A Fast Method for Developing Accurate Scoping and Screening Cost Estimates for Pilot Plants

There is often a need to develop scoping or screening estimates for pilot plant construction when little or no design information is available. While a variety of methods are commonly used such as using costs from “similar” units, asking experienced personnel to “quesstimate” a fast cost or simply guessing the accuracy of such estimates have been a continual source of problems in the industry. Too fast an estimate often produces gross errors; waiting for the necessary information and spending the time and effort to produce a realistic estimate is often too time consuming.

This talk will focus on a method ExxonMobil Research and Engineering has used successfully. It is based on maintaining a simple database of pilot plant costs and using this to access new pilot plants against the database in three fairly simple areas: size, complexity and constructability. Using fairly broad guidelines to place he proposed unit in one of 3 to 4 broad classes allows the estimator to use the average costs in the database to quickly and accurately produce a valid scoping or screening estimate.

The talk will present the method, explain the data required to make it work and offer guidelines for using it to make accurate estimates in a very brief time. A discussion of when the method will not work well is also included.