Standard Estimate CBS for Estimating and Project Controls

I'm interested in how other companies handle a CBS in Estimate and its transition to Control with minimal conformance. Is there an industry consensus for most construction types? I'm considering structuring by CSI, work package, and work area, detailing down to the account code level.

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Greggory.Joyce

Thanks for the response.

We have very detailed estimates, with tag fields that allow us to group items into areas and work packages, but we don't necessarily break down our CBS the same. It would be nice if there was a way to push the estimate to Control based on groupings or by a WBS structure. This would allow us to have any sort of CBS as long as our WBS was coded correctly.

Brittany.Dodson

When we rolled out InEight Estimate, we developed an entirely new process and keep the hierarchy very simple. This has it's pros and cons, but requires a detailed conformance to push it into Control due to our estimators keeping it high level. Using CSI makes sense to me as this is how we have structured our Cost Codes , however, this is not how our Concrete division is setting up their hierarchy in InEight Estimate.

Long story short, we are still working on how to make the conformance "minimal".

samehtalat

@Greggory.Joyce

Yes, the estimation team is using the "Phase code" which we call it WBS during the bid time, but at the bid stage we are not using InEight estimate, we are using different platform

Greggory.Joyce

Do you have the phase code assigned in your Estimate CBS at bid time?

samehtalat

@Greggory.Joyce

Yes, I’m using InEight Control. In InEight, the CBS is used to define the hierarchical structure of the WBS. We utilize the "Phase Code" field to represent our company’s standard WBS format. This also helping with the integration between Control module and Contract/Change modules.

Greggory.Joyce

Good to know. Do you use InEight Control? If so, do you adjust your CBS before pushing it over to Control?

samehtalat

hi @Greggory.Joyce

I've used the CSI MasterFormat for many years, particularly on projects involving U.S. clients. It's an incredibly useful framework, originally developed to expand and organize construction specifications into more detailed divisions. When I first adopted it, it consisted of only 16 divisions—now it has evolved to include around 50, offering much greater granularity.

One effective approach I’ve implemented is integrating CSI divisions as activity codes within Primavera. By assigning these codes to project activities, it becomes significantly easier to generate cash flow reports aligned with the CBS. This method has consistently delivered excellent results in my experience

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