Why Calibrate Unit Costs?

NOTE-- We retired MacNail in 2000, and replaced it with Goldenseal construction estimating software. Goldenseal is an integrated program that also includes accounting, scheduling and contract writing. We keep these instructions online for our die-hard MacNail users! Goldenseal includes the same cost items and assemblies that we used in MacNail estimating (with some expansions).

The MacNail construction estimating software, HyperEstimator and HyperRemodeler all come with a built-in database of construction unit prices-- costs that we calculated from our own experiences at Turtle Creek Construction, here in upstate New York.

Of course, costs do vary from one part of the country to another. They also vary between different types of businesses-- tract builders, custom homebuilders, and remodelers. And they'll even vary for different types of projects done by the same company-- costs will be much higher when gutting out a 100 year old building than when tacking something onto a new home.

To make our database as universal as possible, we store all labor as "person-hours per unit". For many businesses it is possible to get accurate estimates "right out of the box", just by typing in local wage rates. MacNail Customizing also provides a system that will let you adjust material unit costs, by typing in prices that you collect from your local suppliers. And our line-by-line specifying approach means that you can have both "high end " and "low end" specifications, depending on the exact type of work that you're doing.

As with any other price database that you get from an outside source, however, you probably won't feel you can use our numbers with confidence until you have "calibrated" their values to match your own company's actual cost of building.

Fortunately, once you've adjusted our cost database to your own costs, you'll have a personal construction database that will estimate correctly for a long time in the future, without further calibration. It's definitely worth the effort!