The Effect of Different Groupings of Building Elements on Cost Significant Elements and their Cost Contributions to the Total Building Cost of a Block of Medium Cost Apartments in Malaysia

Abstract

Utilising cost data from a block of medium cost apartments in Sungai Buloh, Malaysia, this pilot study aims to evaluate the cost significant elements (CSE) and their cost contributions (in percentages) to the total building cost (TBC) determined based on the grouping of building elements according to the original bills of quantities (BQ) format and the grouping of building elements according to The Institution of Surveyors, Malaysia (ISM)’s elemental cost analysis (ECA) format. Two separate tabulations following the same steps are made in order to achieve the objective of the study. Each tabulation has information on the total cost of each element, and produces information on ‘Actual Total Bill Value’, ‘Mean Bill Value’, ‘Total Bill Value of CSE’, ‘Number of Total Elements (TE)’, ‘Number of CSE in Total’, ‘CSE/TE (per cent)’, and lastly ‘Total Bill Value of CSE/Actual Total Bill Value’. For both tabulations, it is found that “45.45% to 50.00%” of the total number of building elements has contributed to “78.11% to 83.77%” of the TBC and that the two different groupings of building elements being studied have yielded quite similar results. Nonetheless, further analysis can be done with more data from other similar buildings in the region to obtain statistically reliable results.