Developing the log frame cost estimation tool

Abstract

The aim of the thesis is to develop a program to estimate the cost of construction of external walls of wooden buildings at the stage of the tender. This work was written in Pello, northern Finland, commissioned by the Pellopuu Oy company. The main reason for choosing this topic for the thesis is the reduction of time spent on the calculation of the cost of a log frame of the building. This means an increase in profits for the company. In the development of the program Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets in conjunction with Visual Basic third-generation, event-driven programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft were used. The program tool is able to determine the amount of running meters of logs for wooden walls and the cost for it. As a final result, the program displays the costs of log walls with different types of log profiles selected by the user. Therefore the user can easily compare costs and choose the best variant of a log profile to use. The tool was made according to the Pellopuu Oy's requirements: the high level of calculation accuracy and reducing the time spent in comparison to the manual method of calculation. In the end of this thesis a comparative analysis of manual and automatic account methods was made. The differences in time spent was in average 30%. Using the log frame cost estimation tool Pellopuu Oy can increase their log house production from 350 to 455 houses per year. Also the company can save 33,000 € on the time spent for the production of 350 houses per year.