Trimble Quest Help
During project execution, money is typically spent on “someone” or “something”. The “someone” could, for example, refer to the payment of wages or the hiring of subcontractors, whereas the “something” could for example refer to the purchasing of materials, the hiring of plant or the payment for fuel. Collectively the “someone” and the “something” that is costing money can be referred to as “Resources”. Resources are the basic building blocks of all projects and should therefore take center stage in any serious estimating software package. Trimble Quest embodies this philosophy by expressing all work breakdowns and estimates as a composition of resources and productions. Users can define an unlimited list of resources tailored to the requirements of their specific projects. These resources, along with their expected production rates, can be used to express the work breakdown of individual bill items to produce an estimated cost for such items. The resource list, therefore, forms the foundation on which all estimates are based and it is worthwhile to spend the required amount of time to ensure that this list is as detailed and as accurate as possible.
All resources are user-defined, and can be created and inserted via the Resource scene. Each resource has the following properties:
Code
Name
Resource Attribute
Base Allowable
Loading Factor
Effective Allowable
Unit
Provisional Flag
Comments
Tags
The Code and the Name fields are required to identify a resource and have to be unique. The Name of a resource is fairly self-explanatory and is simply a short line of text describing what the data element represents. The Code can be thought of as the ID of a resource, and it is typically either a number or an abbreviated form of the Name. The Code of a resource is often aligned with the cost codes of an organization’s ERP/Financial system to facilitate allowable versus actual cost comparisons during project execution. Both the Code and the Name of a resource have to be unique when compared to other resources in the same project.
Trimble Quest allows users to create their own resource groupings with the help of so-called Resource Attributes. Reporting on the resource attribute level will provide a more summarized view of the project allowables, useful for quick overviews and management reports. By default, all standard Trimble Quest projects will be prepopulated with one such resource grouping called the Resource Type. Resource types should be used to group resources together according to the logical categories (Fuel, Labor, Material, etc.) that they belong to. An unlimited number of resource types can be created for each Trimble Quest project
The Base Allowable represents the estimated base rate, i.e. cost, per unit of a resource. In other words, it is the anticipated unit cost of a resource during project execution. This figure is typically based on quotes received from suppliers/subcontractors at the tender stage, or it is deducted from historical data of previous projects.
It is possible that the Base Allowable of a resource does not represent the final allowable which will be used for estimation purposes. A project manager might for instance want to apply a discount/surcharge to the resource which will have to be reflected in the allowable estimate. The Loading Factor of a resource can be used to model such allowable adjustments. By default all resources will have a Loading Factor of 1, indicating that no adjustments are applicable to the Base Allowable. A Loading Factor < 1 indicates a reduction in allowable whereas a Loading Factor > 1 indicates an allowable increase.
The Effective Allowable of a resource is the estimated unit rate of a resource after the Loading Factor has been applied to the Base Allowable of a resource. The Effective Allowable is not a user-defined field, since it will automatically be calculated by Trimble Quest. The Effective Allowable of a resource will be used for all Net Rate calculations in Trimble Quest, and can be expressed formally as:
Effective Allowable = Base Allowable x Loading Factor
The Unit property of a resource indicates the unit in which a resource will be purchased/measured/paid. In Trimble Quest, the Unit of a resource is not interpreted by the system and consequently does not have any mathematical significance to the system. Note that even though the system does not ascribe any semantic meaning to the Unit of a resource, it does not mean that the Unit will not have any mathematical significance to the user. As will become clear later, Unit transformations form an integral part of the development of an estimate and these are managed by the user. Although all Unit transformations are user-managed, care should still be taken to assign sensible and consistent Units to resources. No restrictions are placed on the Unit of a resource and users can choose any appropriate text for this property.
The Provisional property of a resource is simply a flag that can be switched on or off to indicate whether any properties of a resource still need to be revised. Estimators can use this property as a reminder of which resources are finalized, and which resources still require tweaking.
Any additional remarks or notes about a resource can be stored in its Comments property. Examples of typical Comments include names of preferred suppliers or remarks regarding discounts/surcharges applied to the resource.
Any number of Tags can then also be assigned to a resource. Tags present a powerful way of organizing data.