ICE®
Speed up takeoff, increase accuracy, and make better use of your time with ICE, Interactive Cost Estimating®, from RIB MC². Incorporating over 47 years of construction industry experience, ICE thinks like an estimator thinks, and works like an estimator works, increasing your productivity and giving you the consistency you must have to bid with confidence. The ICE System® gives you more time to study a job, to find ways of working more efficiently, and to assemble the winning package of quotes and bids.
ICE is developed in a Microsoft® open environment that interacts seamlessly with Excel, Access, and other Microsoft products as well as Crystal Report Writer. It is very easy to get estimate data out of the program and pass it to Scheduling, Accounting, Project Management and other corporate software programs. ICE can easily import data from CAD, Excel, .txt files and other industry related software programs.
ICE accommodates the need for flexible access. You can run it as a laptop/desktop application, access interoffice and remotely via a file server, or install on Citrix, Terminal Service or Go Global for Web based access.
Functionality
Security: Assign “rights” to individual users and develop User Groups to assign Menu Level access.
Audit Trail: The ICE program provides “touched by” audit to track actions of the User signed in to the estimate. ICE will also provide many reports that reflect Takeoff, Edits and Variance from the Company default.
Unit Price Catalog: This is the “library” of items that contain Item Code, Description, UM, Man-Hours and SEVEN COST TYPES. There are 4 levels of detail within the UPC. Item Codes roll into Minor Item Codes/Major Item Codes and Divisions of work. You can store multiple catalogs such as RS Means or Richardson’s. Material pricing can be automatically updated with services such as Trade Service, Harrison’s and User Defined. These UPC’s are sensitive to Company Standards.
Relational: The ICE Software allows you to set up “Company Standards” for various regions, offices and customers. These Company Standards contain “pricing tables” of Labor and Material that you define. These pricing tables are stored in a library and can be factored to account for Base & Localized cost and hours so that you can price your estimates accordingly.
Project Information: The ICE Estimate Explorer allows you to “mine” estimate data from Project Information and other User Definable criteria.
Project Variables: Pre-define estimate specific materials. Calculate Dependent Items such as Small Tools as a percentage of other Job Totals.
Multi-Currency: Define 7 Cost Types and Currency Conversion Rates
Metrication: Toggle Quantities and Pricing from Metric/Imperial with ONE database.
Sorting: In addition to the 4 level data structure, the ICE System provides 35 user definable sort fields or WBS Codes. These codes allow you to see totals of various pieces of an estimate. For instance, you may want to see the estimate hours broken out by Line #, Drawing #, Phase, Area, etc. Each of these codes is hierarchical and each code can be 255 characters.
Quantifiers: ICE has the ability to “nest” multiple items of differing units of measure into a common unit of measure in order to output high level Unit Pricing.
Measure: The ICE program can pull dimensional data from Scalex, Digitizers, On Screen Takeoff, CAD and Revit (BIM).
Takeoff / Quantity Survey: ICE provides the most flexibility in populating an estimate with accurate quantities. The user has over a dozen methods in the “toolbox”:
- Batch Import from Engineering with Validation
- CAD Import
- Text File Import
- Excel Import
- Knowledgebase Import
- Add Item – User can type or pull from Unit Price Catalog – Search/Find option
- Add Multiple Item – User can scroll Unit Price Catalog and pull many items at one time
- Miscellaneous Item Models – repetitive
- Assemblies – User Friendly….Pre-defined for repetitive processes
- Construction Systems – Prompts the estimator for dimensional information, material specification and installation methods. User is able to “nest questions”. 3-D view of building component. Construction System Models – Pre-define repetitive processes
- Estimating Wizards – Tie Construction Systems together to form higher logic – tremendous power for Conceptual and Budget estimating. Capture your companies “best practices”.
- Copy/Change previous Takeoff
- Clone previous Estimates
- Browse Previous Estimates for Selective Import
- Combine/Merge Estimates – various disciplines combined to 1 estimate
- Create Templates of pre-defined scope
- BIM Import – Interface to Revit
- Typical Spec Process Pipe Takeoff – pulls from Pricing Table of various Material, Size and Man-hours. Build your Customer Pipe Spec Books into the system. Sensitive to Shop/Field Fab and Installation.
Knowledgebase: RIB MC² has spent over 46 years capturing the best practices related to Industrial construction. There are over 200 Construction Systems that will calculate accurate quantities and apply labor costs, man-hours and material pricing. Construction Systems can contain 3-D relational graphics to assist the estimator and provide valuable visual aides that can be packaged with the estimate.
Feedback: ICE displays the results (Visual Takeoff) after each “pass” or line of takeoff. An estimator can evaluate, edit and add to the answers as needed. Job notes can be added on the fly.
Unit Pricing: ICE displays unit pricing derived from quantifiers. You can adjust the Unit Price and the detail is adjusted based upon the percentage of contribution to the whole.
Estimating Wizards: The Construction Systems in the ICE software can be “tied” together to address E, EP, EPC estimates and TAR’s.
Value Engineering: Many times an estimator needs to review takeoff and make changes to dimensional information or material and placement procedures. Mass changes to the estimate takeoff are easily handled by going to a line of takeoff and changing information as needed. Changes are automatically recalculated and displayed on screen for comparison. Once the changes are accepted they are instantly posted to the Estimate Detail File. You may also copy an estimate to another estimate file and then make a change such as applying different Pipe Specs. Our Estimate Comparison Report will compare estimates side by side for cost comparison so the owner can see the cost variance.
Interactive Spreadsheet View: The ICE program is not a spreadsheet but does reflect the familiar Column and Row appearance. The items in the spreadsheet view can be combined and sorted up to 4 levels. For example, you may wish to see all items by Phase, then Area, then Location and then by Major Item Code group. This Estimate Detail File allows you to work with unit labor rates, total labor, crew productivity, subcontract quotes, unit material price, total material price, unit man-hours, total man-hours, units per hour, duration, total price and total unit price. If you change any of these, all affected costs and productivity are changed. This is truly Interactive Cost Estimating.
You can filter the ICE spreadsheet view to show only the columns and information that you are used to working with text and background color. One estimator may look only at unit prices while another likes to see crew productivity and task duration. The ICE program allows you to store as many “views” as you like. You can also combine similar items such as all formwork for heavy foundations or un-combine the items so you can see which lines of takeoff generated each quantity. The Estimate Detail spreadsheet also lets you view items based on takeoff where you can see each line of takeoff the estimator generated and view the resulting data by each line or “pass”. You can then “right click” and go to any line of takeoff you wish to view or edit.
An item in the ICE estimate can have 7 cost types associated: labor, material, sub, equipment, equip rental, temp material, and other cost.
Group Changes/Escalation: Make changes to Hours/Dollars based on any of the 39 Sort Criteria.
Bid Day: The ICE Program contains an Estimate Bid Sheet that will record subcontractor quotes and will compare your estimate to their number. You can select the quote to use and automatically update your bid.
Material Export/Import: Export bill of materials to purchasing and then import the current pricing that reflects the dynamic market conditions.
Summary: ICE provides our users with a FLEXIBLE summary that will allow you to embed your Custom Views of Summary data for estimate analysis and Markups. ICE will store multiple Summaries.
Management: Getting information out of an estimating system is key and there are dozens of standard reports that come with the ICE System. You can see detail reports or recap summary information. You can create your own custom reports with our User Friendly Report Writer. You can also use the Crystal Report Writer that will export estimate data to delimited files to be shared by other software. Our standard reports allow you to define up to 4 levels of breakout based upon your user defined WBS codes. You can also select the order of the columns that you wish to view and create headings with customer logos. There is no limit to the information the ICE system can provide the management of your company.
Integration: The ICE system interacts with ACCESS, EXCEL or other similar products. The ability to cut & paste, drag & drop and seamlessly exchange estimate data with other software is critical to the integration of tools designed to save time and eliminate re-keying information. RIBMC² has developed links to the most popular scheduling and project management products such as Primavera, Microsoft Projects, Prolog and Expedition and will eliminate the re-keying of data such as resources, durations and dollars. We can also link to almost any accounting software program and pass estimate budgets to job cost.
