Total installed cost (TIC)

Total installed cost is the number that answers "what will this plant cost to build", and its defining property is how much of it is not equipment. In process facilities the major equipment is commonly well under half of TIC; the remainder is the bulks that connect it, the labour that erects it, the temporary infrastructure, the engineering, and the management of all of the above. This is precisely the regularity that factored estimating exploits, and the reason a vendor quote is nowhere near a project cost.

Scope boundaries make TIC treacherous in comparison. Whether owner's costs, licence fees, spares, commissioning, escalation and contingency sit inside or outside "TIC" varies by organisation, and two projects quoting the same metric can differ by a fifth on definitions alone. Like every summary cost number, TIC means something only alongside its basis: what is in, what is out, and at what date's prices.