Refurbishment jobs are always the tricky ones, especially under a D&C engagement.
Refurbishment estimating is not new build estimating done to an older building. The difference is what you are handed. On a new build the drawing set is the job. On a refurb the drawing set is only part of the job.
It is the same discipline as any other tender, applied to a building that is already standing and was built to details nobody has in front of them.
What is not documented still gets priced
A majority of items simply are not documented. They are still expected to be captured, priced and delivered.
The drawings give you maybe 70% of the story. The rest lives in the existing refurb assumptions and details.
That remaining share is where a refurb tender is won or lost. It is not on a page anywhere, so it has to be written down as an assumption before it can be measured as a quantity.
It is not that the documents are bad. An existing building keeps its details to itself until somebody opens it up.
Why D&C makes it harder
Under a lump sum contract you price what is documented. Under Design and Construct the builder carries the design, so the undocumented items are still yours to capture, price and deliver.
Put those two together, an existing building and a D&C engagement, and the estimator is pricing decisions nobody has made yet on a building nobody has fully surveyed. That is the tricky one.
Five zones on one building
On the Crowne Plaza repositioning works in Melbourne, the job split into five zones:
- Guestrooms and corridors
- Level 2 public areas and the Porte Cochere
- A new Level 11 rooftop restaurant and club lounge
- A spa and pool inserted into the existing atrium
- Services upgrades throughout
Five zones, one live building, and five different sets of existing conditions to allow for.
Those five lines are the scope. Every one of them still had to be captured, priced and delivered, whether or not the documents described it.
Scope first, measure second
On refurb, that order matters most. Settle what is in the job before anyone measures any of it. Measure first and you produce a very accurate number for the wrong scope.
The order is the whole point. Scope is the list of what is in the job. Measurement is a quantity against each line of that list. Get the list wrong and every number after it is wrong with it.
Settling the scope first also gives you something to write down. An assumption that stays in someone’s head is not an assumption, it is exposure. On refurb it belongs on the clarifications sheet with everything else.
It is also why the site walk earns its time on this kind of work. Standing in the assumptions is the fastest way to find out which of them are wrong.
Tricky, yet rewarding.