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Drawings & documents · Cost

Cost overview

Estimate what a building costs to build, then price it as design-build or run a development pro forma from it.

Alpha tool. It's early and still changing: expect things to break, and keep your own copy of anything you can't lose. What alpha means

Cost works out what the building costs. It's for a team that needs to understand construction cost: when an owner pays for construction and you're the designers, or when you build it yourselves as design-build.

It estimates the cost from a cost per SF, or from line items by trade, adjusted for the region and with a contingency on top. Two optional pages start from that estimate:

  • a design-build price: the estimate plus general conditions, contingency, overhead, profit, bonds and your design fee
  • a development pro forma: land or a purchase, the estimate, soft costs, a construction loan, carry and the sale

What you charge is a separate tool, Fees. Each can read the other from the same project.

Every number is an estimate, not a bid or a guarantee. The seeded costs and region factors are rough public references; your own numbers beat them.

The main screen #

  • The toolbar: Project ▾, the estimate's name, New, Import, Export ▾ and Share / Snapshots.
  • The left column (Project): the project type, region, areas, the owner's budget, the construction start, which optional pages to work out, and the design fee. Every tab reads from it. On a phone it starts folded; tap it to open.
  • The headline strip: the estimate's low to high, the mid, the mid per SF, how it compares with the budget, and the contract price or the profit when those pages are on.
  • The tabs: Estimate and Cost library, plus Design-build and Pro forma when they're on.

The project inputs #

  • Project type: free text, like "Single-family residence".
  • Region: a state or metro area. The hint under it shows its cost factor. Your own factor overrides it (0 uses the region's). Where the region factors come from names the source.
  • Conditioned SF, Unconditioned SF (garage, storage) and Exterior built SF (decks, patios).
  • Owner's budget: if you know it. The strip shows whether the mid estimate is over or under it.
  • Construction start: when the pro forma's months begin.
  • Also work out: tick Design-build price or Development pro forma to add that page. Turning one off keeps what you typed in it.
  • Design fee: shows when either page is on. See Design-build and pro forma.

Start a new estimate #

Cost isn't on a project page's + New menu yet. Start it from the tool:

  1. Open Cost. It opens on its home page.
  2. Under Start fresh, pick + Blank or a template:
    • New house — cost per SF
    • Renovation budget by trade
    • Design-build price
    • Spec house pro forma
    • Buy, renovate, sell
  3. To save it with a project, open Project ▾ and click Push to a project….

The templates use made-up sample areas and costs so the numbers show. Replace them with your project's.

If you're signed out, the templates open as a demo: you can edit, but nothing saves or exports.

Open existing work #

  • From the home page: Your cost estimates lists the one you were working on and every estimate in your projects.
  • From inside the tool: open Project ▾. The bottom of the menu lists the estimates in your projects.
  • From a file: click Import and pick a .cost.json file. It opens as new work on this computer. An early .fees.json file that carried a construction cost or a pro forma opens here too.

Export #

Export ▾ has:

  • Summary picture (PNG) and Summary PDF: one page with the estimate, and the design-build price or the pro forma when they're on.
  • Workbook (Excel): the estimate, plus design-build and the pro forma month by month when they're on, as sheets.
  • Tables (CSV): one CSV per table.
  • Cost file (.cost.json): the whole estimate. Import it to get it back.

See Exports.

Use an estimate in Fees #

A Fees estimate in the same project can link to this one and run its percent fee on your estimate. See The cost the percent runs on.

Who can see it #

An estimate you push into a project is shared with that project's people. See People and roles. Until you push it, it's only on this computer.

Share / Snapshots takes snapshots and turns on view-only links. Someone with a link sees the whole estimate, pro forma included, but can't change it.

An AI assistant connected through the AI connector can read an estimate, but can't change it.