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Cost estimates

Costing information could be important when choosing components, outlining a budget, or understanding current prices for services or parts. Here are a few sources of costing information:

Product literature (i.e. supplier catalogues)

  • Product literature, such as supplier or manufacturer catalogues, can provide costs for components, parts or entire systems.

Construction cost data (Canada & US)

  • RSMeans Estimating Handbook (2009) provides technical data required to estimate costs for major construction projects, including sizing, productivity, equipment requirements, code-mandated specifications, design standards, and engineering factors. 

      Tip: You can adjust for inflation in order to get costs for current year.

  • Hanscomb's Yardsticks for Costing (in print in the Webster library) that contains cost data for the Canadian construction industry. Details constructions costs for eight major regions in Canada and includes market unit costs, composite unit rates, and gross building costs

 

Labour Costs

 

Newspaper, Magazine or Trade journal articles

  • Newspaper or magazine articles can be great sources of costing information. Journalists often uncover construction or service costs paid by government. Trade journals can also be a good location to find suppliers or manufacturers in an industry. Once identified, these suppliers' websites may allow you to find costing information. Note: If searching Google or news databases to find costing information in Québec, you may need to use French keywords. 
  • Engineering News Record Magazine: publishes biweekly construction cost data from the United States. Follow these steps to find the most recent data:
    1. Go to Business Source Complete
    2. In the first search box, enter "ENR: Engineering News-Record", and then select the "SO Publication Name" from the drop-down menu
    3. In the second search box, enter "construction economics", and then select the "TI Title" from the drop-down menu

 

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