Cost Analysis of a Mass Timber Building Project: Comparison of Budgeted and Actual Construction Cost
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mass timber is considered as a sustainable alternative to traditional building materials such as concrete and steel. However, due to a lack of sufficient mass timber construction projects, the US construction practitioners are not familiar with the cost details of mass timber buildings. Cost is an important parameter of any construction project, and the availability of adequate cost information from previous projects helps to tackle cost-related challenges associated with building construction. This study presents comprehensive cost information of a tall mass timber building construction located in Canada. The methodology of the study was developed by comparing the budgeted construction cost of the building to the actual construction cost of the building. The budgeted cost was estimated before commencing the construction, and the actual construction cost was calculated after the completion of all construction activities. The outcomes of the study show that the actual construction cost of the building was 1.2% ($473,758) higher than the budgeted cost, including a schedule delay of five months due to failures of elevators and storefront trades. Metalworks, furnishing, and utility activities were found higher for actual cost compared to budgeted cost. Contrarily, the cost of engineered wood and plastic, exterior improvement, and installation of mechanical facilities were found lower in actual construction cost. The actual construction cost also incorporated change orders that cost an additional $2,155,549. The study will help US industry practitioners and owners to make decisions regarding their initial investments in a mass timber building project.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".