A New Site-Specific Cost Estimator

When introducing the Site-Specific Cost Estimator, New York NRCS Engineer Ron Young says, “For two years I've been looking for a user friendly field tool that can give cost estimates for projects.  I wanted a tool that had the method [the equations] and the data all in it so that I could see it all. I did not want a black box or a cost list.”

What Ron got was a cost estimator Excel workbook created by a Vermont engineer to help field office planners estimate the actual costs of installing a conservation practice.  From a drop-down list, the field planner chooses materials, equipment, and services that are needed for the specific site.  After each item is chosen, its price and construction specs are automatically written to the spreadsheet.  The planner simply types-in the number of units needed of each item for that specific site.  After choosing all the items and estimating their quantities, the designer can print out the cost estimate as well as other reports.  There is a listing of all the items, their individual costs, and the project total cost.  Users can also get an estimate of out-of-pocket costs (costs remaining after program payments), a contractor estimate sheet, and a bill of materials sheet.

Thus, the cost estimator is not a canned program you simply download and start using.  "You need to see it in order to check it out," Ron says.  If the cost estimation reports are useful to your State, then we will need to incorporate your State's cost data."  How long this takes depends on the condition and sources of the cost data.  For example, the modifications needed for New York (which were huge and fundamental) required about 30 State staff-days but considered by the staff there to have been well worth the investment in time.

Some may ask if NRCS already has a cost estimator with ProTracts. The answer is “not really.” ProTracts provides costs that are used in writing contracts and to calculate the program payment(s) to the landowner. The Site-Specific Cost Estimator provides total cost estimates the landowner can use to estimate his/her remaining costs.

Cost data come from your local cost data and the RS Means Quick Cost Estimator  that enables users to quickly calculate an estimated value of total project cost localized to a selected area.  If the local data are accurate, then RS Means is used to fill in cost data gaps.  Otherwise, RS Means is the primary data source with local data filling RS Means data gaps such as those for some agronomic practice inputs.

Although a recent innovation for the New York NRCS State office, the Cost Estimator has been used by the Vermont field staff for the last five years and Massachusetts area engineers have used it for the old cost lists and to construct and document the new Practice Payment Schedule work.  Vermont and New York use it to estimate costs for their State-level cost share grant programs.

There are at least two good reasons to use the new Site-Specific Cost Estimator.  First, only affordable conservation is actually installed and maintained.  Second, for those States whose cost data may be inadequate for the new Practice Payment Schedule work, the Cost Estimator can provide more complete and documented data.

Affordable Conservation — Even when there is monetary incentive to install conservation, the individual landowner still needs to pay the remaining costs.  If NRCS can help the landowner better understand the magnitude of the remaining costs, the landowner will be better able to determine if he/she should continue with the NRCS program.  Signed contracts are more likely to be implemented.  The Cost Estimator is being used before writing and signing a contract where items are broadly chosen and quantities are roughly estimated for the landowner.

Practice Payment Schedule — The Site Specific Cost Estimator can help implement a State’s Practice Payment Schedule.  The datasets in the Site-Specific Cost Estimator that are used for estimating individual landowner cost, can also be used for the scenarios that are the basis for the new Practice Payments.  Because both the individual cost estimates and the Practice Payment scenarios use the same datasets, there is as close a linkage between the Practice Payment and the individual landowner costs as one can get.
Your contact is Madalene Ransom, NRCS economist, at, 336-370-3357.