Starting CostPlan & Menu Bar

Introduction to CostPlan

It can be customised for any costing activity and is particularly suitable to provide an Outline Cost Plan for a model as output from ModelIT.

CostPlan works by allowing the user to define a Cost Category, and each category has a number of elements. In use CostPlan allows the user to calculate the total cost of the building or to calculate Bill of Quantities estimates.

For example, the cost of ducting associated with a building. In such a case the Category would be Duct and each element would be the particular duct elements. Each duct item could be valued and the total cost displayed in CostPlan. CostPlan can take Bill of Materials information from four programs within the IES product range:

· Indus – Ducting

· Pisces – Closed loop pipework

· Taps – Open loop piping

· Field – Electrical cabling

In addition, CostPlan can use the 3D model created by ModelIT, which contains exact measures for the dimensions of the building, e.g. total floor area, roof area, external wall area, etc. These parameters can be used to generate the elemental costs which are required for the Outline Cost Plan. The Costs data file defines the "rules" and price data that is used to calculate the individual costs. The "rule" defines which measure is to be applied to the unit price to give the cost, e.g. "total floor area" is a commonly used measure. There are two principal CostPlan templates available at this time: a whole building template; and a building services template.

The information from CostPlan can be used as part of the Deft system.

Principal features:

· CostPlan is customisable to suit the users own applications.

· The user can use proprietary information in CostPlan to facilitate their business.

· Elemental costs can be assigned to the 3D model from ModelIT to predict capital costs. Templates are available for the RICS cost plan and for building services.

· Bill of Materials can be generated from IES software and valued within CostPlan.

· The cost data files created in CostPlan can be used within Deft to predict building capital costs.

If CostPlan is run then the following window is displayed:

In the menu bar there are seven menu options: File, Edit, View, Tools, CostPlan, Project and Help.

CostPlan

If “CostPlan” is selected then the following options are available:

New

Creates new CostPlan cost data file.

Open

Open existing CostPlan cost data file.

Close

Close existing CostPlan cost data file.

Save

Save current cost data information with current location and name

Save as

Save current cost data information under new name and/or location.

Print

Prints the current data.

Edit Menu

If “Edit” is selected then the following options are provided:

Category

This section describes the options available to the user for editing and manipulation of categories in the Cost Data file.

Note that the elemental costs are grouped into a number of Categories. Categories can be added, modified or deleted.

The following browser at the bottom of the main window allows the user to view and edit the cost data. Tabs along the top allow the user to view current project information including: number of zones, floor area, and areas of external wall, internal wall and roof in square metres (or feet).

Subsequent tabs show any cost plan files which currently exist. Each cost plan file is broken into categories and elements, where categories contain any number of elements:

This window shows a list of the categories present in the cost plan file with individual costs and capital cost.

The following options are available from the edit menu and by right clicking on a category.

Cut	This remove an category to be pasted elsewhere
Copy	This copies an category to be pasted elsewhere
Paste	This pastes the cut/copied category over an existing selected one
Paste as New	This paste the cut/copied category as a new item by adding it to those already there
Add	This creates a new empty category
Insert	This inserts a new category into the list
Remove	This removes a category and all its contents
Move up	Moves up the list
Move down	Moves down the list

The buttons below the window further provide another means of adding and removing categories.

Element

The edit options for element s are exactly the same as for categories. See the above table for a description of functions.

The following shows the element part of the cost plan file window. The elements displayed depend upon the active Category. The user can edit elements and assign an Element code that can be assigned to a unit cost. For example: cost/ground floor area; cost/total floor area, fixed cost, etc. The necessary areas, volumes and quantities are extracted from the 3D Model that was generated by ModelIT.

The window displays the Cost Elements and five fields showing the Element code, Rate, Weighting Factor, Cost and Cost/floor area. In more detail, the window consists of the following:

· The "Element Code" label shows the particular code of that element. Values may be input directly into the text field. See "Element Code" for further information.

· The “Rate” is a user assigned rate associated with the Element Code, which when multiplied together gives the Cost.

· The “Weighting Factor” is a simple multiplying factor to allow the user to take account of information not in the model e.g. there could be 30% more internal surfaces therefore a factor of 1.3 could be applied to internal partitions.

· "Cost" shows the total cost according to the rate, weighting and actual area of the element.

· "Cost/m2" is a label showing the value obtained from multiplying the Unit Cost with the factor obtained via the Element Code and the Weighting Factor.

The add/remove element buttons work in exactly the same way as the category buttons.

Element Code

The Element Code can be selected manually from a list by double-clicking on the appropriate element code cell. This shows the following selection window, displaying the list of available element codes.