Solutions
By the question you are answering.
Each task below is one mode or one tab of the same estimate file. The class you can claim is set by the definition you have, not by the tool.
Class 5
Screen a project from capacity.
Pick a published plant type and a capacity. The engine scales the record’s reference cost by the capacity ratio raised to the record’s exponent, warns when the ratio leaves the published validity, escalates by CEPCI to your cost date, applies the location factor, then the class defaults for allowances and contingency.
An estimate may list several process units, each scaled by its own record. The Class 5 band is shown on every output, and the back-test shows how five public-source plants landed against it.
What you need
A plant type from the published list, a capacity in the record’s unit, a location and a cost date. Nothing else.
Class 4
Price a sized equipment list.
Enter or import equipment lines with type, sizing parameter, material and design pressure. Each line is priced by a cited correlation with material and pressure factors, escalated, located, converted, then installed by Lang, Hand, Guthrie bare-module or your own percentages. A vendor quote bypasses the correlation and is tagged as such.
Every line has a trace. An out-of-range size is flagged in amber, never silently extrapolated.
What you need
A sized equipment list from the datasheets, or a CSV or Excel sheet with recognisable headers. Quotes where you have them.
Class 3
Add quantified bulks at rates you can cite.
Semi-detailed unit-cost estimating: the Class 4 equipment path plus quantity-priced lines for piping, civil, steel, electrical, instrumentation, insulation and painting. Quantities come from an imported line list or MTO, manual entry, or pure geometry from rack polylines and equipment coordinates you enter. Rates and labour norms come from your company set.
Class 3 is claimed only when the stated definition level is in the Class 3 band and at least one line is quantity-priced. Nothing is inferred from a drawing or a hidden model.
What you need
A company set with unit rates and labour rates, a labour productivity factor with its note, and the line list or MTO.
Techno-economics
Carry the estimate into a cash flow.
A techno-economic basis on the estimate gives NPV, IRR, payback, discounted payback and the yearly cash-flow table, with every constant from a cited library row or a company price-deck row. A study of several cases ranks them and draws the Pareto set; sliders re-run the engine on every case.
The Basis of Estimate gains an economic-basis section under AACE 16R-90, and the workbook gains cash-flow and cases sheets.
What you need
Plant life, spend profile, discount and tax rates, depreciation, working capital, and priced product and opex lines.
Simulator snapshots
Start from the simulation, not from a blank grid.
Import a simulator’s workbook or report export as a versioned snapshot. Company mappings turn unit operations into estimate lines; a sizing method can derive a library size parameter from simulator outputs with a sizing trace step. Reconcile shows what matched, what drifted and what is only on one side.
What you need
An export file from your simulator and a mapping row per unit type in the company set. Unmapped types are listed, never guessed.
Company rates and history
Layer your own numbers over the published ones.
Company sets hold Lang and Hand factors, location factors, unit rates, labour rates, pipe specs and mappings, every row sourced and versioned. The knowledge base holds your historical projects, brought onto the estimate’s basis by the same steps the engine uses everywhere, and can calibrate a published correlation with a ratio that prints on the line.
What you need
Your rates and as-builts in a CSV, Excel or JSON file, each row with its source.