Hello everyone and welcome to our third course in the construction management specialization which we will be focusing here on construction cost estimating and construction cost control. My name is Ibrahim Odeh director of the Global Leader in Construction Management and one of the professors at The Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University. You are part of the Construction Management Specialization which focuses on four courses. The first one focusing on the, mostly in the initiating and the planning of the project. The second one focusing on the scheduling part of the project. The third which I will be talking in more details about it here and the last one in the specialization to focus more in the construction finals. That being said, let's talk little bit more about the construction cost estimating and the cost control outline and to take you into a quick journey, I call it, to understand what's the roadmap that you will be facing during this course to understand what you will be learning. So, in this course, we will start by giving a general overview of cost estimation, and after that we will jump into better understanding the design phase to be able to do the right estimation in the process. Then we will give an overview about an introduction to the types of cost estimates, with more focus in that specific module on the part on the early phases of the project. Which is from the conceptual and the preliminary design of your project, the feasibility studies. Next step, we will go into the details especially when you have the final design completed and start talking about quantity of and measurements. In this section or that module, we will focus on examples like cut and fill, deep foundation, concrete work, structural steel, interior finishes, and facade. Once done with the of and measurements we would cover that pricing process and then to show how you build that estimates. After that we would cover quickly procurement as well as a section or a module in post contract cost estimation within a project force. From the part of cost estimation we will go to cover then cost control because it's totally different area, cost estimation and cost control. So we will cover what's cost control is. And we will speak about cost control methods with more focus on the most common tool or method which is the Earned Value Method or EVM. After that, we will highlight a section on that close out period of the project, from talking about the punch lists, as well as final approval, and turnover to the client. Toward the end of this course, we will cover tips and we will share experiences when it comes to cost estimation in a practice with adding a flavor of international components. To add to that, we will study also the project cash flow in more details and link all what we learned with how technology is adding value from the trends, from the practices, what's exactly in the field in both areas cost estimation and cost control. The last two points in our course we will cover to add to what you learned from the first two courses about program management and highlight the program point of view when it comes to the control of your cost of the problem. And after that we will wrap up by finalizing to add to a special component that I highly recommended for you to always learn and always understand and always read about it is Lien construction and we kind of connect that to the costs and cost control. As you noticed from the first one, introduction to lien and the second one focusing with lien and related to scheduling and this third course the focus with the cost control. Now when it comes to, especially cost estimation, I always say that it is very, very important to know that the more experienced you get in this And especially in the cost estimation field, the better you get in doing estimation. That's why my approach to deliver this specific topic of cost estimation was to invite one of our industrial partners. To be specific here, the company called Turner and Townsend to deliver in collaboration with my group, with my research team the details of construction cost estimation. Turner and Townsend are just like for you as an FYI to understand that basics why we invited also several of these industrial partners. Turner & Townsend or T&T are a global independent construction firm headquartered in London with approximately 5000 staff and 100 offices around the globe. From Turner & Townsend we have two very experienced gentlemen who I had opportunity to work very closely with, and to deliver along with their work, with their help, with our group teamwork. And the estimation part, the cost estimation part of the course you will study in here. So one, let's highlight the first two gentlemen coming from Turner & Townsend first. And then we will go about what other guest speakers we had to add value to our project, or our course started by James Sneath, who is an Associate Director of cost management with Turner & Townsend here in New York City. He has a natural drive for success within more than 15 years experience in the construction industry, working in the USA, in Australia, in Western Europe, and specifically UK. James gained a considerable amount of the global experience working in real estate, infrastructure, and the mining industry and even wrote an article for the building economists on being a cost estimator. In addition, we have Ian Taylor who is a project manager also with Turner and Townsend in New York City, graduate also from Columbia University. It was good to know him and see how he was tasked with both, learning in the job and completing his masters program at the same time. He worked in several tasks this includes cost management which you will be learning about during this course as well as project control. In addition, we have also Mr. Kevin and he is a senior vice president at Harvard Limbach. And Kevin will be talking about also from a technology point of view about cost estimation and a little bit cover about the cost control. He's one of the few that I really saw that he can capture the technology aspect, when it comes to cost estimation from several presentations I saw in the last few years. So, we are lucky to have him on board. Ben Miller, he is a project manager with Gilbane Building Company. He is a frequent speaker to Colombia for several topics including their project cashflow and project delivery methods. So I am really happy that he will be presenting to you that area of project cost control. We spoke also about James and Ian and as well as Sam Spata who everyone who watched the first two lectures or courses know or Sam and his expertise in lean construction and lean processes in general. We'll be also talking about lean in this course and connect it with the cost control part. Chris Toomey, a very, very, very dear friend of mine. A wonderful gentleman, very well experienced, Senior Vice President at AECOM, one of the few people who's very expert when it comes to program management, when you deal with several billion dollar projects or programs would be also talking how his, in the field from a practical point of view, the cost control part in a program, how they deal with it at AECOM, from theory and the practice. With that, I want to welcome you all for our course, me and my speakers. And I hope and wish you a very good learning journey for the cost estimation and cost control class.
