Cost Plan

A cost plan is the structured statement of a project\'s forecast cost by element, updated as the design develops, against which value engineering, tender returns and cost control are measured.

A cost plan earns its keep in the deltas. Each revision tells a story — the shell got heavier, the fit-out specification moved, the abnormals grew — and the discipline of explaining movements line by line is what turns a spreadsheet into a management tool. Plans that only update totals are just receipts.

elemental structure (substructure, frame, envelope, services, fit-out, prelims) lets benchmarking work. Compare like elements against the evidence base, and a number that drifts can be caught while it is still a decision, not a funding gap.

Related: preliminaries · value engineering · provisional sum