Abstract:
Cost estimating is an essential task of a quotation management process,
particularly for a kind of construction project. Any contractor company has to be able to
propose a bidding price within a short lead-time and precision. This study focuses on
the quotation management of a case study of a construction contractor company.
The case study companys business involves about design and installation of piping
systems, air cooling systems, fire suppression systems, and wiring systems. During
January to October 2011, the case study company had opportunity loss totally
18,970,000 baht due to the long lead-time of data acquisitions process. This problem
occurred during acquiring price of materials and equipments from suppliers and
vendors. The company used to store data and information in hard copies which are
difficult to retrieve and up-to-date. It results averagely 54 % of total quoting lead-time.
This study therefore develops a database management system for quotation
management in order to reduce the quoting lead-time. The database management
system is developed based on a relational database in order to manage data of
suppliers, vendors, materials, equipments, and quotation logs. The results of
implementation of this system enhance estimators to search and to retrieve needed
information, and also reduce the number of query from suppliers and vendors.
Consequently, it can reduce the quoting lead-time from 6.6 days to 4.1 days for a
project.