BCIS
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| Founded | 1961 |
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| Headquarters | Great George St, City of Westminster, London, England, United Kingdom |
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Key people
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Joe Martin Executive Director |
| Slogan | Independent Cost Information For The Built Environment |
| Website | www.rics.org/bcis |
The Building Cost Information Service, known as BCIS, is a leading provider of cost and price information for the UK construction industry. It is a part of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
BCIS Website
BCIS carries out statistical analysis of the UK Construction Industry as a basis for early project cost advice and Elemental Cost Planning. Pages about BCIS are now to be found within the website of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The BCIS area presents the current BCIS portfolio including subscription services such as BCIS Online, Rebuild Online, Running Costs Online, BCIS Price and Estimating data, Price Adjustment Formulae Indices and Public Sector Price and Cost Indices. The website also provides information on the consultancy services of BCIS as well as free downloads of a number of 'industry standard' documents such as 'BCIS Elemental Standard Form of Cost Analysis' and 'BCIS Principles of Elemental Classification for Buildings (International)'.
Elemental Cost Planning
BCIS was set up in 1961 to provide the profession with cost information in elemental format and to promote the use of elements and of elemental cost planning. 1951 saw the publication of the Ministry of Education Building Bulletin No 4 which essentially introduced the concept of elemental cost planning to the UK construction industry. Its Author was James Nisbet.
The preface to the Bulletin says that with the need for a great number of new schools, it is "essential to explore every possible means of reducing the cost, increasing the speed of school building whilst maintaining standards of quality and educational efficiency". The Bulletin described a "new approach towards a costing technique for use by architects and surveyors". In the intervening half century the UK quantity surveying profession have made the technique their own. The key to this innovation was the concept of elements. Again, it is worth quoting from the bulletin:
"An architect tends to think in terms of functions and of the means by which he can perform those functions. For example, he sees as one function the exclusion of rain and weather and he looks to a roof to perform this task. It is, for the purposes of cost analysis, immaterial to him whether the roof be of timber and tiles or of concrete and asphalt. He is primarily concerned to know how much it has cost to roof in the building."
"Thus, where the estimator builds up his tender by adding together a large number of relatively small items, classified by trades, cost analysis must reverse this process and break down the tender into groups of material and labour classified according to the functions they perform. These groups have been described as elements."
Thus an element is defined as 'a part of a building that fulfils a specific function or functions irrespective of its design, specification or construction'. The move from 'costing a design' to 'designing to a cost' and the development of cost planning techniques has served the profession well in offering value added services to clients. The concept of elements has been incorporated into the development of life cycle costing and value management. It has also spread around the globe and both the term and its definition are enshrined in national and international standards.
