Construction Estimating Using Excel
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Construction Estimating Using Excel (2nd Edition) $94.48 Construction Estimating with Excel, Second Edition, introduces readers to the fundamental principles of estimating. Using drawing sets, real-world exercises, and examples, the text offers students critical estimating experience. The book moves step-by-step through the estimating process, discussing the art of estimating, the quantity takeoff, how to put costs to the estimate, and how to finalize t… |
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Estimating With Microsoft Excel: Unlocking the Power for Home Builders $45.00 Excel is one of the most powerful tools any home builder can use. This books gives you step-by-step instructions on how to create a fully customized estimating program and improve the accuracy of your estimates. With easy to understand examples, screen shots and a tutorial CD-ROM you will be able to create estimates you can rely on for your most important management decisions. Use Excel to make yo… |
Getting Costs Estimates To Construct A House For Your Retirement To Thailand
This article is not simply repeating other data that already can be found elsewhere on the Internet. Rather, it is new and original ideas based on the current experiences of somebody actually progressing through the process of getting cost estimates to develop a retirement home in Thailand.
The Rudimentals Of Getting A Construction Estimate To Construct A Retirement House In Thailand
To acquire a price to build a retirement home in Thailand there are essentially two separate ways.
1. By Means Of Baht per m2 To Approximate The Cost Of Building A Residence.
The first andmost simple way of arriving at the likely price of constructing a retirement development in Thailand is by means of Unit Rates. i.e. price/m2 . The cost of building property in Thailand differ with the type of the building and the place in Thailand. Other factors that have an effect on the price of building a estate in Thailand and these are not ,on the whole, reflected in unit rates. One instance is that the cost of building depends to a great extent upon the individual builder chosen as quotes for the same house from alternative builders significantly.
Locating unit rates for homes in Thailand is not simple – the author has not come across a source of ‘official’ unit rates, but one or two have been posted on several Thai Forums. They are only suitable to be used as a guide.
Unit Rates recently forwarded to the author by one of Thailand foremost design-and-build companies located in Bagkok are in the range of 15-20 thousand Baht per m2.
If you can get hold of unit rates for the nation where you live, you will be able to weigh against those to the unit rates for Thailand. When I did this found out that building in Thailand was 30 to 40 pc of the cost of constructing in my native land, which is the UK. Let me present the figures:- Cost of building a house in Thailand 15,000 to 20,000 Baht/metre squared the same as three to four hundred £/m2. (based on 50 Baht per pound) Cost of constructing a residence in the UK is a thousand pounds per metre squared. That is to say that the cost ofbuilding in Thailand is thirty to fourty pc of the United Kingdom price.
For anyone residing in the UK the Home Building & Renovation website publishes an excellent free spreadsheet named “Build Cost Guide” which is a matrix of construction costs (unit rates) for varying sorts and sizes of houses throughout the Kingdom.
The construction price of a home is calculated by multiplying the unit rate by the complete floor area of the dwelling under assessment.
There is no need need to obtain or engage a Construction Company when making use of unit rates to arrive at an costing for building your house.
There is one more flaw in the unit rate technique for the reason that it is a blanket rate and should not be used for differing parts of a house if those areas are entirely different in arrangement. For illustration our intended retirement house in Pak Chong, Thailand, has alltogether different ground and first floor uses. The property follows the form of the popular Thai post home where the first floor which contains the living accommodation is elevated on nine posts or columns and is approaching three metres above the ground. The ground floor accommodation is 50 % left unfilled to make a car shelter and the remaining half is purely a walled area to form a workshop. Clearly the same unit rate can’t be applied to both floors. (Unless the unit rate was obtained from a similar structure)
On the first floor of my Pakchong residence there is a sizeable terrace area and another similar half-open dining area. These two rooms will be cheaper than the living zones, bathrooms, living and bedrooms, for case. Therefore when working out the cost of the residence does one assume the unit rate to the total area, or adjust it for the lower-price rooms? This is a further intricacy you will find when applying rates per m2 to assessment the cost of a building.
The catch is that I have no idea specifically of the starting point for the rate/ m2 in the first place. i.e. whether it was for a building like my own with the open zones adopted, or if it was for a building with a higher proportion of actual living area.
This means can only give you a estimated indication of the probable price of your house in comparison with the standard price of other properties of equal size and ought not be utilised to provide an exact budget taking into account the detailed arrangement of your residence.
2. Finding A Construction Company’s Cost Estimate In Thailand For Constructing A Property By The Use Of House Plans
If you have had produced (or designed on your own) a set of designs your retirement building in Thailand you ought to be able to acquire quotation from a construction company.
If you wish for a truly precise estimate then the drawings should be very well detailed and if possible supplemented with extrapapers for example Scope of Works and Materials Lists. The Materials Lists are commonly a schedule of finishes, schedule of doors, locks and so on.
This technique has 3 major problems.
Making The Drawings And Supplementary Information
I didn’t need to get, and pay for, a person to turn out my own plans to get a construction company’s quotation for my retirement home in Thailand. I am skillful in the utilization of the Computerised drawing software and am used to with building design.
To get me with making my own house layouts I got various ready made Thai home plans in pdf and AutoCAD format from the Thai Government website at http://www.dpt.go.th/download/PW/house_model/framehome.html. I selected one of the layouts that I preferred and made it larger in plan by adding accommodation. This is a great deal better than starting from nothing.
If you are not attracted to this do-it-yourself method you will have to obtain somebody to prepare the house drawings for you. When you attempt to obtain a Thai Architect to undertake this for you then you are bound to have difficulties.
In the first place finding an Architect in Thailand is not trouble-free (except if you want to pay a over the odds in which case there is a corporation in Bangkok who will design your house for you). Actually that is the corporation I selected to put together my house plans and when you see the tremendous standard and huge amount of the layouts they turn out are not pricey at all in absolute terms.
And for the next point, how do you make clear to an architectural design company what you want? This is particularly tricky (impracticable?) if you are unable to to meet with the architect and discuss suggestions and concepts. Carrying out that by electronic mail from outside of Thailand is very nearly impractical.
Construction Contracts Have Got To Be In The Thai Language
Having your documents translated into Thai is trouble-free, you will be able to discover lots of English/Thai translators by going online. However locating a person to translate the CAD house plans into Thai is another matter. Because besides knowing the Thia and English languages, in addition they have to a) be in possession of the Autocad software or have access to it and b) be able to use the CAD application.
There is a shortage of people like this. Most tend to be Architects.
Though I have written that a good number of construction companies are not used to English I did manage to get 2 quotes from Thai construction companies with drawings and documents in the English language only.
My wife spoke to at least 6 building companies in Thailand and requested them to provide us a quotation for building our project. Just 2 responded with a quotation and that was twice our budget! It appears they are all engaged on on big construction projects to care about our tiny little house. Therefore locating a construction company in Thailand to give you your estimate might not be so straightforward.
The way we adopted to locate builders asking home owners “You occupy a pretty property, can you tell me who the builder was?” My wife finds it straightforward to make friends with people and once she was talking to the Security Guard at our apartment and he promised her that he can secure a quote from at least a couple of builders. We took him up on that suggestion but never received the bids. One was occupied on other resdidence and the other demanded 5,000 Baht payment prior to preparing a quote in case we failed to select him as our building company!
I was then told that our useful Security Guard would be earning a tenpc wedge of the build cost from the house builders as commission!
To precis this piece, I have clarified the best methods to obtain a quotation for constructing your retirement home in Thailand and the advantages and disadvantages of each method. As well I have described the problem areas you might face when attempting to locate a Thai construction company to undertake the build for you.
Determining the cost of building a house in Thailand for your retirement is not easy. The author demonstrates two ways to obtain a budget cost estimate for a retirement house using A) Unit Build Rates and B) getting quotations from Thai companies for Architects Fees and building a house in Thailand companies using Thai house plans.
Budget price of building a house in Thailand using Thai house plans and Unit Rates.
About the Author
<a target=”_blank” href=”http://retiringinthailand.net/house-build-thailand-2/thailand-house-prices/budget-cost-1/”>Budget price of building a house in Thailand</a>using Thai house plans and Unit Rates. (Baht per m2). The Author is building a house in Packchong, Thailand where he intends to retire to. In this article he gives advice on how he obtained quotations to build his house using two different methods.
Some ideas please as to what business/Job I can go into and be passionate about with these ideas?
Thank you for taking time out to read my post. By the list of interests below can you give me some ideas please as to what business/Job I can go into and be passionate about:
Here are the interests, hobbies, skill sets etc:
- Basic to Intermediate web design
- AutoCAD software
- Computer assembly and hardware support
- Computer games / consoles
- Software support (most MS Office products, Sage, some Adobe products)
- Estimating (I am particular proficient using Microsoft Excel, setting up formulas etc)
- Good knowledge of construction/building industry but would like to move away from this
Please throw some educated ideas
Vlad, i think that a person can only be ‘passionate’ about an area/career
if they are already passionate, as a person, about the ‘things’ most involved in that area/career. if you put a cv type doc up it would make it alot easier to answer because your ’skills’ would be seperated from your ‘hobbies’ and ‘interests’ etc.
but here is a guess:
If you enjoy IT and want to stay constantly challenged then programming and/or system architecture design (where you design how a whole suite of programmes are going to interact, and probably get to write the links that thread it all together, say for a telecoms co) are ever changing. You probably won’t get there in a rush (without a degree) but IF that is your passion then ANY job that uses as many of your skills as possible (ie >0) and gives you the resources (time/money/training/experience) to get you closer to that should be grabbed with both hands.
As you like web design you might want to try using the resources on offer (above) to help you learn how to write s/ware for web pages, ASP (active server pages) is useful. writing s/ware is not as difficult as some might have you believe. if you understand how the s/ware, you have experience with, works, then you are half way there. i hope i haven’t missed the target by too much, but if i have then please remember that it really all depends on what YOU are passionate about. And this may well change over time, if it does don’t worry, go with it.
Construction Cost to complete using Excel
In by gone days all a contractor had to do was give the customer good quality and good service and he/she would be set. Then set back and let your customers do your selling for you. They would tell a friend and then that friend would tell a friend. Your phone would be ringing off the hook. I remember as an Architectural designer some days I would have up to four people wanting to schedule appointments for designs. Those days are long gone! But Fear Not! Click Here For Help
