CATALYST For Builders

Building CATALYST provides a fun and rewarding way to move from a manual to a highly automated approach to cost estimating and preconstruction services. CATALYST enables you to model costs based on the facility's departments and functions - the key drivers that determine outcomes. We use a hands-on training approach, and work beside you, until you become proficient with the tool and process. One goal is to help transition estimators out of their siloed (quantity and unit price) role, and into a more strategic precon professional role.

Building CATALSYT applies autonomation – a Toyota concept providing the best combination of what the computer is good at with what the cost pro is good at. The computer takes away the tedious effort associated with the “common” causes that impact projects. This frees up your precon professionals to focus on the “special causes” that make the difference between successful and problematic projects. CATALYST provides an easy computer-to-human interface to integrate the common and special causes. 

Here’s how Building CATALYST can help you:

Winning Work
  1. Perform a thorough analysis of the owner’s information: scope, program, design, and budget as applicable. Know how each of these compares to the market average.
  2. Respond to RFP’s with objective knowledge that your competitors don't have access to apart from CATALYST.
  3. As appropriate, model and present scope and design options to achieve higher value.
  4. Provide impartial cost models from market average baseline. Owner’s appreciate impartial analysis.
Improved Cost Modeling and Estimating
  1. Perform cost modeling from the space program and early designs
  2. Perform comparative cost models against the owners budget, your estimates, or trade contractor estimates.
  3. Replace your manual Excel-based or 3rd Party Estimating tools with an autonomation approach. 
Advanced Preconstruction
  1. Validate and/or analyze the proposed program and design by running comparisons against the market baseline or from your other benchmark projects.
  2. In design meetings, automatically update the model in minutes based on different design ideas. Eliminate the weekly cycle times usually associated with design updates. Propose options and model results to reliably inform decisions.
  3. Automate the process of balancing the scope, design, and budget.
  4. Maintain a running account of each step in the design for ready tracking or back-tracking of design decision. More effectively steer design toward budget or target values.
  5. Improve the due diligence process by focusing on the high variation budget areas (site, subsurface, environmental, regulations, etc.) to reduce uncertainty and risk.
  6. Transition from cost modeling to cost estimating as design and due diligence information is provided. Estimate in CATALYST, or import detailed results from another estimating app.
Procurement
  1. Produce trade contractor estimates and scopes of work to help in the procurement process.
  2. Continue to track schedule and cost to insure project is proceeding according to plan.

This is all possible because of a robust data processing approach behind Building CATALYST. But the real power is in data. We’ve been collecting and analyzing data from a wide range of real-world projects.

Learn more in our Why? What? How? When and Where? pages.

If interested in discussing or scheduling a live demo, feel free to contact us at: Info@buildingcatalyst.com