Unit price analysis: what it is and how to build one
A unit price analysis (in Colombia, the APU) tells you what it costs to build one unit of an item: a cubic meter of concrete, a square meter of wall. Multiplied by their quantities, unit prices are the project budget.
01What goes in
The four parts
- Materials, with waste.
- Labor: the crew, its cost with benefits and how much it builds per day.
- Equipment and small tools.
- Haulage, if the supplier does not include it.
02Example
One square meter of wall
For one m² of No. 5 clay block wall, add the blocks and mortar it takes, with waste. Then labor: if a mason and a helper lay 10 m² a day, each m² carries a tenth of that crew's daily cost. Add small tools, and the total is the unit price.
03Mistakes
What throws the budget off
- Outputs copied from another project.
- Material prices nobody updated.
- Labor without statutory benefits.
- Forgotten waste on mortar and steel.
04In BIW
How BIW does it
In BIW the budget is built by chapters and items, each with its unit price analysis. What is executed and paid is checked against it, and the alert comes before a chapter goes over, not after it has been paid.