Construction Cost Estimator
Produces ground-up construction cost estimates by CSI MasterFormat division with regional adjustments, soft cost layering, contingency framework, and sensitivity analysis. Accepts floor plans, building drawings, or text descriptions as input. Can generate ASCII floor plans and building mockups for co-creation design loops with real-time cost feedback. Triggers on 'estimate construction costs', 'how much to build', 'construction budget', 'TDC estimate', 'hard cost estimate', 'development cost', 'price this floor plan', 'what would this cost to build', or when given a project description, drawing, or floor plan.
What this skill does
Construction Cost Estimator is an A.CRE Intelligence Hub skill that gives your AI agent the analyst-grade workflow a senior commercial real estate professional would run. Produces ground-up construction cost estimates by CSI MasterFormat division with regional adjustments, soft cost layering, contingency framework, and sensitivity analysis. Accepts floor plans, building drawings, or text descriptions as input. Can generate ASCII floor plans and building mockups for co-creation design loops with real-time cost feedback. Triggers on 'estimate construction costs', 'how much to build', 'construction budget', 'TDC estimate', 'hard cost estimate', 'development cost', 'price this floor plan', 'what would this cost to build', or when given a project description, drawing, or floor plan. Produces ground-up construction cost estimates by CSI MasterFormat division with regional adjustments, soft cost layering, contingency framework, and sensitivity analysis. Accepts floor plans, building drawings, or text descriptions as input. Can generate ASCII floor plans and building mockups for co-creation design loops with real-time cost feedback.
How you'll use it
Say something like this to your AI agent in the Hub, Claude, or ChatGPT to activate this skill.
Skill activation rules
Detailed routing logic, prompts the skill responds to, and operational guardrails as documented by the author.
Produces ground-up construction cost estimates by CSI MasterFormat division with regional adjustments, soft cost layering, contingency framework, and sensitivity analysis. Accepts floor plans, building drawings, or text descriptions as input. Can generate ASCII floor plans and building mockups for co-creation design loops with real-time cost feedback. Triggers on 'estimate construction costs', 'how much to build', 'construction budget', 'TDC estimate', 'hard cost estimate', 'development cost', 'price this floor plan', 'what would this cost to build', or when given a project description, drawing, or floor plan.
What's inside
Construction Cost Estimator
You are a construction cost estimator producing institutional-quality Total Development Cost (TDC) budgets for commercial real estate projects. Given a project concept with property type, size, location, and construction parameters, you build a…
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Construction Cost Estimator
You are a construction cost estimator producing institutional-quality Total Development Cost (TDC) budgets for commercial real estate projects. Given a project concept with property type, size, location, and construction parameters, you build a ground-up cost estimate organized by CSI MasterFormat division, apply regional adjustments, layer soft costs, structure contingencies by design stage, and produce a Sources-and-Uses-ready budget with sensitivity analysis. Your estimates are designed for investment committee review, lender underwriting, and development pro forma integration -- not for contractor bidding. You think in $/SF and $/unit, benchmark against comparable projects, and flag assumptions that require validation with local market data.
When to Activate
Trigger on any of these signals:
Full instructions and any reference files ship in the .skill bundle.
construction-cost-estimator/
├── SKILL.md # Required: instructions + metadata
└── references/ # Optional: documentation
├── csi-cost-database.yaml # 41.2 KB
├── regional-cost-factors.yaml # 16.7 KB
└── soft-cost-benchmarks.md # 13.1 KB
How to run it
Not in the Hub? Download the .skill bundle above and follow the A.CRE skills install guide → to load it into Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Cursor, or any other agent that supports skills.
Already in the Hub. If you're an AI.Edge Pro or A.CRE Accelerator member, this skill is bundled into the A.CRE Intelligence Hub direct connector (MCP server) — just ask your agent.