What you should know before you begin:
Location Factors are an extremely useful tool to use when you want to compare costs from city to city and region to region. A Location Factor is a collection of multipliers that are applied to the US national average cost of the same item.
This software contains Location Factors for
over 900 three-digit zip code locations in the United States and more
than 70 areas in Canada.
In other words, these index figures represent relative construction factors (or, if you prefer, multipliers) for Material and Installation costs, as well as the weighted average for Total In Place costs for each CSI MasterFormat division. Installation costs include both labor and equipment rental costs.
For information on changing locations in CostWorks please see:
Click here for locations in the United States.
Click here for locations in Canada.
What you might like to know about how we developed the Indexes:
To create a reliable index, RSMeans researched the building type most often constructed in the United States and Canada. Because it was concluded that no one type of building completely represented the building construction industry, nine different types of buildings were combined to create a composite model.
The exact material, labor and equipment quantities are based on detailed analysis of these nine building types, then each quantity is weighted in proportion to expected usage. These various material items, labor hours, and equipment rental rates are thus combined to form a composite building representing as closely as possible the actual usage of materials, labor and equipment used in the North American Building Construction Industry.
The following structures were chosen to make up that composite model:
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Factory (1 story) |
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Hospital (4-8 story) |
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Office (2-4 story) |
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Garage (Parking) |
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Store (Retail) |
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Apartment (1-3 story) |
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Town Hall (2-3 story) |
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Hotel/Motel (2-3 story) |
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High School (2-3 story) |
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For the purposes of ensuring the timeliness of the data,the components of the index for the composite model have been streamlined.
They currently consist of:
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Specific quantities of 66 commonly used construction materials |
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Specific labor-hours for 21 building construction trades |
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Specific days of equipment rental for 6 types of construction equipment (normally used to install the 66 material items by the 21 trades.) |
Related Topics
Selecting a Location in the United States
Selecting a Location in the Canada