How do I benchmark unit rates from past projects?
Bildstak benchmarks unit rates by indexing the cost and quantity data from your own completed projects, then returning confidence-ranged rates — such as cost per m³ of concrete or per tonne of structural steel — when you query them during estimation for a new project.
Estimating unit rates from scratch for each new project is slow and inconsistent. The most reliable source is your own completed work — but that data is buried in old ERP exports, spreadsheets and close-out reports that are hard to query systematically.
Bildstak turns your historical project data into a live benchmarking corpus:
1. Connect completed-project data — cost ledgers (SAP, Maconomy, spreadsheets), bill of quantities and schedule data from past projects. 2. Index by work type — Bildstak reads the cost codes, descriptions and quantities to categorise expenditure by work type (civil, structural, MEP, fit-out, etc.). 3. Query during estimation — ask "what is our historical unit rate for in-situ concrete foundations in the Gulf region?" and Bildstak returns the rate range, sample size, and the specific projects it drew from. 4. Apply confidence ranges — rates come with a min/max and a median so estimators can calibrate risk allowances appropriately. 5. Refine by scope — filter by project type, region, contract strategy or time period to make comparisons more like-for-like.
What this replaces: manual trawl through close-out reports, reliance on published indices that don't reflect your supply chain, and gut-feel uplift factors that are hard to defend in a tender audit.
The same benchmarking engine feeds the portfolio supplier comparison: you can ask which subcontractors delivered the best unit-rate performance across your completed projects, providing an evidence base for procurement decisions on the next one.
Updated 2026-06-19