Video - InEight Estimate - Merging Cost Items

TRANSCRIPT

In this video, we'll walk through how to merge cost items, including how to initiate the merge, use the merge preview dialogue, and how to address warnings and symbols. One use case for merging cost items is when once a job is awarded, the field execution team will want to use the estimate for execution, but they'll want it rolled up at the right level of detail so they can use the estimate in a meaningful way. Simplifying the structure of an estimate makes it more manageable and better supports the hand-over process. Also, having a conformed estimate with less detail is especially helpful when you push it into Control, so you have the like cost items merged into a single budget item.

Just keep in mind, once you merge cost items, there's no way to unmerge, so we recommend you either make a backup of your job, save it to an archive, or create a snapshot of it to ensure you can get back to that level of detail in case you need it. There are two ways to merge cost items. The first is by using the toolbar. The other way is to right-click on the Position Code of a parent item and select Merge Cost Items.

For our example, this superior cost item with terminals will merge these items. It asks me if I want to explode the resource assemblies, meaning it will get rid of the assemblies, and instead add the assembly resources directly to the merged cost item. A dialogue opens so I can work through merging the cost items together. You'll see the resulting cost item will be re-named and it now has added up all the quantities of those resource employments and merged the productivity rates.

This robust Preview Dialogue gives you a really good idea of what the result of the merge will be before you execute it, and if you don't like what you're seeing, you can just Cancel out of it. For example, along the top, notice that the unit of measure is disabled because these items all have the same unit of measure and the parent also has the same unit of measure, so there's nothing to change here. For Quantity, you'll want to use the first option if all units of measure are the same and the parent is also the same unit of measure. The second option only appears if one or more of the subordinates has a different unit of measure.

Otherwise, this option will be disabled. In this example, notice the superior Unit of Measure. Not all of its subordinates have the same unit of measure. If I proceed with the merge and click the Use Sum of Subordinates, only those with the same unit of measure will be shown.

Alternatively, in this example, I can't roll up the quantity because there's nothing for it to roll up from. Under Duration, you can choose how the duration of the merged cost item will be calculated. If you select Total Duration, the duration will be based on the duration of all the merged cost items, individual durations added together. If you select Longest Duration, the duration will be based on the cost item that has the longest duration of all the cost items being merged.

The default setting used is based on whatever is in the Job Properties. In notes, if I choose to include them, all of the subordinate details are there. When doing a merge of cost items, you typically don't want to impact the cost, so we'll adjust the hours or quantity to try to keep the cost of the superior the same. If you do see a dollar difference, you might want to go back and look at the changes you're attempting to merge.

Also, notice that with a mix of Plug and Detailed cost sources after the merge, they'll all appear as a Plug. If you see a Merge Summary Warning, make sure to heed its advice. In this example, it's pointing out if we continue with this merge, the cost source will be set to Plug and Resource Employments will be lost. Once you're satisfied, click Merge.

Notice that prior to this merge, the parent and subordinates all had a cost source of detail, so the merged cost items are also detailed. Alternatively, if all were plugged, then the merge cost item would have been plugged. Also, it's good to know that another type of warning pops up if you try to perform this merge action on cost allocations, suspended items, or job tracking. At times, you may be merging items that are unique in some way as indicated by the Unique symbol.

In this case, these cost items are used in a different wage scale than the other cost items being merged. Let's initiate the merge of all these items to see what happens. Notice that due to the different wage scales, the cost driver for all the merging items is set to Fixed. This is to keep the hours of each resource the same after the merge so that the cost doesn't change when the merge takes place.

On this Merge dialogue, you of course can change the cost driver on any of your resources prior to merging. Notice your cost recalculates and you now have a cost difference because the resource will now be using the standard wage rate for the merged cost item. Even though this affects your cost, you may want to have the cost driver be based on Cost Item Duration so that your resource hours automatically update when the merge cost items' quantity changes. After clicking Merge, it looks like this with the resource employments directly under the cost item.

Well, that walks you through the basics of merging cost items. Thanks for watching.