Understanding cost items

Managing cost for a dry-docking project is a complex task, since it's very large project going through several different phases, each of which has it's own requirements with regards to cost. 

Planning phase

Cost items

In order to ensure that your project has all required flexibility on handling cost, you should make sure you add cost items for the work orders that are to be executed by the yard. For work orders that you add from the list of standard work orders, these will be included automatically. For any new work orders, you should make sure these are registered.

Each work order can contain one or more cost items, each being either a per unit cost or lump sum.

Cost items have always been around. We are used to specify in the description field "Please provide lump sum cost on X and per unit cost on Y". The downside then was the unstructured format which made it impossible to track these later, both during the tender process as well as the execution phase.

How the cost items are defined on Maindeck: 

Since we are in the planning phase, you are not adding any of the yard quotes at this stage. Instead, these cost items will together produce a template in which the yard can provide you with all the necessary price details. This will be the Excel file you export for the project, which is the next step.

Tendering (yard selection phase)

Yards providing quotations

A unique quotation sheet will be provided for each yard candidate. This allows the shipyard to:

• Provide detailed price quotations on cost item level, not just one cost per work order. Include information such as per unit or lump sum, estimated quantity, unit prices, discounts and remarks.
• Add additional cost items as they see fit. They only need to copy a work order ID for new rows that they add, so that we know which work order it should belong to when importing it.
• Add additional sheets to the Excel file, where they can add their contact information, details about repair facilities etc. Maindeck only needs to import the sheet containing the quotation, and if there are other sheets in the file then that's not a problem.

The Excel file contains yellow fields where the shipyard needs to add their quotes. The white fields are calculated automatically as the export already contains necessary formulas.

The layout of the Excel has been created in dialogue with shipyards, which is how we know it meets their requirements. Some shipyards are still hesitant, in such case the owner should insist and make clear that it's required in order to be awarded the project.

Import the quotations

Once you start receiving the price quotations from the shipyard, you can upload these on the yard comparison page.

1. Before doing so, do a quick review of the Excel to make sure they have followed the layout. In particular, look out for: That they have not added any additional headlines on any rows.
2. That they have copied the WO ID field for any new cost items that they have added.
3. That they have not merged any cells. 
4. Estimated quantity should be filled out with a number. If you expect nothing, then add 0. If it's a lump_sum, the quantity must be either 0 or 1. 
5. Measurement unit needs to be filled out for all per_unit cost items.
6. Unit price must to be filled out for each cost item. If you don't know the price, then you must add 0. If the cost item is free of charge, write "included" as either measurement unit or in the yard remarks.
7. The discount needs to be a number between 0 and 100. So 60% is added as 60, not 0.6. 

The different columns available in the quotation are summarised below. Please note that the ones in grey are not being imported.

1. Cost ID - Will match it to the exact cost item you created on Maindeck. If the shipyard has added an additional cost item, this field will be blank and then an additional, new cost item will be added only for that specific shipyard's quote. You should never copy this field from another cost item.
2. WO ID - A unique code for each of your work orders. This column should be included and each row should have a value (not be blank). For new cost items added by the yard, the WO ID should be copied for the work order in question. If not included for a work order then it's not possible to know which work order it's for when importing.
3. SFI code - Not required when importing, instead it's only for your own reference.
4. WO name - Not required when importing, instead it's only for your own reference.
5. Group - Not required when importing, instead it's only for your own reference.
6. Cost item - A name of the cost item. Could be anything from "Fire doors" to "Staging".
7. Cost type - Either lump sum or per unit.
8. Est.quantity - This is important to include, even if it's just an estimate. It can always be adjusted later. If the cost item is a lump sum, then this is set to 1 and the unit price field is that case for the lump sum price.
9. Measurement unit - This can be anything from "doors" to "m3".
10. Unit price - The unit price of the cost item. If the cost item is lump sum, then the lump sum goes here (this will be correct by setting quantity to 1 and specifying lump sum under cost tye.
11. Quote - Not required when importing, instead it's only the shipyard's reference when working on the quotation.
12. Discount (%) - The shipyard has the ability to add a discount on each cost item.
13. Discounted quote - Not required when importing, instead it's only the shipyard's reference when working on the quotation.
14. Remark - A free-text area for the shipyard to specify anything they see necessary.

When you have made sure everything looks good, you can start the import. This will only take about a minute to complete and an info popup will tell you have far along the import process has come.

Once the import is done, you will see all the detailed cost items on the yard comparison page.

Reviewing and manipulating the quotations

Now, it's time to review the quotation. You can make any edits to any of the quotations. 

Selecting yard candidate

Once you have approval to select a yard candidate, you can go ahead and do so on the comparison page. When doing so, all the cost items (with all unit price information, your estimates, remarks and more) from the selected yard will be added to the project, as the cost structure of the project. 

By selecting a yard, and moving the project into Execution phase, any changes to cost will no longer by on the comparison page. From now on, they are made on the Budgeting and cost page.