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Construction costs are higher in some areas than in other area. Apply an area cost modifier to adjust all cost in a costbook to your job site.
Enter the U.S. zip code or Canadian postal code for the construction site.
Press Tab.
You’ll see the name of a nearby city and the cost modifiers recommended for this area.
Click the check box to invoke any of the cost modifiers listed.
Click Save.
All costbooks used with the current estimate will be adjusted by the modifiers selected.
New estimates always begin with no area modification.
Area modifications apply to only the current estimate. Other estimates are not affected.
Tips:
Area modifications apply to costbooks only. To adjust costs in an estimate by a percentage, see Percent Changes.
Area modifications don’t affect costs already copied to an estimate.
The recommended modifiers are composites of many costs and will not be accurate for every trade and material. But when used to adjust costs for an entire project, these modifiers should improve the accuracy of your estimates.
Modification factors in National Estimator Cloud are revised quarterly for materials, labor and equipment costs in 38,000 postal codes based on data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, surveys of national building material suppliers, Statistics Canada and the Canadian Real Estate Association.
Area modifications are approximations. A better choice is to use the actual hourly labor cost of crews assigned to the job. If you know the hourly labor cost, enter that figure in the Hourly Wage field of the Cost Row Editor. Then it’s safe to ignore area modifications. Hourly wage is the most significant cost variable from community to community.