Construction Estimating Software

The cost estimate and other PriMus documents

PriMus produces and manages a multitude of document types:

• price lists with unit rates;
• construction cost estimates;
• job estimates;
• requests for proposals (RFP);
• comparison charts;
• project documents and templates;
• labor incidence estimates;
• health and safety incidence estimates;
• technical specifications.

Work sections as categories in the cost estimate or Bill of quantities

PriMus allows the quantity surveyor to easily organise a bill of quantities or cost estimate into different work sections to group homogeneous categories of work in an organic manner.

Each BoQ can be subdivided into three levels of grouping allowing to achieve a detailed breakdown of all work items. This kind of subdivision produces an mmediate picture in terms of costs for each work section (for example, structures, finishes, all furniture, etc.).
Using different levels of subdivision allows the surveyor to instantly view cost details for super-groupings or sub-groupings; for example, for the “structure category” the program can provide filtered measurement and cost data relating to the sub-structures (foundations) and the costs relating to the building’s super-structure.

Categories can also be useful during data input, because with PriMus you work by selecting a category at a time, but can also turn out to be useful when printing to get very detailed quantity surveying documents.

Chapters in the Price List

The Price List can be organised into chapters, each of which can enclose, for example, homogeneous tariff items to an individual work type.

Price Lists also have three levels of chapter subdivision that can give huge advantages both during the preparation phases of the document and during printing.

The Quantity surveyor is free to use the Price List chapter organisation or the BoQ categories sorting so as to organize all works according to specific needs and expectations.

Print Manager

PriMus has a real “Print Manager” that allows you to produce and customize all documents relating to a project. You can print in RTF, WORD, PDF, HTML, ASCII and CSV.

WYSIWYG interface and object technology

Thanks to the WYSIWYG interface (What You See Is What You Get), PriMus allows the user to work on the screen just as if he/she were working on a paper document making data entry and general program much easier and intuitive to use.
The screen becomes a true virtual office desk where the user can open price lists, estimates, BoQs and many other quantity surveyor document types, to view, insert, edit or copy data from one documenmt to another with simple Drag and Drop actions. Estimates and BoQs, together with Price Lists are just different data views of a single small-sized file; at every change, all views are immediately updated and aligned.
PriMus is in fact the first object oriented Bill of Quantities and estimating software: the data input phase is no longer a seperate process from the final document display, because each document type can be used to add or modify measurement data.
The project’s general data, its structure (chapters, categories, etc.), the relating forms, documents and print revisions, are all stored in a single file. The user can view, consult and edit anything and at any time.

Compatibility and sharing

A bill of quantities or cost estimate document, created with PriMus, can be saved in the standard XML, XPWE and PWE file formats; the produced data is open to everyone and exchangeable with anyone and with any other software procedure. The PriMus features can be integrated with other external applications and with other ACCA software solutions too such as Edificius and EdiLus. PriMus also supports document view export and import to Word and Excel file formats (2007/2010).

Manage Price lists in bill of quantities or cost estimate documents with simple Drag and Drop

With PriMus, you can open price lists directly from the internet and use the tariff data directly with classic Drag and Drop actions. The embedded PW-CONV technology also allows the user to convert other price list formats to the PWE, XPWE and DCF file formats that are compatible with ACCA software range of solutions.

Acquire metric data from CAD drawings

When editing and inserting measurements, PriMus allows the quantity surveyor, by means of the PriMus for CAD module, to automatically acquire metric data from drawing entities thanks to a dynamic interaction between the project cost estimate and the CAD drawings prepared with AutoCAD LT and AutoCAD; you can seamlessly transfer graphical entity dimensions, or CAD “block” attributes, directly from the drawing to the Bill of quantities, keeping a dynamic interaction between the CAD drawing, PriMus and its various document types active.