| This research addresses the practice of building cost estimation in the Architectural/Engineering (A/E) firms located in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. It explored the extent to which local (A/E) firms carry out the practice of cost estimation along different phases of building projects development. The study addresses the types of cost estimates that (A/E) firms develop for their clients, the procedures followed in preparing these cost estimates and the assessment of (A/E) project managers of the effectiveness of these cost estimates and their recommendations on ways to improve the present cost estimation system.;A pre-established preliminary questionnaires were mailed to all (A/E) firms operating in the Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia in order to solicit their interest in participating in the study and to determine their conformance to the study criteria. The (A/E) firms who expressed their interest to participate in the study and exhibited their conformance to the study criteria were provided with the main questionnaires which were designed to solicit needed information for this study.;Some of the (A/E) firms in Saudi Arabia provide cost estimation as part of their engineering and consultancy services. They develop all different types of cost estimates such as feasibility, budget and design estimates. They provide cost estimation services along with supervision for most of the projects and for most of the major clients such as public, Saudi Aramco, SABIC, SCECO, etc. The cost estimation procedures used are manually developed and, therefore, are labor intensive, costly, with inconsistent results and hard to check and update. However, when the results of these procedures were compared with bid prices, good results were obtained. |
