SOCIETY PARTNERS WITH INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS, FEDERAL AGENCIES IN BUILDING SMART ALLIANCE TO SIGN COST ENGINEERING AND ESTIMATING
MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT
Washington, DC, December 10, 2008 - The American Society of Professional Estimators today signed an agreement in partnership with the National Institute for Building Sciences (building SMART Alliance), The Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering, The Associated Builders and Contractors, The Royal Institute of Quantity Surveyors, The General Services Administration, The Army Corp of Engineers and other organizations to survey estimator and cost professionals with regard to BIM estimating. A full report REGARDING THE Cost Engineering & Estimating Memorandum of Agreement (copied here) will be found on the ASPE National website homepage by January 1, 2009.
There is a need in the facility industry to improve the efficiency of the building process throughout the project lifecycle by coordinating among the various project actors the processes by which project costs are estimated, actual costs captured and stored and cost information communicated among those involved in the project.
Building Information Modeling offers a significant opportunity to create efficiencies in cost engineering and estimating of project costs from inception onward thereby reducing waste and lifecycle costs and improving sustainability of the facility. We desire
to make cost information available to all participants in the business process to support decision-making at each stage of the project. As a starting point, we support the proof of concept project focused on the quantity takeoff processes associated with cost estimating and the advancement of this automated process.
Our collective goal is to develop best business processes, practices and open standards that can be used by all vendors to develop products that will produce reliable and predictable cost estimation results. We are interested in developing processes by
which costs can be estimated more accurately and information shared with respect to the lifecycle of a particular facility. Our efforts are not intended to standardize or control the costs of goods or services actually incurred in designing, developing, constructing, or operating any facility.
The undersigned agree to work together through the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) in forming a team to solve cost engineering related problems for the facilities industry. This team will work on a set of projects under the auspices of the
buildingSMART alliance, a council of NIBS. It is anticipated that many of the products of this agreement will become candidate standards for the National Building Information Modeling Standard. The first phase of recommendations is projected to be delivered in June 2009. Signed this 10th day of December 2008.