We all know that in commercial construction, sticking to the budget is essential. A miscalculation or oversight regarding materials and their associated costs can jeopardize the entire project. Large-scale commercial infrastructure requires a granular understanding of the materials and costs for several reasons, including:
- Mitigation of budget overruns. The scale of commercial projects renders any deviation from the initial budget especially consequential. By meticulously accounting for the precise materials and their costs at the project’s outset, stakeholders can preemptively identify potential fiscal challenges, allowing for strategic adjustments and preventative measures.
- Time efficiency. Delays can have compounding effects, resulting in financial losses and an erosion of stakeholder confidence. The inclusion of actual materials and prices in estimates expedites the decision-making process, enabling teams to make informed choices promptly.
- Negotiation and procurement strategy. Armed with precise information about materials and their associated costs, teams can engage in more informed and advantageous discussions with suppliers. This level of detail enhances the overall project management process and contributes to more effective resource allocation, ensuring that the project progresses seamlessly and within budgetary constraints.
But how do you incorporate your materials and pricing into your estimates quickly and accurately? That’s where STACK’s library of items & assemblies come in.
STACK Items & Custom Items
An item represents a specific material, but it can also be equipment, labor, or subcontracting cost. When using items, you’ll need to think about units of measure, purchase units (how you order the item, such as roll, sheet, square foot), coverage rate, and cost type.
STACK comes with over 10,000 items pre-built into the system. We’ve taken into consideration the most commonly used materials by trade to get you started quickly. But you can also create your own custom items for jobs that need additional specificity.
Note that you can always add both material and labor items to the same takeoff, and you can save your takeoff with the items as a template to your Takeoff Library for future use. You’re also able to bulk import your own custom items to STACK and export them from STACK.
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Using Assemblies in Your Takeoffs
Assemblies allow you to combine items that are frequently used together into a single package for quicker additions to your takeoffs. Assemblies can contain any number of items with the ability to adjust and change items and input variables such as coverage rates, waste percentages, layers, and depths.
Using items and assemblies in your takeoffs allows you to estimate the quantities of materials, labor, etc., accurately according to your measurements, leaving you confident in the estimate you submit to your GC, and providing a built-in bill of materials you can give directly to your suppliers.
