scope:

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The purpose of this Cost Reference Manual is to give the user a source of labor unit data required to fabricate and install heating, ventilating and air conditioning materials and equipment. The Manual provides the user with the national average amount of manhours required to fabricate or install a given quantity of each item under typically normal conditions on typically normal projects. The Manual also provides the tools necessary to adjust those levels of manhours to job or project conditions which may be considered difficult and very difficult. The conditions which, in the view of the industry, represents a typically normal project are defined on pages ii-iii of this Introduction. Guidance is also included to assist in the adjustment of the data for conformance to specific project types and unique site characteristics.

It should be noted that proprietary systems also affect labor units. This should be factored into your estimates and change orders. However, this Manual does not contain references to specific proprietary systems.

Because costs in regions of North America vary widely, units in this Manual must be adjusted to reflect local conditions, project types and trade practices. Any use of this Manual to verify or set labor unit validity in a particular location would be inappropriate.

The Tables in this Manual are based on surveys of active sheet metal and air conditioning contractors in the United States and Canada, including actual data from numerous projects. In addition, secondary sources of productivity and labor efficiency data, such as U.S. government statistics from the Bureau of Labor Standards and several scholarly reports and journals have been used to verify, supplement and extrapolate from the original data set.