Creating Better Estimates
Creating Better Estimates: Kiewit Power Constructors
Kiewit Power Constructors (KPC) implemented new technology aimed at helping them create better, more detailed and accurate project estimates. They chose the advanced functionality available with InEight Estimate. InEight’s technology enabled KPC estimators to collaborate with multiple teams, simplify tasks, and track and share cost-modeling and benchmarking functionality, which helped to ensure successful project completion at the lowest cost and highest quality.
The Project
Good project cost management means being able to deliver a quality project on time and within budget. To do that, project teams must start with a detailed and accurate estimate. Kiewit Power Constructors (KPC) was looking at new technology for its Lenexa, Kansas-based estimating team that would improve productivity and efficiency, automate processes, improve accuracy and enable them to query historical past costs in real-time.
This would give KPC estimators more confidence in their estimates and allow them to focus more time on innovative cost control measures for their clients. KPC selected InEight Estimate, one of the project cost management solutions in InEight Project Suite.
“Everyone could be in InEight Estimate at the same time. The updates are live, and it’s very easy to navigate compared to our old system.”
— Andrew Haley, Project Estimator KPC Estimating
The Solution
InEight Estimate sets the standard for accuracy, performance and multiuser collaboration throughout the estimating process. It can be used to create top-down estimates or detailed, bottom-up estimates, including assemblies, crews and production rates.
“InEight Estimate seamlessly keys off account codes in the background, so all that data that we estimate with and generate on a project is instantly available to compare against,” said Project Estimator Andrew Haley. “That’s something we have never been able to do as a company.”
The data can be pulled from multiple sources, including InEight Control, which brings together critical budget, as-built and forecast data related to costs, man-hours and productivity information. KPC projects use InEight Control to effectively track and manage budget and contract changes, and forecast performance and progress.
“Now, I can pull and query data for the entire company in real time and see what productions they’re seeing, what past costs they’ve experienced, which is amazing,” said Haley. “Having better access to the data has definitely increased visibility, accuracy and productivity.”
Because InEight Estimate allows estimators to query real past costs across the company for similar projects, estimators spend less time tracking down that information and manually entering it into spreadsheets. Having more confidence in the data means less time chasing outliers and figuring out which numbers to trust in disparate spreadsheets.
Another big win with InEight Estimate is the increased ability for an estimator to complete close-out and bid forms. Complex forms that previously were labor intensive can be printed out instantly and repeated to examine different scenarios.
“Overall, the ability to access the data and spending the time to analyze the data and validating exceptions has really improved our overall processes and eliminated some of the time spent manually doing things. That’s something we can see every day. It’s a pretty cool tool,” said Haley.
“What really took us to the next level was the whole entire enterprise system jumping onto this new level of technology that we didn’t have before.”
— Andrew Haley, Project Estimator KPC Estimating
