Maturity of definition, not effort, separates the classes. What moves between Class 5 and Class 3, what must not, and the two questions that expose the real class.
Contingency is the expected cost of known uncertainties, priced. Where the number comes from, who owns it, and how to defend it in front of a board.
Why crews, durations and access set the estimate on heavy civil and marine work, and how to build the plan before pricing a single quantity.
Shutdown windows, permits and congestion. What a brownfield tie-in does to installation norms, and how to build the factor area by area.
Scope splits, exclusions and validity. The checklist we run before a quote is allowed to carry an estimate, and the sheet that makes quotes comparable.
Normalising for location, year and scope before a cost-per-unit number is allowed anywhere near a decision.
An independent review is not a second estimate. The eleven questions we ask of someone else's number, and the two that find most of the problems.
Minus 50 to plus 100 percent is not a failure of the estimator. It is what concept-stage information supports, and it has a job to do.
Owners want one number. The estimate is a distribution. How to show P10, P50 and P90 so decision-makers use them instead of ignoring them.
Base wage, burdens, premium time, small tools and supervision. Why an all-in rate borrowed from another project is the most common pricing error.
Once the number is approved it stops being an estimate and starts being a baseline. What the estimator owes the project from that point on.
The contractor says 240, the owner says 190. Neither is lying. A method for finding where the 50 lives before anyone argues about it.
The estimate structure is inherited by cost control, scheduling and claims. How to build one all three can live with for five years.
The assumed escalation rate deserves the same scrutiny as any other line. How to price it by commodity, cash-flowed to the midpoint of spend.
The work inside a turnaround window needs its own estimate, schedule and risk model, separate from the months of preparation around it.
Site overheads on a long, remote or phased project can exceed the direct labour. Build them from the schedule and the organisation chart, not a ratio.
At Class 4 the drawings are incomplete by definition. The discipline that turns partial information into defensible, traceable quantities.
Every brownfield estimate leans on drawings of what is already there. What to do when they are wrong, and how to price not knowing.
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