Estimating glossary

A to C

Activity: One priced piece of work inside a bid item, such as the trench excavation under a storm pipe item (a task, in some software). Each activity is priced from a crew and its production, unit costs, a sub or a typed cost.
Assembly: A saved group of activities that are always priced together, such as trench excavation, pipe, bedding and backfill for a storm pipe item. Adding an assembly to an estimate adds all of its activities in one step.
Bid form: An agency's own form on which each contractor enters unit prices; the amount for each item is its unit price multiplied by its quantity. In Aggrado, the customer's list of bid items is the bid schedule, and their form filled in with your prices is the customer's form.
Bid item: One line of the bid schedule (a pay item, on owner's estimates and DOT lists). In Aggrado, each bid item is priced from one or more activities.
Bid schedule: The customer's list of bid items, with quantities and units. Aggrado reads it from their file into the estimate.
Bond: A surety bond guaranteeing the contractor's bid, performance or payment obligations. Bond cost is usually calculated from the surety's tiered rates applied to the contract amount.
Boring log: A record of the soil and rock layers encountered in a test boring. In Aggrado, boring logs define the soil strata used to divide excavation into material types.
Burden: The employer's costs in addition to wages, such as payroll taxes, workers' compensation insurance and benefits. It is added to wage rates to give the full hourly cost of labor.
Check: Aggrado's review of an estimate before it goes out. It lists problems such as items without quantities or costs, crews without production rates, plugs still in the bid and a bid price below cost. Your review rules decide which findings block Lock as submitted.
Codebook: Your company's library of trades, equipment, materials, crews, production rates and assemblies (a cost library or price book, in other software). Estimates in Aggrado are built from the Codebook.
Cost code: A code identifying a category of work, used to organize an estimate and to track cost on the job. Aggrado keeps one list of cost codes for the whole company.
Crew: The workers and equipment assigned to an activity, for example a foreman, two operators, two crew members, an excavator, a dozer and two trucks.
Crew hours: The time a crew needs to complete an activity: the quantity divided by the crew's production rate. Crew hours determine the activity's labor and equipment cost and its duration in the schedule.
Cross section: A view of the ground cut at a right angle to a line of work, showing existing and proposed grades. Earthwork volumes can be calculated from cross sections at regular intervals.
Cut and fill: Cut is material removed where the existing ground is above the proposed grade. Fill is material placed where the existing ground is below it.

D to L

DWG: The native drawing format of AutoCAD. Aggrado converts an uploaded DWG to DXF on its own servers; Civil 3D objects come through plain AutoCAD exports or LandXML.
DXF: Drawing Exchange Format, an open CAD format that most design software can export. Aggrado reads DXF files directly.
Equipment rate: The hourly cost of a machine, without fuel. It combines ownership costs, such as depreciation, interest and insurance, with operating costs, such as maintenance, tires and wear parts. Fuel is priced on its own: the machine's burn rate times its hours, on the estimate's Fuel line.
Fill factor: Bank cubic yards of cut it takes to make one compacted cubic yard of fill: 1.15 means a compacted yard takes 1.15 bank yards. In Aggrado it is set once per project, on Volumes, and used by every cut and fill run.
Fuel burn: The gallons a machine uses per running hour, at light, medium or heavy load. Set by equipment class in the Codebook. Bid uses it to price fuel; Job compares it with the fuel tickets delivered to the site.
Invert: The elevation of the inside bottom of a pipe or structure. The difference between the ground surface and the invert determines trench depth.
LandXML: An open file format for civil engineering data, including surfaces and alignments. Aggrado creates surfaces directly from LandXML files.
Lock as submitted: Keeps the bid in Aggrado exactly as it went out, so you can tell later what you bid and why. It doesn't send anything; a change after that is a new revision.

M to R

Margin: Profit as a share of the price: (price − cost) ÷ price. Aggrado shows it beside markup.
Markup: What is added to cost to arrive at the bid price, including overhead, profit and bond. As a percentage it is (price − cost) ÷ cost.
Overhead: The indirect costs of running the company, such as office staff, facilities and insurance, recovered through markup on each bid.
Plug: An allowance typed in place of a detailed price or a quote (a placeholder cost), to be replaced before the bid goes out. Pricing and Bid day's Still plugged list show how much of the cost is still priced this way.
Pricing strategy: In Aggrado, a saved combination of markup, bond and adjustments applied to an estimate. Try another markup, on Pricing, makes a copy to compare side by side before one is chosen.
Production rate: The quantity a crew installs in a unit of time, for example 180 cubic yards per hour. Dividing the crew's hourly cost by its production rate gives the unit cost.
Quote comparison: Comparing subcontractor and supplier quotes on the same scope. Where a sub or supplier did not price a line, Aggrado fills it with your own plug so that the leveled totals are comparable.
Request for quote: A request to subcontractors or suppliers for prices on a defined scope of work or list of materials. In Aggrado, it goes out from the estimate's Quotes.
Resource: The labor, equipment, material, subcontract or trucking that an activity is priced from.
Revision: A new version of an estimate, created from a copy of the previous one. The version locked as submitted stays unchanged.

S to Z

Shared costs: Work priced once and spread across the bid items you pick, such as mobilization or traffic control (indirects, in HeavyBid).
Shrink and swell: The change in volume of soil as it is handled. Excavated soil swells as it loosens; compacted fill shrinks. In Aggrado, the fill factor converts compacted fill to bank cut, and swell converts bank to loose yards for trucking.
Strata: The layers of soil and rock below the surface, taken from boring logs. Strata are used to estimate how much of an excavation is each material type.
Strip and subgrade areas: Areas drawn or taken from CAD whose depth comes off a surface: topsoil stripping off existing ground, and pavement sections and building pads off finished grade, so cut and fill are measured to subgrade.
Stripping: Removal of topsoil and organic material from the surface before grading. Stripping volume is the stripped area multiplied by the stripping depth.
Surface: A digital model of the ground, either existing or proposed, built from contours, points and breaklines. Comparing two surfaces gives cut and fill volumes.
Takeoff: Measuring quantities from the plans, such as volumes of earthwork, lengths of pipe and areas of paving.
Takeoff item: One named quantity measured on the plans: a length, an area or a count, such as curb or silt fence (a condition, in On-Screen Takeoff).
Target price: In Aggrado, the total you intend to bid, entered on Pricing as the price you want to hit. The difference between the target and the calculated total can be distributed across the bid items you select.
Unit cost: The cost to perform one unit of work, before markup. For crew work, it is the crew's hourly cost divided by its production rate, plus materials and other costs per unit.
Unit price: The price per unit entered on the bid form. It includes the unit cost plus its share of markup.

Units of measure

Abbreviation	Unit
CY	Cubic yard
SY	Square yard
SF	Square foot
LF	Linear foot
TON	Ton
EA	Each
LS	Lump sum

From the makers of Aggrado Site, sitework estimating and job management software: takeoff and crew-based bids, the won bid as the job's budget, and the crew's phone app on one record.