Estimating time management has always been an issue in the all estimating departments which affects the quality of estimates being produced. I would like to discuss how an estimator generally plans his estimating work for a project and how we should be approaching it so as to avoid the last minute rush that is generally experienced in all estimating departments.

The following figure shows a typical estimating schedule

The important points to note in the above figure are:

• There is a long waiting time by the estimating group between the start of the process and when they actually start getting inputs from the various disciplines.
• Once the inputs come in there is very little time left before the estimate needs to be complete.
• The management generally reviews the estimate before the last input has come in.
• The final estimate needs to be submitted very soon after the last input has come in.

Most estimators deal with this typical situation in the following way:

• The estimator does not start work before the first input starts coming in.
• The accuracy of the estimate is compromised and reduced; the estimator blames this on the late receipt of inputs.
• The late inputs, which arrive after the management reviews, are typically not incorporated into the estimate as there is “not enough time” to do so, or added as very high-level order of magnitude estimates in the form of late changes.

I will propose an alternative to this unsatisfactory approach, based on methods which I have been successfully using for the last several years while working as an estimator.

During the kick-off meeting at the start of the project / proposal effort, the estimator will get a fair idea of what the designers are going to design and typically how similar or dissimilar the new design will roughly be to something done by the company in the past. During the long waiting time, before even a single input has come from the disciplines, the estimator can actually complete a detailed estimate based on the available past project information and come up with the as-of-date estimate of the past project. As a lot of time is required by the estimator to gather typical prices from various sources to use in the estimate preparation, that work will have been done during this process. Another important thing, which takes a lot of the estimator’s time, is the formatting, presentation and management approval of the estimate. If based on an old but similar project / proposal information, the managers are usually quite happy to discuss the results of the as-of-date estimate of that old project, comment and advice on it, and review it. This helps in finalising the estimate even before any input has been provided. This brings forward the time generally spent on the activities at the end of the estimating process. Thus, when the inputs do come in, it takes very little time to update the estimate with the revised (or correct) quantities. The approval cycle is also faster as everybody is already familiar with the cost basis.

I have taken this approach even for projects where there was no historical data available, but people were able to give me a fair idea of what the final product would be like, so that I could assume dummy quantities for my format preparation and basic cost information search.

The following are the advantages of such an approach:

• No last-minute-rush situation, as the work is evenly distributed during the actual time available for an estimate.
• More time spent on cost database searches and approaching vendors (if required), thus making the cost basis more accurate.
• More review time available by the managers.
• More suitable for training new estimators as there is no pressure on the team to complete an estimate thus requiring some experienced estimator to quickly start and finish the estimate when the inputs come in.
• Frees the experienced estimator’s time to perform a more supervisory role.
• Gives better understanding of what kind of inputs are required to complete the estimate and could be used to guide the new discipline engineers on the job to formulate their outputs accordingly.
• Last but not the least, it gives a clearer idea to the managers about the range of the final figure; this helps them to design their selling pitch accordingly.

I would like to argue that managing and utilising the total available time for any estimate is a more sensible approach, which produces accurate and more reliable estimates.

This article formed part of a larger opinion piece published in Nov-2015, in the Project Control Professional which is the journal of The Association of Cost Engineers.