Generating project estimates and monthly interim valuation certificates within an integrated construction environment

The AIC (Automation and Integration in Construction) Research Group at the University of Salford has developed a PC based integrated environment proto type SPACE (Simultaneous Prototyping for An integrated Construction Environ ment). SPACE aims to incorporate various construction applications enabling project information to be shared between these applications and the user t o run them simultaneously, i.e., concurrent engineering. The purpose of thi s paper is to present the EVALUATOR (Project Estimate and Intereim VALUatio n (Monthly) GenerATiOn in an IntegRated Environment) application of SPACE. EVALUATORS main objectives are two fold; (i) to produce the project estimat e in the form of an elemental Bill of Quantities (BQ), and (ii) to generate monthly interim valuation certificates from the construction plan. Previou s work has adopted various structured analysis techniques to model this app lication as an integral part of the other applications in SPACE. Thr implem entation of the resulting Express-G (static data) and IDEFO (process) model s into SPACE, leading to the development of EVALUATOR's estimating and mont hly interim valuation modules are described.