Elemental cost plan

An elemental cost plan allocates the budget to elements defined by function: everything that performs "keep the weather out" is the envelope, regardless of which trades build it. Standard elemental structures (in UK practice, those of the RICS New Rules of Measurement) make the allocation consistent from project to project, so element costs can be benchmarked per square metre against comparable buildings.

Its purpose is design-stage control. Because elements map to design decisions rather than to procurement packages, the cost plan gives each designer a target — the frame has this much, the facade that much — and design development is checked against those targets iteratively. Overrun in one element becomes visible early enough to rebalance others, instead of surfacing as a single unaffordable tender.

The limits are its boundaries: element definitions must be applied exactly for benchmarks to mean anything, and the elemental view must eventually be translated into the trade-and-package view that contractors price — a mapping exercise where scope can fall between the two structures if it is done carelessly.