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  • Estimator - Duties and Responsibilities of the key position


    Are you searching for the detailed information of roles and responsibilities of an estimator? Looking out for the eligibility criteria for this role, qualification and experience required, courses required to take up this role? Find answers from our ISC experts here.

    My friend has completed his 3 years diploma in Mechanical branch and wishes to become an Estimator. Some of his concern that he would like to have a clear view are:
    a) What is the role or function of an estimator?
    b) What are the duties and responsibilities of an estimator?
    c) What is the basic qualification & experience required?
    d) What are the other additional skills required?
    e) Is there any other skill set or course required to be done?
    f) What is the requirement of an estimator in a plant or project?
    g) Do all branch or discipline have estimator or it's a common person?
    h) What is the basic calculations that an estimator need to understand or perform?
    i) Any other additional?
  • Answers

    2 Answers found.
  • Estimators are industry specific and generally a graduation degree in engineering, business or finance will be preferred. Their job is to estimate the cost of manufacturing a product or providing a service or constructing a building. For this they will have to analyse and work out the manpower, material and time required for the project in order to make a realistic estimate of the cost.

    With this background the point wise answer to your query is as follows -
    a) The role of an estimator is to find out the cost of manufacturing or cost of providing service or cost of construction project. This is the most important data based on which the company will fix the sale prices.
    b) The estimator has to collect all the data related to designing, blueprints, project details, manpower required, time factor and other associated things and then estimate the cost to be incurred on those activities before providing the material or service to the customer.
    c) Generally an Engineering degree is required but diploma holders with additional certification and experience are also working in the industry. In manufacturing sector people from business and finance background are also taken.
    d) Experience is the ket to estimation. A basic understanding of costing and affect of inflationary trends in long time projects should be understood by the person.
    e) Some institutes provide certification courses. One can explore that.
    f) An estimator will always be asked to work out the revised costs in the plant depending upon the changes in products or hiring of people or change in speed of the processing units. Any change in the process will affect the cost and that is the job of estimator to analyse time to time.
    g) Estimators are industry specific and they grow up as their experience in that industry increases. They are not common to all the industries.
    h) Basic financial costing is crucial for estimation. One has to be conversant in use of computers and related software packages.
    i) Nil.

    Knowledge is power.

  • My answers point wise are as follows.
    1. The role of an estimator is to make estimations of various works like construction, manufacturing, service activity and so and so forth,
    2, The duty of an estimator will be collecting the proposals, getting the specifications, getting any blueprint related to the work for which estimation is to be made. He should also obtain any other information that will be required or useful for him to make the estimation perfectly. He has to prepare the estimates as required. He has to evaluate the need for manpower, materials, and specialised manpower related to the area of work the time required for completion of the job, He has to see the accuracy of the information collected and try to gather the pricing information from the other competitors also. By talking all the inputs and their costs he has to make a presentation to the management on the cost he arrived with all detail. If there are any doubts or additional inputs from them the changes required are to be made and submit the proposal for approval.
    3. An Engineering degree with or with or without experience or a diploma holder with some experience in the field is generally the criteria for a person to get selected to the post. For some industries, they may ask for Chartered Engineers. The expereince requirement will be different and the more the experience you have the higher the post you will get with higher pay packets.
    4. Analyzing Information, Planning, Reporting Research Results, Strategic Planning, Attention to Detail, Mathematical Skills, team leading skills and some basic computer knowledge.
    5. Estimation is very important for any type of work including manufacturing. A correct estimation will be useful in making a correct proposal and cost estimation. Based on these estimations only initial costing will be decided to understand the profitability of the business. While estimating the cost one should consider all aspects of the process including batch time, manpower, raw material, specification etc. If there is any change in the root also may affect the costing. SO casting plays a very important role in the industry.
    6. The requirements for estimators vary from project to project, product to product and service to service. So the same person can't be competent to do estimation job in all fields The requirements will vary.
    7. An estimator should know the calculation of a unit. What will be the cost per unit is generally what determines the minimum production capacity to make the process profitable. So he should be good at mathematics and some computer working also.
    8. An estimator's job will be correct only when the work is completed his job as per the timing in his estimation and the project cost will be around what was estimated. So it is the duty of the estimator to see that the process if followed properly and work is completed on time with the exected level of quality.

    drrao
    always confident


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