ESTIMATING FOR CONSTRUCTABILITY: 3 FOUNDATIONAL PRACTICES
Learn to differentiate and win with innovative constructability
With construction spending estimated to reach $22 trillion by 2040, up from $13 trillion in 2024[1], the race is on for construction organizations to differentiate themselves and win more projects. No matter the project, estimators work hard to deliver bids that let them respond with total confidence when someone inevitably asks: “Where’d you get that number?” But when competition is tight—and especially when it’s a first-of-a-kind or very complex project—accuracy alone is not enough. Innovative approaches to constructability helps win work by setting a bid apart from others, making a project significantly more affordable for a client, or even making the difference between achievable and out of reach. That’s why organizations that deliver – or aspire to deliver – projects that push the envelope on constructability need modern estimating solutions and practices that empower their teams to bring innovating approaches to the table.
[1] Jan Mischke, Kevin Stokvis, and Koen Vermeltfoort, McKinsey, Why construction productivity growth is lagging — and what to do about it, Construction Dive, January 2, 2025.
Exceptional estimating practices alone can’t solve every complex construction puzzle, but they can deliver the added time and confidence needed to unleash an estimating team’s problem-solving capabilities. This e-book explores three foundational practices that free up the necessary time and headspace to support innovative estimating: 1. Build hyper-accurate estimates
2. Start from success
3. Build estimating data you can rely on
[1] Jan Mischke, Kevin Stokvis, and Koen Vermeltfoort, McKinsey, Why construction productivity growth is lagging — and what to do about it, Construction Dive, January 2, 2025.
Construction spending is estimated to reach $22 trillion by 2040 and competition is tight.
BUILD HYPER-ACCURATE, PRECISE ESTIMATES
In KPMG’s most recent Global Construction Survey, 37% of respondents (a mix of project owners and engineering and construction company leaders) said that they have missed budget and/or schedule performance targets and only 50% of projects are meeting completion deadlines.[2] When an estimate is imprecise or includes even a small inaccuracy, it can result in unnecessary project challenges, expenses, and delays—which happen all too often. But a highly-detailed, hyper-accurate estimate helps your organization bid on even first-of-a-kind or complex projects with confidence, and avoid major problems downstream. To support the problem-solving needed to tackle the particular challenge of first-of-a-kind projects, an estimating solution needs to empower teams to build hyper-accurate estimates quickly—and to precisely adjust estimates, in real time, to adapt to unforeseen issues. When estimators don’t need to spend all their time wrestling estimating software, they can quickly produce a base estimate. With the time they save, the team can jump into alternate constructability scenarios in the estimate and estimate schedule, by calling on their own experience and the experience of their field personnel.
Only 50% of projects are meeting completion deadlines
ACCURATE ESTIMATE, ACCURATE OUTCOME
An integrated project controls solution, such as InEight, allows project teams to quickly realign up- and downstream to maintain key project parameters as the reality of delivering a “never been done before” project starts to take shape. Learn more about how InEight enables hyper-accuracy.
“The precision we get from InEight Estimate provides the confidence we need. In today's competitive marketing, there's no room for error in our estimates.”
- Bob Carlson, Director of Estimating, Hunter Contracting Company
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The precision we get from InEight Estimate provides the confidence we need. In today's competitive marketing, there's no room for error in our estimates.
- Bob Carlson, Director of Estimating, Hunter Contracting Company
START FROM SUCCESS, NOT FROM SCRATCH
Just because a project is a first-of-its-kind, it doesn’t mean the estimate needs to start from a blank page. By reusing elements of past projects that worked well—and learning from those that didn’t—estimators can free up time to brainstorm and quickly prove out alternative construction approaches. This practice of re-use is faster on the front-end. For example, a first-of-a-kind project might reuse assemblies from several previous projects, but sequence them differently. An estimate will be both faster and more accurate if those assemblies can be quickly reused, then modified as needed. The speed and flexibility flowing from re-use of previously used elements give estimators time to try out different build scenarios and experiment with constructability.
Of course, estimators also want to consider the performance of the work elements they re-use, and that’s where benchmarking comes in. Using benchmarked data inspires team confidence when proposing something innovative, so organizations can move faster and spend less time validating. Benchmarking fosters confident construction creativity by helping estimators:
- Validate an estimate
- Identify variances
- Detect and analyze trends
- Price changes over time
- Unit costs decreasing as quantities increase
- Productivity rates at various quantities
- Compare similar projects
- Continually sharpen and improve
Successful use of benchmarking relies on reliable access to past estimates and as-built data benchmarks, as addressed in the next section.
“We can put together estimates at least 50% faster with InEight. It allows us to move faster and spend less time doing estimates—while still having confidence that they're right.”
- Dave Maynard, President, Gradex
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We can put together estimates at least 50% faster with InEight. It allows us to move faster and spend less time doing estimates—while still having confidence that they're right.
- Dave Maynard, President, Gradex
START FAST, FINISH STRONG
With InEight Estimate, estimators can easily re-use elements of previous work and replicate current project assemblies. Integrated rate tables ensure specificity and consistency across teams and projects, and benchmarks of past projects empower estimators to analyze estimated vs. as-built costs and productivity, resulting in continuous improvement, reduced risk, and tighter contingencies. Learn more about how InEight Estimate enables quick starts for more time to innovate.
With a centralized library, estimators avoid wasting time combing through email chains or searching for old spreadsheets to find valuable data from previous estimates and completed projects.
BUILD ESTIMATING DATA YOU CAN RELY ON
Innovative constructability isn’t only about whether something can be built, but can it be built efficiently and profitably, within defined deadlines and budget parameters, while still driving a culture of safety. By building a library of estimating data over time—and continually feeding actuals data back into the system—organizations create an invaluable data asset that sets them up for success with innovative approaches to constructability. The two keys to this practice are:
- Having data in a consistent format
- Making it easily accessible across the organization
The time savings achieved by following this practice is significant, and it frees up opportunity for innovation. One industry study found that construction professionals spend an average of 5.5 hours a week just searching for documents.[3] With a centralized library, estimators avoid wasting time combing through email chains or searching for old spreadsheets to find valuable data from previous estimates and completed projects. Beyond the time savings, regularly feeding actual project data back into a centralized, cloud-based repository creates a powerful, ongoing feedback loop that creates a more precise and accurate estimating environment. As mentioned earlier, when re-using project elements that worked well in the past builds confidence and saves time on validation. The insights gained from a centralized data asset can help quickly pull efficient building practices into estimates, which is especially important when focusing on constructability.
[3] FMI Corporation, Construction Disconnected: Rethinking the management of project data and mobile collaboration to reduce costs and improve schedules, 2018.
Construction professionals average 5 1/2 hours a week searching for documents
PAST DATA, FUTURE CONFIDENCE
InEight strongly supports this valuable practice of building a reliable data asset. With InEight Estimate, every estimate and as-built actual feeds back into a knowledge library in a consistent format, enabling quick validation against historical data, and the ability to easily analyze unit costs and productivity over time. Learn more about how it works.
“We make better project decisions because we're working from the most accurate and up-to-date information from InEight Estimate.”
- Jim Blois President, Blois Construction
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We make better project decisions because we're working from the most accurate and up-to-date information from InEight Estimate.
- Jim Blois President, Blois Construction
The insights gained from a centralized data asset can help quickly pull efficient building practices into estimates, which is especially important when focusing on constructability
FOR ACCURATE ESTIMATES, BENCHMARK
Innovative constructability can take many forms, but it often relies on the same basic components of construction, no matter how out-of-the-box the overall approach may be. For example: There are only so many ways to pour a foundation or to grade a site. At that component level, the industry makes incremental improvements over time, but there aren’t volatile swings in cost information. So, to create an accurate estimate, estimators look at what materials, labor, and equipment cost today vs. two or 10 years ago. How much have they escalated? Going back and looking at those commodity curves over time allows more accurate predictions of what an innovative construction project is going to cost—especially if it’s going to take several years and the estimate must include the escalation risk. InEight also empowers estimators to precisely analyze previous projects by geography, type of work, and other parameters, so it’s not a blended average of all projects, it’s highly specific to the work at hand—resulting in more accurate estimates up front even for innovative proposals. Learn more about the role of benchmarks in estimating in this InEight webinar.
UNLEASH THE POWER OF “WHAT IF?”
Estimators do their most powerful when they’re asking “What if…?”
What if we tried a different approach? What if we swapped out equipment? What if we added another team? What if we built key elements offsite first? What if we changed the path of construction
By following the practices outlined in this e-book, estimators unlock the time and confidence needed for creative constructability. Estimators will be able to ask What if? more often—secure in the knowledge that creative answers will pay off.
ABOUT INEIGHT
InEight is a leader in construction project controls software, empowering over 850 companies taking on challenging projects in industries including construction and engineering; transportation infrastructure; mining; water; power and renewables; and oil, gas and chemical. Uniquely suited to capital construction and other complex work, our integrated, modular software manages projects worth over $1 trillion globally, taking control of project information management, costs, schedules, contracts, and construction operations, and delivering insights with advanced analytics and AI. InEight's solutions adapt and scale to meet the dynamic needs of modern construction, driving operational excellence and successful project outcomes. For more information, follow InEight on LinkedIn or visit InEight.com. © 2026 InEight, Inc. All Rights Reserved