Handing Off Cost Estimates: CostLink/CM Now Converts CostLink/AE Projects

With this quarter's release of BSD CostLink^®/CM and BSD CostLink^®/AE, CM is now capable of reading a CostLink/AE project. This means you can begin a project using AE's unique modeling capability to create an initial conceptual or budget estimate (even before any significant design development), carry that forward into design development by using AE's capability to drag and drop alternative tasks and assemblies into the model, and subsequently convert that estimate into CM format for further detailed development and reporting during the construction documents phase.

CostLink/AE's major strengths are its modeling capability and its overall simplicity, allowing development of detailed cost estimates before any significant design work has begun. CM, on the other hand, has heavy-duty capabilities that include breaking costs down into material, labor, equipment, and other types of costs, and a full-blown reporting system, alternate work breakdown views, individual contractor markups, and many other high-end features. AE is bundled with RS Means installed cost data that includes 70 cost models, 11,000 assemblies, and 20,000 line items. CM, on the other hand, supports optional RS Means databases with similar composition, but they are broken down by material and labor, and they include the crew, labor and equipment resources for each assembly and task.

To use the new conversion capability, simply use the File|Open project command in CostLink/CM and choose the AE project that you want to use in CM. After a confirmation message, the software presents a dialog to let you specify the name and location for the resulting CM project. The AE source project is not changed by the conversion process and is still available for use in AE. However, once converted there is no connection between the AE version and the CM version of the project, and the CM version cannot be opened in AE. During the conversion process, you are given an opportunity to select the RS Means assembly or cost item database you will be using as the reference database for the CM project and subsequent editing in CM. AE uses the so-called "big" assemblies RS Means database, so if you are using other Means assembly databases in CM, they may not support all the assemblies in your estimate. Unsupported assemblies will be converted to user-added tasks. Similarly, if you choose a cost item database (which does not include assemblies), assemblies will be converted to user-added tasks—as will any cost items in your estimate that are not represented in the referenced cost item database.

Once you have converted a project from AE, there are a couple of areas you will want to consider carefully—markups and quantities. CM supports several types of sophisticated markups, whereas CostLink/AE uses a simple set of markups applied to the bottom line. The conversion assigns all items to a single prime contractor, so you may want to make markup adjustments to the project in CM. Quantities are another area worth examining. If you use a model in AE, many quantities are dependent on a formula, and the formula is not available in CM. Consequently, quantities will be set at the values established by the model formulae at the time of conversion and may need subsequent adjustment in CM.

New Custom Reports in CM: The new release of CostLink/CM includes four new custom reports that demonstrate the power of CM's custom reporting capability. The new reports are Bill of Materials, Bill of Sales, Bill of Materials Quote Sheet and Bill of Sales Quote Sheet. The release notes include step-by-step directions for running them. The reports are sorted and combined by "source tag," which is the unique ID of a cost item that generally begins with a two-digit code corresponding to its MasterFormat division number. All of the new reports display costs as Cost to Prime, which includes the bare costs plus sales tax, overtime, direct cost adjustments, and subcontractor markups. They do not include the Prime's markups or any Owner Cost markups.

Detailed instructions for the conversion process and for running the new custom reports are included in the release notes for the current version of CM. Be sure to read the notes, and taking advantage of these new capabilities will be a snap.