How to Use Job Templates with Shared Quantities and Measurements

3 July 2020 by CostMiner

In this tutorial we will define a simple template for a concreting job that utilises the Shared Measurements and Shared Quantities features of the system to minimise the effort required to create a new job of this particular type. Please note that Shared Quantities and Measurements can as well be very useful when a job is created from scratch without a template.

We will create a template for estimating the cost of materials and equipment required to concrete an area. For that we will need the following:

  • The concrete itself.
  • Reinforcement mesh that comes in 12.5 square metre sheets.
  • Plastic bar chairs that support the mesh at the required height when the concrete is poured.
  • A concrete pump. The pump hire cost is comprised of an hourly rate with the minimum of 4 hours and a per-cubic-metre - rate. We assume the first part to be fixed at 4 hours.

Creating a Template

Step 1. Click Templates on the main CostMiner screen to open the list of templates.

Step 2. Click New Template.

Step 3. Enter the name for the template and press Save.

Step 4. Open the estimate for the new template.

Step 5. Select the Measurements tab and define parameters for the estimate. The Area parameter is the size of the concreted area. Thickness is the depth of the slab with the default value of 100 mm.When creating a job based on the template, we will provide values for these parameters by entering them as numbers or using take-off.

Step 6. To select result type for a parameter, use the result type buttons in the ribbon.

Step 7. Add a heading called Materials with the Concrete item under it.

Step 8. Select the Concrete item, make sure that the Length cell is highlighted and assign the Area measurement to the Length cell.

Step 9. The Length column will be renamed to Area, and the name of the Area measurement will be displayed in the respective cell.

Step 10. Assign the Thickness measurement to the Height cell.

Step 11. Add an item for bar chairs.

Step 12. Assign the Area measurement to bar chairs as well - 1 bar chair is required per square metre.

Step 13. Add an item for reinforcement mesh.

Step 14. Calculate the number of mesh sheets as the area multiplied by 0.08 (the size of one sheet is 12.5 m2, 0.08 = 1/12.5).

Step 15. Add items for hiring a concrete pump.

Step 16. We will share and reuse the quantity of concrete we already calculated to estimate the pump hire cost. Select the Concrete item and then press Share in the Calculation Table.

Step 17. Enter a name for the shared quantity and click OK.

Step 18. The new name of the quantity will be displayed above the calculation table.

Step 19. As we can see, the shared quantity was added to the Quantities tab.There are two ways of making a measurement or quantity shared - they can be created as named from the start in the Measurements and Quantities tabs, as we did with the measurements in this tutorial, or can be named later, as we have just done for the concrete volume.

Step 20. Select the item that represents the volume of concrete for pump hire and then pick the shared quantity from the drop-down.

Step 21. Now, the Concrete Volume and Pump Hire items share the same quantity calculation table.

Using the Template

Let's use the template we have just defined to create a new job.

Step 1. Click New Job on the main screen, give the job a name, select the template and press Create.

Step 2. Open the Measurements tab, select the Area measurement and take off the concreted area from the plan. We can also adjust the Thickness measurement, if required.

Step 3. All we needed to do was to supply the job parameters (Area and, optionally, Thickness), and everything else, including the line and job totals, was calculated automatically.

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