Last week I described three common estimating approaches: analogous (top-down), parametric, and bottom-up. We looked at how these approaches increase both in accuracy and in the effort required to complete them, with the analogous approach being the least accurate and fastest to complete and the bottom-up being the most accurate and most-time consuming to generate. However, each approach to estimation has a time and a place, and this week we’ll take a look at how and when to best deploy each approach. Generally speaking, there are three major estimating milestones in most theatre design processes: the beginning of the season, when budgets for each aspect of a production are set; the so-called “preliminary design” deadline, at which a basic representation of the set is presented to the team; and the “final design” deadline, at which the completed, fleshed out version of the set is presented. (Some venues may have different names for these milestones, and even have a greater number of intermediate steps as well, but these three major milestones generally represent the major phases of the development of a design.) As a production’s design progresses through these major milestones, it gets increasingly more detailed; consequently, it only seems appropriate that the estimation process should progress along the same lines. For example, I typically utilize the analogous model during the process of creating each annual budget—sometimes I’ll have the opportunity to do this knowing which shows will be in which slot, which means I’m comparing each production to similar productions we’ve produced in the past. Other times, I won’t know any of the shows, and I’ll be forced to come up with averaged numbers, which I’ll then ask to revise later, once actual productions have been determined. This is an important step for anyone at the beginning of the season! Many of us who are technical directors will generally try and skip the whole “reading the play” part of the production process—we’ve got a thousand other things to wrestle with, and generally someone else has read the play, right? However, while in many summer stock situations we may be brought on board too late to suggest changes to the amounts budgeted for each production, we can still offer our insight into whether staying within those budgeted amounts might be difficult, or whether doing so might require some special considerations. This is the perfect place for an analogous approach. Take a play like, say, The Glass Menagerie. Like so much of Tennessee Williams’ work, this play blends unit-set realism with dream- and memory-scapes. We can imagine, from previous experience, that we’re looking at a unit set with some kind of architectural realism, but that will have to somehow provide a space for memory and dreams to live—this may mean “broken” walls, or a world that transitions from hard surfaces to soft fabrics, or something similar. In the past, this has cost, in our space, something like $4,000 to $5,000 to create—particularly if we do move into the world of soft fabrics, as that is generally more expensive (especially as you move into the land of sheers). Once we reach the preliminary design milestone, the design team should have a pretty clear idea of the direction in which the design is headed; the designer will probably have a fairly well-defined ground plan and an idea of the broad strokes of the scenic units. This is a great time for a technical director to provide valuable feedback about the feasibility of the direction the design is headed and about potential bottlenecks in terms of time or materials. In the best of all possible worlds, this would be a quick process—there is generally not enough detail information available to make the effort required for a bottom-up estimate worthwhile, and what details are available are likely to evolve as the design continues to develop. A parametric estimate, however, doesn’t depend on specific details and can be generated pretty quickly, perhaps even while the design presentation is happening. Additionally, if a technical director has developed a fairly robust set of modeling parameters, this estimate can be relatively accurate, within about 10-20%. Ideally, we can use such a parametric estimate to provide a clear enough picture of the cost (in terms of both labor and materials) of the project that the team can make any major adjustments to scope required to ensure the project falls within budget once the design process is completed. The final design presentation generally reflects the entirety of the team’s vision of the set. By this point in time, there should be enough detail information to permit the technical director to embark on the process of completing a thorough, bottom-up estimate. The result of this estimate should be an estimate of the total cost of the project, with 5-10% accuracy, and to provide a baseline for the value-engineering process (that sometimes unfortunately painful process of finding a way to make a project that is over budget affordable). Because of the accuracy required, as indicated last week the bottom-up estimate process can be time consuming, and it is important that space be left in the calendar to provide time for it, and for the value-engineering which follows. When deployed in this fashion—with an analogous estimate early in the season, a parametric estimate at a mid-point in the design process, and a bottom-up at the end of the design process—final estimates are not only relatively accurate, but also generally fall within 5-10% of the budget for a project. This is because running the estimating process in tandem with the design process allows both of these aspects of a project to continually inform each other. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon in the sometimes fast-paced world of theatre, for the deployment of these estimating approaches to happen in other ways; most commonly, I’ve seen the analogous approach deployed somewhere in the mid-point of the design process, and a combination of analogous and parametric approaches applied at the final design presentation. For someone who with a lot of experience under their belt, and who knows a space, a designer, and available materials incredibly well, this can be an approach that works reasonably well. However, there is a lot at stake in choosing to approach the estimation process in this way, and the decision to do so should be made in consultation with the artistic team on the project and with the production manager of the producing organization, as errors or variances in accuracy can lead to serious cost overruns in materials and labor. Next week: the value-engineering process.See More

Last week I described three common estimating approaches: analogous (top-down), parametric, and bottom-up. We looked at how these approaches increase both in accuracy and in the effort required to complete them, with the analogous approach being the least accurate and fastest to complete and the bottom-up being the most accurate and most-time consuming to generate. However, each approach to estimation has a time and a place, and this week we’ll take a look at how and when to best deploy each approach. Generally speaking, there are three major estimating milestones in most theatre design processes: the beginning of the season, when budgets for each aspect of a production are set; the so-called “preliminary design” deadline, at which a basic representation of the set is presented to the team; and the “final design” deadline, at which the completed, fleshed out version of the set is presented. (Some venues may have different names for these milestones, and even have a greater number of intermediate steps as well, but these three major milestones generally represent the major phases of the development of a design.) As a production’s design progresses through these major milestones, it gets increasingly more detailed; consequently, it only seems appropriate that the estimation process should progress along the same lines. For example, I typically utilize the analogous model during the process of creating each annual budget—sometimes I’ll have the opportunity to do this knowing which shows will be in which slot, which means I’m comparing each production to similar productions we’ve produced in the past. Other times, I won’t know any of the shows, and I’ll be forced to come up with averaged numbers, which I’ll then ask to revise later, once actual productions have been determined. This is an important step for anyone at the beginning of the season! Many of us who are technical directors will generally try and skip the whole “reading the play” part of the production process—we’ve got a thousand other things to wrestle with, and generally someone else has read the play, right? However, while in many summer stock situations we may be brought on board too late to suggest changes to the amounts budgeted for each production, we can still offer our insight into whether staying within those budgeted amounts might be difficult, or whether doing so might require some special considerations. This is the perfect place for an analogous approach. Take a play like, say, The Glass Menagerie. Like so much of Tennessee Williams’ work, this play blends unit-set realism with dream- and memory-scapes. We can imagine, from previous experience, that we’re looking at a unit set with some kind of architectural realism, but that will have to somehow provide a space for memory and dreams to live—this may mean “broken” walls, or a world that transitions from hard surfaces to soft fabrics, or something similar. In the past, this has cost, in our space, something like $4,000 to $5,000 to create—particularly if we do move into the world of soft fabrics, as that is generally more expensive (especially as you move into the land of sheers). Once we reach the preliminary design milestone, the design team should have a pretty clear idea of the direction in which the design is headed; the designer will probably have a fairly well-defined ground plan and an idea of the broad strokes of the scenic units. This is a great time for a technical director to provide valuable feedback about the feasibility of the direction the design is headed and about potential bottlenecks in terms of time or materials. In the best of all possible worlds, this would be a quick process—there is generally not enough detail information available to make the effort required for a bottom-up estimate worthwhile, and what details are available are likely to evolve as the design continues to develop. A parametric estimate, however, doesn’t depend on specific details and can be generated pretty quickly, perhaps even while the design presentation is happening. Additionally, if a technical director has developed a fairly robust set of modeling parameters, this estimate can be relatively accurate, within about 10-20%. Ideally, we can use such a parametric estimate to provide a clear enough picture of the cost (in terms of both labor and materials) of the project that the team can make any major adjustments to scope required to ensure the project falls within budget once the design process is completed. The final design presentation generally reflects the entirety of the team’s vision of the set. By this point in time, there should be enough detail information to permit the technical director to embark on the process of completing a thorough, bottom-up estimate. The result of this estimate should be an estimate of the total cost of the project, with 5-10% accuracy, and to provide a baseline for the value-engineering process (that sometimes unfortunately painful process of finding a way to make a project that is over budget affordable). Because of the accuracy required, as indicated last week the bottom-up estimate process can be time consuming, and it is important that space be left in the calendar to provide time for it, and for the value-engineering which follows. When deployed in this fashion—with an analogous estimate early in the season, a parametric estimate at a mid-point in the design process, and a bottom-up at the end of the design process—final estimates are not only relatively accurate, but also generally fall within 5-10% of the budget for a project. This is because running the estimating process in tandem with the design process allows both of these aspects of a project to continually inform each other. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon in the sometimes fast-paced world of theatre, for the deployment of these estimating approaches to happen in other ways; most commonly, I’ve seen the analogous approach deployed somewhere in the mid-point of the design process, and a combination of analogous and parametric approaches applied at the final design presentation. For someone who with a lot of experience under their belt, and who knows a space, a designer, and available materials incredibly well, this can be an approach that works reasonably well. However, there is a lot at stake in choosing to approach the estimation process in this way, and the decision to do so should be made in consultation with the artistic team on the project and with the production manager of the producing organization, as errors or variances in accuracy can lead to serious cost overruns in materials and labor. Next week: the value-engineering process.See More

The ability to effectively, quickly, and accurately generate a time and cost estimate of a project is one of the most important—and, if you’ll forgive the pun, most underestimated—skills a technical director (or any technical manager) can have. With it, a set (or costume design, lighting design, etc.) can generally sail pretty smoothly from conception to realization; without it, a set design can get bogged down in costly overruns and consequently show up at the load in incomplete. This inevitably leads to raised tensions, angry designers and technicians, and a production manager wringing his or her hands trying to find a way to keep everyone sane and at the same time get the show completed. What is an estimate? This seems like a straightforward question with an easy answer—but it really isn’t. Approaches to estimates vary in accuracy, and differ in the amount of time required to complete them. Consequently, different estimating approaches have different uses, which can (and should!) be deployed at different phases of the design process to help guide the artistic team to a project that can be completed with the resources available. Generally speaking, there are three basic approaches to generating an estimate for a project: the analogous (or top-down) approach, the parametric approach, or the bottom-up approach. We’ll take a look at each in turn, and next week examine when in the process each might be best deployed. I would be willing to place a sizable bet that the analogous approach is the approach most utilized by technical directors at summer stocks and small to mid-size regional theatres. This is primarily due to the fact that it generally requires the least amount of time-on-task dedicated by the technical director, and in the fast-paced environments of these theatre venues, shaving time off of a process can be essential. In the analogous approach, estimates for a given unit or project are generated based on previous, similar projects. For example, a technical director may look at a design for a period, architecturally-realistic, box-set interior, and based on her experience building a period, architecturally-realistic, box-set interior during the previous season, be able to say that the project might cost $2,500 to $4,000 and take approximately three weeks to build and paint—depending on the skills of the available labor—prior to load in. The analogous approach is quick and dirty; ideally, an analogous estimate should be backed up by historical records from the previous project, but in practice (at least in theatre), these estimates can often be based on a technical director’s recollections. (When a technical director can do this well, we call her “experienced” or “seasoned,” when a technical director can’t, we call him “young,” or “green.” This is a little unfair, because not everyone has a great head for numbers!) This is one of the many reasons why accurate record-keeping is an essential part of a technical director’s job: being able to go back to a previous project and see exactly how much money was spent on a particular unit (or entire project) and how much labor was required to complete each unit (or project) can make this analogous approach much more accurate. (It can also help those less-number-savvy technical directors look just as good as their Rainman contemporaries!) If you’ve ever been involved with building a new home, or worked with a contractor to renovate an old home, you’re probably familiar with the parametric approach to estimating. This approach utilizes a mathematical model to predict the cost of a project. For example, you might consider that, on average, ¼” lauan costs about $15; a 16’ stick of 1x6 spruce costs about the same. We could say that the materials to construct a 4x8 hardcovered flat, then, cost about $45 (one sheet of lauan, and two sticks of 1x6 ripped to 1x3). Add to that the cost of paint, non-architectural details and some kind of texture, and you might say a 4x8 hardcover flat costs about $100 in total. As our hardcovered flat has an area of 32 square feet, we can calculate that it costs a little over $3 per square foot. Using this number, we can estimate, rather quickly, the total cost of a 20’ tall and 50’ wide wall that is non-architectural, has some texturized paint, and constructed as a hardcovered unit: 1000 square feet multiplied by $3.125, or $3,125. As the mathematical model becomes more detailed, the estimate will become more accurate. For complex projects, parametric models can have any number of different modifiers with varying values to represent different aspects and variances in a production. For example, you might have a base rate of $3.125 per square foot for hardcovered flattage; to this you might add a modifier of between $.50 to $2 per foot based on the number of doors or windows in a unit; you might add a modifier based on the amount of trim detail and the period or style of the set. For decks, you might add modifiers for the number of changes in level. All of these modifiers provide ways to bring the estimate to a greater level of accuracy. Parametric models can be fairly quick—any spreadsheet program can turn this into an easy plug-and-chug process. The time and energy expended in the parametric approach is in generating accurate mathematical models. (This is where the accurate record-keeping mentioned above can be so helpful!) Using a spreadsheet program can make refining these models fairly quick and easy, however. The bottom-up estimate is the most time consuming of the three estimating models. In a bottom-up approach, each project is broken up into constituent units, and each unit is broken up into component work packages (remember those work breakdown structures?); these packages—the smallest deliverable chunk of each unit (think “constructed framing,” “applied facing,” “base paint,” etc.) are assigned specific cost and labor estimates. Work package estimates are totaled to generate unit estimates; unit estimates are totaled to arrive at total project estimates. Given the specificity of the bottom-up approach, these estimates can generally be relied upon to be fairly time-consuming, but also incredibly accurate—provided the initial work-package estimates are accurate. Each of these approaches to cost and time estimates is very different in terms of accuracy and the time required to complete them; no one approach is better, and there’s no one “right” estimating approach to use. Rather, each approach can be effectively deployed at different phases in the design process, as the project becomes more fully-fleshed out and the design team and management require a more refined estimate of the resources required to complete it. We’ll look at when and where to best utilize each technique next week.See More

The ability to effectively, quickly, and accurately generate a time and cost estimate of a project is one of the most important—and, if you’ll forgive the pun, most underestimated—skills a technical director (or any technical manager) can have. With it, a set (or costume design, lighting design, etc.) can generally sail pretty smoothly from conception to realization; without it, a set design can get bogged down in costly overruns and consequently show up at the load in incomplete. This inevitably leads to raised tensions, angry designers and technicians, and a production manager wringing his or her hands trying to find a way to keep everyone sane and at the same time get the show completed. What is an estimate? This seems like a straightforward question with an easy answer—but it really isn’t. Approaches to estimates vary in accuracy, and differ in the amount of time required to complete them. Consequently, different estimating approaches have different uses, which can (and should!) be deployed at different phases of the design process to help guide the artistic team to a project that can be completed with the resources available. Generally speaking, there are three basic approaches to generating an estimate for a project: the analogous (or top-down) approach, the parametric approach, or the bottom-up approach. We’ll take a look at each in turn, and next week examine when in the process each might be best deployed. I would be willing to place a sizable bet that the analogous approach is the approach most utilized by technical directors at summer stocks and small to mid-size regional theatres. This is primarily due to the fact that it generally requires the least amount of time-on-task dedicated by the technical director, and in the fast-paced environments of these theatre venues, shaving time off of a process can be essential. In the analogous approach, estimates for a given unit or project are generated based on previous, similar projects. For example, a technical director may look at a design for a period, architecturally-realistic, box-set interior, and based on her experience building a period, architecturally-realistic, box-set interior during the previous season, be able to say that the project might cost $2,500 to $4,000 and take approximately three weeks to build and paint—depending on the skills of the available labor—prior to load in. The analogous approach is quick and dirty; ideally, an analogous estimate should be backed up by historical records from the previous project, but in practice (at least in theatre), these estimates can often be based on a technical director’s recollections. (When a technical director can do this well, we call her “experienced” or “seasoned,” when a technical director can’t, we call him “young,” or “green.” This is a little unfair, because not everyone has a great head for numbers!) This is one of the many reasons why accurate record-keeping is an essential part of a technical director’s job: being able to go back to a previous project and see exactly how much money was spent on a particular unit (or entire project) and how much labor was required to complete each unit (or project) can make this analogous approach much more accurate. (It can also help those less-number-savvy technical directors look just as good as their Rainman contemporaries!) If you’ve ever been involved with building a new home, or worked with a contractor to renovate an old home, you’re probably familiar with the parametric approach to estimating. This approach utilizes a mathematical model to predict the cost of a project. For example, you might consider that, on average, ¼” lauan costs about $15; a 16’ stick of 1x6 spruce costs about the same. We could say that the materials to construct a 4x8 hardcovered flat, then, cost about $45 (one sheet of lauan, and two sticks of 1x6 ripped to 1x3). Add to that the cost of paint, non-architectural details and some kind of texture, and you might say a 4x8 hardcover flat costs about $100 in total. As our hardcovered flat has an area of 32 square feet, we can calculate that it costs a little over $3 per square foot. Using this number, we can estimate, rather quickly, the total cost of a 20’ tall and 50’ wide wall that is non-architectural, has some texturized paint, and constructed as a hardcovered unit: 1000 square feet multiplied by $3.125, or $3,125. As the mathematical model becomes more detailed, the estimate will become more accurate. For complex projects, parametric models can have any number of different modifiers with varying values to represent different aspects and variances in a production. For example, you might have a base rate of $3.125 per square foot for hardcovered flattage; to this you might add a modifier of between $.50 to $2 per foot based on the number of doors or windows in a unit; you might add a modifier based on the amount of trim detail and the period or style of the set. For decks, you might add modifiers for the number of changes in level. All of these modifiers provide ways to bring the estimate to a greater level of accuracy. Parametric models can be fairly quick—any spreadsheet program can turn this into an easy plug-and-chug process. The time and energy expended in the parametric approach is in generating accurate mathematical models. (This is where the accurate record-keeping mentioned above can be so helpful!) Using a spreadsheet program can make refining these models fairly quick and easy, however. The bottom-up estimate is the most time consuming of the three estimating models. In a bottom-up approach, each project is broken up into constituent units, and each unit is broken up into component work packages (remember those work breakdown structures?); these packages—the smallest deliverable chunk of each unit (think “constructed framing,” “applied facing,” “base paint,” etc.) are assigned specific cost and labor estimates. Work package estimates are totaled to generate unit estimates; unit estimates are totaled to arrive at total project estimates. Given the specificity of the bottom-up approach, these estimates can generally be relied upon to be fairly time-consuming, but also incredibly accurate—provided the initial work-package estimates are accurate. Each of these approaches to cost and time estimates is very different in terms of accuracy and the time required to complete them; no one approach is better, and there’s no one “right” estimating approach to use. Rather, each approach can be effectively deployed at different phases in the design process, as the project becomes more fully-fleshed out and the design team and management require a more refined estimate of the resources required to complete it. We’ll look at when and where to best utilize each technique next week.See More