ball park estimate 1

[amyrice72]

20 story reinforced conc tower, 1 million sf.
Ball park estimate for structural design? My estimate just got laughed at and I am curious...

 

[JAE]

1 million S.F. x $150/sf x 0.015 = $2,250,000 for a high end fee.

For a low end use 1/2% = $750,000.

Just a stab at it. Also depends a lot on the complexity of the building - underground garages? Complex facade? High seismic/winds? Egotistical architect?

 

[archeng59]

Do you have a copy of the RS Means Building Construction Cost Data handbook? Check out page 712 in the 2008 Edition or look at the attached pdf. Perhaps this will help.

 

[msquared48]

I agree with JAE.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[slickdeals]

Wow, I am really surprised with the numbers. We typically end up getting 40-55 cents per square foot. You must have good architects to work with.

 

[archeng59]

Depending on the project, we get between 80 cents and $1.30 per sq. ft.

 

[lsmfse]

archeng59, the RS Means can be misleading. They lump apartment buildings with Hospitals. In our state our fees would be 1.5 or so times the fees for apartments due to the scrutiny of the reviewing agency. Also agree with JAE, fees in the $0.75 to $1.75 per square foot.

 

[msquared48]

Slickdeals... Repetition figures for a lot here in reducing the design price for any highrise.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[JAE]

Mike I think that is very true. Floor 1 - unique
Floors 2-19 - all the same
Roof - unique.

So in terms of detailing and gravity its almost like a 3 level structure - lateral design gets more critical and column shortening, etc. kicks in too.

 

[msquared48]

Yep...

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[slickdeals]

JAE,
Are you then suggesting that $750,000 is still a good number for a low end figure?

What percentage of the architects fee's do you typically get. We target 12.5% of the architects' fee, but end up getting between 11-11.5%.

 

[archeng59]

RS Means is a place to start looking at rationality of a fee, IMO. There are so many variables associated with a fee that those numbers are not the final answer by any means. As stated, building type plays a factor. Use of repetitive framing can allow a fee reduction just as an odd design where repetition is not possible should increase the fee. The architect plays a big role. Does the architect make a lot of changes throughout the course of the project or do they essentiall design it once? Does the architect always give the owner what they ask for so we can all design it once or does the architect always try to design a flamboyant award winner that is out of budget and a value engineering effort is required to get the costs in line with the budget? Is it design-bid-build or design-build/fast track? Will you have to do BIM or 3D modeling? Lots of variables.

 

[JAE]

slickdeals,
I'm not sure about high-rise office buildings - but usually an architects fee is between 6% and 8% of the total construction cost (sometimes higher).

If we use 8% and say that structural is 11% of that total (per Zweig White stats) then the structural fee should be about 0.88%.

I don't see too many fees over 1% do you?

 

[JAE]

Actually I think Zweig White shows 17% of the total A/E fee.
And the 8% fee is the total team fee, not just the architect's fee.

 

[msquared48]

In recent years, I have seen Architect's fees in the 7 to 10% range of the total cost, with Structural Engineering costs varying from .5% to 2% of the overall budget, dependent on the type and extent of Structural Engineering services required, special structural conditions, locations, time of completion requirements, idiot factors, etc., etc., etc.

This is not the only way to estimate though. There are two others that I use. One based on the cost per sheet, the other based on an estimation of the time expenced for each item of the design based on hourly fees with a percent for profit. For large projects, I usually look at the average of all three. For smaller ones, maybe only one.

The larger projects, in general, will have a smaller percentage of the overall fee than smaller ones, again due to repetition in the larger projects, such as high rises. There is not usually much repetition though in large commercial projects, so those look more to 1.0 to 1.5%, at least for me in the past.

God knows what the future holds though.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering