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Cost Engineering
Cost engineering is "the engineering practice devoted to the management of project cost, involving such activities as estimating, cost control, cost forecasting, investment appraisal and risk analysis". "Cost Engineers budget, plan and monitor investment projects. They seek the optimum balance between cost, quality and time requirements." Skills and knowledge of cost engineers are similar to those of quantity surveyors. In many industries, cost engineering is synonymous with project controls. As the title "engineer" has legal requirements in many jurisdictions (i.e. Texas, Canada), the cost engineering discipline is often renamed to project controls. A cost engineer is "an engineer whose judgment and experience are utilized in the application of scientific principles and techniques to problems of estimation; cost control; business planning and management science; profitability analysis; project management; and planning and scheduling". Overview One key objective of cost en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application. See glossary of engineering. The term ''engineering'' is derived from the Latin ''ingenium'', meaning "cleverness" and ''ingeniare'', meaning "to contrive, devise". Definition The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD, the predecessor of ABET) has defined "engineering" as: The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Construction Management
Construction management (CM) is a professional service that uses specialized, project management techniques and software to oversee the planning, design, construction and closeout of a project. The purpose of Construction management is to control the quality of a project's scope, time / delivery and cost—sometimes referred to as a project management triangle or "triple constraints." CM is compatible with all project delivery systems, including design-bid-build, design-build, CM At-Risk and Public Private Partnerships. Professional construction managers may be hired for large to jumbo-scale, high budget undertakings (commercial real estate, transportation infrastructure, industrial facilities, and military infrastructure), called capital projects. The role of a contractor Contractors are assigned to a construction project during the design for a constructibility review or once the design has been completed by a licensed architect or a licensed civil engineer. This is done by g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gower Publishing
Ashgate Publishing was an academic book and journal publisher based in Farnham ( Surrey, United Kingdom). It was established in 1967 and specialised in the social sciences, arts, humanities and professional practice. It had an American office in Burlington, Vermont, and another British office in London. It is now a subsidiary of Informa (Taylor & Francis). The company had two imprints: Gower Publishing published professional business and management titles, and Lund Humphries, originally established in 1939, publishes illustrated art books, particularly in the field of modern British art. In March 2015, Gower unveiled GpmFirst, a web-based community of practice allowing subscribers access to more than 120 project management titles, as well as discussions and articles relevant to business and project management. In July 2015, it was announced that Ashgate had been sold to Informa for a reported £20M, and Lund Humphries was relaunched as an independent publisher in December 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Value Engineering
Value engineering (VE) is a systematic analysis of the functions of various components and materials to lower the cost of goods, products and services with a tolerable loss of performance or functionality. Value, as defined, is the ratio of function to cost. Value can therefore be manipulated by either improving the function or reducing the cost. It is a primary tenet of value engineering that basic functions be preserved and not be reduced as a consequence of pursuing value improvements. The term "value management" is sometimes used as a synonym of "value engineering", and both promote the planning and delivery of projects with improved performance The reasoning behind value engineering is as follows: if marketers expect a product to become practically or stylistically obsolete within a specific length of time, they can design it to only last for that specific lifetime. The products could be built with higher-grade components, but with value engineering th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Total Delivery Cost
Total Delivered Cost (TDC) is the amount of money it takes for a company to manufacture and deliver a product. Its components are: *Total Manufacturing Cost: Costs incurred up to and inclusive of the production of finished and wrapped pallets or unit loads, fit for introduction into the warehousing and distribution chain. *Product Supply Non-Manufacturing Expense: Administrative and developmental costs associated with the purchase of materials, engineering, design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design' ... of a plant worthy production process, and administrative costs required to manage it. *Finished Product Logistics Costs: Costs incurred from the entry of finished, wrapped pallets, or unit loads to the warehousing and distribution chain, until delivery of cases to the cus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reference Class Forecasting
Reference class forecasting or comparison class forecasting is a method of predicting the future by looking at similar past situations and their outcomes. The theories behind reference class forecasting were developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The theoretical work helped Kahneman win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Reference class forecasting is so named as it predicts the outcome of a planned action based on actual outcomes in a reference class of similar actions to that being forecast. Discussion of which reference class to use when forecasting a given situation is known as the reference class problem. Overview Kahneman and Tversky Decision Research Technical Report PTR-1042-77-6. In found that human judgment is generally optimistic due to overconfidence and insufficient consideration of distributional information about outcomes. People tend to underestimate the costs, completion times, and risks of planned actions, whereas they tend to overestimate the benefits ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pre-construction Services
Pre-construction services are used in planning a construction project before the actual construction begins. These services are often referred to as preconstruction or precon. It is a modern practice, considered to be part of construction project management, which is the overall planning, coordination, and control of a project from inception to completion aimed at meeting a client’s requirements in order to produce a functionally and financially viable project. Overview In the long established design-bid-build method of construction project delivery, a project would be entirely designed before being built. This resulted in a package of plans and specifications which formed the construction documents. The owner would then request bids (or tenders) for the project and award the project to a successful bidder, who would then build the project. Often the early feasibility, studies, and design development is supported by construction cost estimators, who prepare cost estimates for u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optimism Bias
Optimism bias (or the optimistic bias) is a cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event. It is also known as unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism. Optimism bias is common and transcends gender, ethnicity, nationality, and age.O’Sullivan, Owen P. (2015)The neural basis of always looking on the bright side.''Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences'', 8(1):11–15. Optimistic biases are even reported in non-human animals such as rats and birds. However, autistic people are less susceptible to optimistic biases. Four factors can cause a person to be optimistically biased: their desired end state, their cognitive mechanisms, the information they have about themselves versus others, and overall mood. The optimistic bias is seen in a number of situations. For example: people believing that they are less at risk of being a crime victim, smokers believing that they are less likely to contract lung can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muntzing
Muntzing is the practice and technique of reducing the components inside an electronic appliance to the minimum required for it to function. The term is named after the man who invented it, Earl "Madman" Muntz, a car and electronics salesman who was also a self-taught electrical engineer. In the 1940s and 1950s, television receivers were very complex pieces of equipment, often containing upwards of 30 vacuum tubes, as well as transformers, rheostats, and other heavy electronics. The consequent high price limited their potential for high-volume sales. Muntz determined, through trial and error, that he could remove a significant number of parts and still end up with a monochrome TV that worked very well in urban areas, close to transmission towers. He carried a pair of wire clippers around and when he felt that one of his builders was overengineering a circuit, he would begin snipping components out. When the TV stopped functioning, he would reinsert the last part and leave the TV a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Cost Engineering Council
The International Cost Engineering Council (ICEC) is a nonpolitical and nonprofit organization. ICEC’s objective is to promote cooperation between cost engineering, quantity surveying, and project management organizations. This is a global and local initiative to ensure the shared well-being of the organization and that of its members. ICEC identifies itself as a Worldwide Confederation of Cost Engineering, Quantity Surveying, and Project Management Societies. ICEC is an NGO in Roster Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Member societies of ICEC are generally national associations or institutes. History ICEC was founded in 1976 and now represents more than 100,000 cost engineers and project managers in over 100 different nations. Where subjects of common interests need to be exchanged and discussed, regular ICEC meetings are attended by delegates of the member societies. Each member society has one vote on the Council. Global Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cost-plus Contract
A cost-plus contract, also termed a cost plus contract, is a contract such that a contractor is paid for all of its allowed expenses, ''plus'' additional payment to allow for a profit.Cost-Plus Contracts Cost-reimbursement contracts contrast with fixed-price contract, in which the contractor is paid a negotiated amount regardless of incurred expenses. History |
Cost Overrun
A cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, involves unexpected incurred costs. When these costs are in excess of budgeted amounts due to a value engineering underestimation of the actual cost during budgeting, they are known by these terms. Cost overruns are common in infrastructure, building, and technology projects. For IT projects, a 2004 industry study by the Standish Group found an average cost overrun of 43 percent; 71 percent of projects came in over budget, exceeded time estimates, and had estimated too narrow a scope; and total waste was estimated at $55 billion per year in the US alone. Many major construction projects have incurred cost overruns; cost estimates used to decide whether important transportation infrastructure should be built can mislead grossly and systematically. Cost overrun is distinguished from cost escalation, which is an ''anticipated'' growth in a budgeted cost due to factors such as inflation. Causes Recent works by Ahi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
