International Construction Measurement Standards draft released

In November, the International Construction Measurement Standards (ICMS) was released for public comment.

ICMS Coalition, a group of over 40 professional bodies, is asking for professionals to support the project that seeks to develop a new approach to calculate costs for the world’s building and civil engineering projects. The aim is to devise a universal system for measuring the cost of construction projects to allow comparisons to be made on a like-for-like basis between countries.

Today, the way construction project costs are measured varies significantly from country to country, hampering decision making and creating barriers to investment. All stakeholders in the construction and infrastructure sectors are invited to comment on the draft standard.

“This draft international standard presents huge opportunities for the global cost management profession,” says Ong See Lian, Chair of the ICMS Coalition SSC. “We’ve worked hard to get the new standard to this point and we now need to hear from cost consultants, quantity surveyors and civil engineers around the world.”

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.