The Cost Engineer’s Dilemma: Judgment vs. Data
For anyone who has ever carried the weight of a project estimate on their shoulders, the tension is familiar. You’re asked to predict outcomes with precision, but the information you’re given is at best incomplete and at worst outdated or inconsistent. And yet the expectation remains: “Be more accurate next time.”
It’s a paradox that every project professional, cost engineer, and PMO leader knows too well. And it’s exhausting.
The Problem: Reliance on Judgment in Cost Estimating
Early in our cost estimating careers, many of us learned to survive by cultivating instincts: what a number should feel like, whether a forecast looks too optimistic, and whether the total labour hours make sense. These instincts become a kind of professional muscle memory. But instincts alone were never meant to be the foundation. They were meant to complement good data, not replace it.
Without reliable, current, context-rich benchmarks, judgment becomes the thing we lean on, not by choice, but by necessity. We triangulate figures, apply sanity checks, dig through old reports, and pull in peers for quick validations. Eventually, the estimation process becomes less of a science and more of an art, an art that demands constant vigilance and continuous focus.
Why cost data is often missing or outdated
The lack of credible cost and labour norms data isn’t caused by professionals “not doing their homework.” It’s structural.
- Organizations often store data in fragmented systems, some in legacy tools, some buried in spreadsheets, some hidden in project archives nobody has touched in years.
- Benchmarks age faster than anyone expects, becoming irrelevant long before anyone officially retires them.
- A feedback loop is usually missing to determine whether a cost was high because of location, market conditions, or a specific contracting strategy.
- And finally, culture gets in the way as many teams rely heavily on experience because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”
As a result, even the most seasoned experts often operate without a stable baseline. The system demands accuracy without providing the necessary inputs to confidently deliver it. Therefore, it isn’t a question of capability, but of clarity.
The Human Side: The Quiet Stress Behind Every Estimate
Behind every number in a project review is a person hoping they haven’t overlooked something, hoping the data won’t betray them, and hoping they won’t have to defend gaps.
Professionals don’t fear accountability; they fear being held accountable without the clarity they need to make confident decisions.
What people want is straightforward: a shared foundation of cost data that’s trustworthy, timely, and placed in the right context. They don’t need perfect predictions or some magical system that claims to know the future. They just need visibility.
With that in place, professional judgment no longer has to compensate for an incomplete system. Instead, it can add real insight and strengthen the work.
The solution: Building a structured cost database
Every industry is shifting toward better cost estimating with trusted data, which isn’t just a technical improvement. It’s a human one. It reduces stress, strengthens collaboration, and restores confidence in the decisions that shape multimillion-dollar outcomes.
And until organizations start investing in a solid estimating database with a continuous improvement cycle, project professionals will keep doing what they’ve always done: balancing art and science, intuition and analysis, experience and evidence.
But imagine what their judgment could become with a stronger cost estimating database foundation beneath it, the kind that CESK is built to offer.