Abstract:
The construction industry and services form an integral part of the economy of Pakistan. One of the big pillars of this economic tier is the residential construction. Due to the private and local nature of this sector coupled with the illiteracy, it faces a lot of problems during the planning and execution phases. These problems are related to the incorrect speculation of capital resources during the planning and their management during the execution phase. This research work makes an endeavour to streamline the capital management at this level. The work involves the cost estimation process at both preliminary and detailed levels and has tried to standardize the main elements of cost estimation applicable to the residential construction industry in Pakistan. Furthermore, it has focused on some standard and common house plans, modelled them in Auto desk Revit 2017 software to get the quantities of the construction elements which had earlier been standardized. These quantities were calculated to apply to the cost estimation process in order to speculate the estimations and to carry out cost analyses on the results. In these analyses, various elements have been compared vis-à-vis their costs as well as the trends in the variation of plan costs vis-à-vis variations in the plot areas. Basing on these analyses, digital cost models have been developed in MS-Excel which make the cost estimation process an easy task at the residential level. No technical specialities are needed to operate these models and the users just need to follow through the guidance by choosing some very useful options from the drop-down menus. The models are fully inter-linked and automated wheretheclients and contractors areat liberty to vary some elements/items as per their taste/requirement to come up with a more customized and accurate estimate on some standard plot areas within minimum time. Moreover, some help ful recommendations have also been proposed which can be of utter value to both the client and the contractor as regards cost management during the execution phase.
