Figuring Construction Unit Costs

Figuring Unit Prices

When you create new Specifications line items in the BidMagic estimating software, you'll also create new unit prices (unless you can get them from an estimating book such as Means, National Construction Estimator or HomeTech). Fortunately it's not hard to translate your construction business experience into line items in Specifications. There are several ways to figure unit prices, depending on the kind of information you start out with.

What are Unit Prices?

A unit price is simply what it costs to build one unit of work--the unit being a square foot, lineal foot, cubic yard, or some other quantity that can be easily measured. Since it's much easier to measure square feet of floor than it is to measure board feet of lumber, the unit price will nearly always be based on some actual project measurement.
Unit prices can be stored in many different forms. In BidMagic, labor costs are stored as skilled and unskilled person-hours per unit, which is the number of hours it takes for a worker of each type to perform one unit of work. Material costs are stored as a simple dollar cost per unit.