Improvement of methods for determining the cost of design solutions at early stages of investment and construction projects realization

Abstract

The list of basic solutions for the implementation of an investment and construction project is mentioned and approved as part of the project documentation. However, the choice and justification of these decisions are made by the customer and the investor already at the pre-design stage. It is at the pre-design stage that a decision is made on the feasibility of the project, a feasibility research is formed, in which not only such basic technical and economic indicators as area, construction volume, length, etc. are of particular importance, but also the composition and cost of individual space-planning and design solutions. So, one and the same object can be erected from monolithic reinforced concrete and bricks, or from pre-fabricated metal structures and multilayer enclosing structures. At the same time, the functional purpose of the object will remain the same, but the cost will change significantly. In this regard, the relevance of this article lies in the research of methods for determining the cost of various design solutions at the pre-project stage as the basis for successful project implementation in the future. Since the most economically sound solutions identified at an early stage can significantly reduce the costs of the entire project and increase its efficiency. The purpose of this research is to improve approaches to substantiating the cost of various design solutions at the pre-project stage of the implementation of an investment and construction project. The authors reviewed the existing methods of substantiating the cost of design solutions for construction projects at the pre-project stage of an investment and construction project and also developed proposals for their improvement: an algorithm for estimating the cost of construction at the early stages of an investment and construction project, taking into account the cost of alternative design solutions. The implementation of the algorithm became possible thanks to the authors' development of a methodology for creating a data bank on the cost of design solutions, accumulation, analysis and structuring of data on the cost of already implemented residential and civil facilities (administrative buildings with a total area of 1,000 to 20,000 m2). A factorial analysis of the cost of administrative buildings was also conducted with identifying the causes of deviations in the cost of identical indicators from the average value. The results obtained can form the basis for the formation of a new database of prices of constructive solutions necessary for calculating the estimated cost at the stage of investment justification. Such data will be able to determine the cost more reliably precisely at the early stages — at the stage of transition from the idea to the development of basic technical solutions that will determine the appearance, manufacturability and cost of construction projects.

Keywords

• cost of design solutions
• investment and construction project
• pre-design stage
• aggregated cost indicators