Project Cost Management for the Utilities Industry

Utility Estimating

Utility Solution for Accurate Capital Planning,
Estimating, and Consistency

Deregulation of the utility industry, consolidation, increased competition, price pressures introduction of the “Smart Grid," pursuit of renewable energy sources ranging from biomass to wind power plus demand side management are all putting unprecedented demands on Project Cost Engineers and Operations to deliver accurate and cost effective projects more than ever.

Hard Dollar meets the capital planning and project control needs for power generation, transmission distribution, gas and electricity, water, nuclear, and telecom plus public works.

By far the majority percent of companies are reliant upon spreadsheets and multiple non-standard processes to provide engineering estimates, capital planning estimates and actual to estimated cost outcomes. Inherent with this is the inability to abstract, compare and selectively re-use data captured in the spreadsheets.

Hard Dollar for utilities and public works improves estimating accuracy by 100%, reduce response times by up to 50% and in doing so allow time to evaluate the project considering alternate approaches, consistency, escalation and varied schedule scenarios. All leading to a much improved work product. Beyond the individual project Hard Dollar offers a rich and well developed Project Portfolio Analytics and modeling capability which serves the need of the planner as well as providing access to productivity and cost historic data at the task level, important to closed loop feedback into the planning execution phase.

Solving Business Issues

A common work platform and processes for estimating, planning and executing capital projects across all divisions.
Ability to integrate work from various groups into a composite plan from conceptual to final construction grade estimates.
Accurate earned value reporting and monitoring including costs, production and time.
Consistency and a common platform develop a historical cost and productivity library for faster and accurate estimates.
Ability to rapidly and easily model “what-if” options and conditions into plans.
Ability to easily determine cost escalation across multi-year projects.
Ability to track changes from conceptual to engineering budget to as-built costs.
Dynamic integration to either Primavera or Microsoft Project for seamless scheduling and realistic accurate cash flow analysis.
Ability to apply different labor rates, local taxes, crew productivity and availability across all business regions.

“Oneness” integration interface to leading industry systems including Oracle, SAP, Ventyx, Microsoft Project® and Primavera®.

5D-BIM Server Power

Extensive Building Information Model (BIM) integration streamlines data management and handling from Owner designs to ERP systems providing unprecedented labor savings, faster estimating turnarounds and easy to use flexible reporting.