Authors: Gawai Santosh Bhaskar, Shashikant B. Dhobale
Abstract: The process of developing a comprehensive project cost estimate is critical for a project to be adjudged successful on completion. Projects’ costing is one of the most critical and most widely used project management tools. The complex nature of Projects and the inherent uncertainty of the financial performance of construction projects, development funding, and the monitoring and controlling of costs and schedules make exact budget needs impossible to forecast accurately. This same characteristic also makes projects to deviate from plans. The main object of this paper is to identify the factors affecting the accuracy of project cost estimation, determine the various methods of carrying out project cost estimation in construction projects within INDIA. The study is motivated by the inability of most construction professionals to arrive at a tentative and reliable project cost estimate in project realization which has created obvious problems of project cost overrun and subsequent abandonment. The study sampled the opinion of fifty-three selected project professionals who had worked on related construction outfits in INDIA. An objective realization instrument developed using eighteen (18) factors identified in the literature as possible factors affecting the accuracy of project cost estimation were ranked based on a Likert four-point scale. The score of respondents to the factors were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, mean score value and factor analytical approach as the major tool.
