Cost estimation of construction projects is considered the basis for projects' life cycle cost management. Accuracy of project cost estimate depends on many factors such as the availability of labor and equipment prices and productivity rates, materials price availability, the accuracy of bidding documents provided by the client, and conditions of the market. The construction material prices form a high portion of the total project cost. Accordingly, the availability of material prices is considered one of the most important factors affecting the project cost estimate's accuracy. Several sources of material prices can be used in cost estimation during the tender phase, such as catalogues, surveys, historical data, suppliers and manufacture price lists, and governmental or private organization price bulletins. This paper introduces a simplified method for cost estimation based on two formal references for construction material price bulletins in Egypt (CAPMAS Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, and MHUC Ministry of Housing, Utilities & Urban Communities) which are issued on a monthly basis. A simple case study based on contractor's bidding documents for the residential building has been applied and compared with the above mentioned bulletins to verify the availability and accuracy of material prices provided by these bulletins. The results show that the available material prices provided by MHUC represents about 79% of total material cost in the case study, while the CAPMAS available data represents only about 59%. This study also highlighted the high level of accuracy of both bulletins' material prices compared with actual market prices. |
