The same question comes up in every conversation with a construction company: why does pricing take so long? A developer wants a cost estimate within a few days. The estimating department needs six, sometimes eight weeks to produce a figure it considers acceptable. By then, the tender has closed or the client is already talking to a competitor.
The issue goes deeper than a lack of speed. Estimators are trained to be precise. Their work is checked after completion, their figures underpin the construction contract, and mistakes often attract serious criticism. In that context, speed and accuracy naturally pull in different directions. A tender needs something different from a contract: a well-supported estimate, delivered quickly, with the known risks identified.
Resolving that difference is a process question, not a software question.
Our approach works on three fronts at once, regardless of the ERP system. The first is templates. Construction companies with in-house design capabilities create design templates and connect them to estimating. An apartment building, a school, an office tower: each project type gets its own template with a baseline structure of quantities, cost types and assumptions. The estimator no longer starts from a blank sheet, but adjusts the points where the project differs.
The second is early procurement information. Reference prices from suppliers and subcontractors are loaded into the estimating model, so estimators do not have to phone around to establish current prices for a typical finishing package. Those references are maintained, not collected just once.
The third is BIM. Where the design team provides a BIM model, quantities are taken directly from that model into the cost model. This is not automatic in every situation and does not work in every context. But where it does, manual quantity take-off disappears from the estimating cycle.
“We distinguish between calculating and estimating. A good tender needs a well-supported estimate, not an exact calculation. Building that distinction into your process saves weeks.”
— Dennis Michiels, Senior Application Expert at Teamservices
The Belgian complication is that there is not yet a national BIM standard. In Germany, France and the Netherlands, contractors can work with a shared design language. In Belgium, each BIM model looks different depending on the design office behind it. We do not address this by waiting for a national standard, which we do not expect in the near future. We work with contractors that have their own design templates. Those who establish their own shared language do not have to wait for a national one.
The strategic implication for construction companies is clear. If your competitive advantage lies in design capability, your estimating cycle is the bottleneck. Every week saved in that cycle opens up tenders you currently pass over because the timescale is too tight.
That five-week difference helps determine which projects you pursue and what margin you achieve on the work you win.
Read more here about our approach and how we can help your construction company.
