Anastasia:
Your query is either not expressed well or you are trying to do several things at the same time when you should be doing a step-wise process. First of all, is this a formal, industrial application, a pilot plant, or an academic assignment? Or is this a feasibility study for general interest? What is the degree of accuracy on the total cost that you require? You admit you don’t know how to obtain estimated costs; then, how is it you were assigned a project such as this if you are neither experienced nor trained? I ask this because this is not what is done in industry.
Nevertheless, what is done in industry is:
An engineering study is implemented after identifying the process desired; this is done in-house or contracted out with an engineering firm who specializes in this. You state you are “in the process of calculating of the cost of the design”. This tells me that you are in the process of estimating the cost of engineering work to do the actual design and estimate. But this is confusing. I thought you were doing the design. This needs clarification or a better explanation of what is it exactly that you need.
You should not be involved in equipment cost estimating until all the design is done, finished, and checked. And then, if this is an industrial application, a professional cost estimator (or so-called “cost engineer”) is employed to compile the cost estimate of every cost item – not the design engineer. I have done this in this manner for over 40 years at the plant level and at the corporate level.
Engineering man-hours are currently costing from $60 -$85. At this rate, a company has to have a serious reason to start a cost study – and it must have a definite scope of work and an identified accuracy of the cost study that it must have in order to reach a logical decision. Cost estimates will run all over the place – depending on what you are seeking and with what degree of accuracy. By personal experience I can tell you that to estimate a project better than 25% accurate, you had better have a lot of money to spend on detail engineering design and time required to generate such a study. I’m citing personal experience in estimating and studies involving world-scale projects with firms such as Fluor-Daniels, Bechtel, M.W. Kellogg, etc., etc.. In order to allow us to help you must be very specific and detailed in explaining what is it that you require help in – and why. Otherwise we’ll all waste a lot of valuable engineering time.
Art Montemayor
Spring, TX
