Developers can now get accurate construction cost estimates on the web from the Building Cost Information Service. Adam Tinworth reports
The RICS’s Building Cost Information Service has been producing financial facts about the costs of construction for 40 years.
Until now it has been a high-cost information service for quantity surveyors. Now, a low-cost version, BCIS Review Online, has been launched.
Joe Martin, the BCIS’s executive director, is enthusiastic about his new service, which allows surveyors, insurance companies and developers rapid access to average construction costs for buildings.
BCIS has had a computer-based system for 20 years, although for much of that time it has been a basic dial-up, text-based submission service. Then, 18 months ago, it launched BCIS Online. With a full range of cost data, including day work rates, it is targeted at professionals in the construction industry, with prices to match.
The new, low-cost BCIS Review Online service allows people to access the average building costs of various developments, based on research conducted over a number of years. It costs between £280 and £680, depending on the size of the company. Deals are available to large firms that wish to incorporate the system into their intranets.
Analysis of 14,000 tenders
The system offers average prices for more than 200 building types, based on the analysis of more than 14,000 tenders. These are collected from chartered quantity surveyors working all over the country. “We’ve even got abattoirs in there,” says Martin.
This has obvious uses in early cost appraisals of schemes, as well as insurance reinstatement claims.
The site design is fairly simple. A menu down the left side of the screen gives rapid access to the different features of the site. A menu bar along the top gives users the opportunity to download or print the information they have found, or access the online help.
Along with the final costs, users are also given an idea of the number of projects the estimate is based on, and a possible range of costs, based on those figures.
The information drawn out of the system can be displayed in various graphical formats, and downloaded into word processors, spreadsheets or any other application.
As well as showing costs per square metre, the system can also be used to determine the likely construction cost of the whole building, based on the numbers it needs to cater for: a school for 500 children, or a200-bed hospital, for example.
Beyond paper to the ether
The review has existed in paper form for 84 issues, and the new web service will sit alongside its older brother.
“People would always take the copies out of their office in briefcases and then not put them back,” says Martin. “That’s not a problem with the website.”
Once the basic estimates have been obtained, they can be tweaked for regional factors. Users can also predict the likely cost a year or two in the future, using the BCIS’s tender price index.
Other services on the site include various briefings on topics that the BCIS has prepared, and studies it has done on particular factors likely to affect construction costs.
The service is accessed with a username and password, once you know the site address. The address is not made public and is not linked from the BCIS’s homepage at http://www.bcis.co.uk.
