Asee peer logo

A Case for Incorporating Pre-construction Cost Estimating in Construction Engineering and Management Programs

Download Paper |

Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

June 29, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Construction Session 2: PM, BIM, and Collaboration

Tagged Division

Construction

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

18

DOI

10.18260/p.26265

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/26265

Download Count

4236

Paper Authors

biography

Carla Lopez Del Puerto University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-0334-7208

visit author page

Carla Lopez del Puerto, PhD
Associate Professor
Construction Engineering and Management
Department of Civil Engineering
University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez
email: Carla.LopezdelPuerto@upr.edu
http://cem.uprm.edu

visit author page

biography

Luis G. Costa Agosto University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez

visit author page

Luis G. Costa Agosto
Graduate Student
Construction Engineering and Management
University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez
email: luis.costa@upr.edu
http://cem.uprm.edu

visit author page

biography

Douglas D. Gransberg PhD, PE Iowa State UIniversity

visit author page

Douglas D. Gransberg is the Donald and Sharon Greenwood Professor of Construction Engineering at Iowa State University. He received both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from Oregon State University and his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He was a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma and Texas Tech University before joining ISU in 2011. His research spans the full life cycle of engineering, construction and maintenance, from the procurement of new projects using alternative project delivery methods such as Construction Manager/General Contractor and Design-Build to the preservation and maintenance of pavements and bridges. His research has received awards from the Transportation Research Board, several US state departments of transportation and the New Zealand Transit Agency. He is also a registered Professional Engineer in Oklahoma, Texas and Oregon, a Certified Cost Engineer, a Designated Design-Build Professional and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in the UK. Before moving to academia in 1994, he served for over twenty years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers retiring at the rank of lieutenant colonel.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

The need to effectively manage costs during the construction phase of a project to meet budget constraints is widely understood by both practitioners and academics. Most, if not all, Construction Engineering and Management undergraduate and graduate programs require that students complete construction cost estimating courses as part of their core curriculum. However, the value of estimating the owner’s planning, design, and procurement costs during the preconstruction period is not typically included in the Construction Engineering and Management curriculum. Preconstruction costs are usually defined as all work required to develop and advertise construction documents to a point where the construction contract can be awarded. Final project construction documents literally define the level of required construction quality and as such, must also be of adequate quality to achieve the construction project’s ultimate success. Thus, failing to provide an adequate and sufficient preconstruction budget constrains the necessary resources to fully develop these documents and may unintentionally constrain the document development process causing planners and designers to match their level of effort to the amount of time permitted by the budget. Not only may the quality of the construction documents be negatively impacted but design factors of safety may be unnecessarily increased due to a lack of time to do detailed design analyses. It can also, eventually, have an impact in design issues related to serviceability, operation, or maintenance. Lastly, the increased use of alternative project delivery methods, such as Design-Build and Construction Manager-at-Risk, have created a need to teach preconstruction cost estimating in academic programs to ensure that graduates have the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively manage construction projects delivered using both traditional and alternative methods. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by demonstrating the importance of accurately estimating owner’s preconstruction costs and proposing a framework to assist engineering educators to integrate the subject into the required curriculum in Construction Engineering and Management programs.

Lopez Del Puerto, C., & Costa Agosto, L. G., & Gransberg, D. D. (2016, June), A Case for Incorporating Pre-construction Cost Estimating in Construction Engineering and Management Programs Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.26265

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2016 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015