Photo By Andres Guzman | The 2025 Kansas City District cost engineering team stands near the Richard Bolling...... read more read more
Before making a big purchase, whether a product or a service, many people conduct research to ensure they pay a fair price. Comparing prices, reading reviews and even calling to get real-time quotes can help inform consumers before pulling the trigger and making a purchase.
The same is true for the federal government. Before approving taxpayer dollars to be used to construct military facilities, improve the nation’s infrastructure or implement flood risk reduction projects, Congress must ensure the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ project cost estimates are as accurate as possible. At the Kansas City District, a highly skilled team of cost engineers is tasked with the challenging job of estimating the cost of a project before Congress will agree to fund it.
“Our goal is to develop budget estimates that align with future construction costs, which is a challenge as final design and construction often don’t happen until several years after budgets are locked in,” said John Dillon, Cost Engineering branch chief at the Kansas City District. “We’re a steward of the taxpayers’ dollars. We’re also responsible for looking after the taxpayer and making sure contracts are awarded at a fair and reasonable price.”
At first glance, developing a project cost estimate might not seem too difficult. However, cost engineers face many challenges from trying to predict future project unknowns, managing customer expectations to adjusting budget estimates amid unprecedented market fluctuations.
“Cost engineering is just like it sounds. It’s not cost estimating. It is cost engineering in which we’re doing a little bit more than one plus one,” said Patrick Miramontez, senior cost engineer at the Kansas City District. “It’s understanding the project, analyzing, adapting and forecasting. There’s a lot more to it than just doing some math.”
For Miramontez, the team’s collective experience helps them overcome the immense hurdles they face when developing a project cost estimate.
“Lately, the future stuff that we haven’t [historically] experienced has been really challenging to us—from high inflation to tariffs—we just don’t know yet how those things impact [a project,]” said Miramontez. “That’s where experience comes into it.”
Predicting the future might sound like an art but for cost engineers, using historical data is the foundation for building a fair and accurate cost estimate. Balancing a reasonable cost estimate, while accounting for potential unknowns like cost increases or schedule and scope changes, can make the job difficult.
“Finding the right spot to be [is challenging.] We don’t want to be overly conservative, and we also don’t want to be overly optimistic,” said Dillon. “We’ve done research over the last six months, over the last year, five years, so we use the past data to predict the future. That’s all we can do, is use past data.”
According to Dillon, research includes tracking previous project data, keeping up to date on inflation and tariffs, as well as getting real-time quotes from vendors on the cost of material and labor. Like Miramontez, he attributes his team’s success in developing fair and reasonable cost estimates with experience, but also mentorship.
“It’s challenging and it’s something different every day,” said Dillon. “Mentoring is one of the biggest things that we try to focus on in our branch … and we’ve found that it’s been very helpful with the learning curve.”
Different projects, different challenges
A team of 22, the Cost Engineering Branch at the Kansas City District is one of the largest in USACE. They support not only the district but are also the Cost Engineering Branch for the Levee Safety Center and support USACE Headquarters. Additionally, the branch performs technical lead and modeling duties for the Army Facilities Component System, where the Kansas City District is the lead design agent.
While all cost engineers face the difficult task of trying to predict the future when developing a cost estimate, different types of projects present different types of challenges.
Miramontez, who primarily works on civil works projects, faces unique hurdles as a cost engineer. For one, civil works projects often have a life safety component. According to Miramontez, they also require a positive cost benefit ratio, but with competing projects throughout the nation, managing funding can be difficult.
“Life safety projects require immediate attention, but there’s other projects across the country and you have to rank your projects accordingly to safety and mission,” he said. “On the civil works side, we have to make sure that the cost is less than the benefits. If you don’t have enough benefits, it’s challenging to justify spending the money.”
Matt Yannayon, senior cost engineer at the Kansas City District, primarily works on military construction projects. Unlike working in the private sector, military construction projects are often innovative or the first of their kind.
“You can work [in the private sector] and design office or apartment buildings, pretty standard stuff,” said Yannayon. “But when you come into military design, it’s completely different. You might need to build a building that’s going to get blown up and needs to keep getting blown up. You get to do stuff that the outside world is not even thinking of.”
Susan Frentzen’s work is perhaps the most unique on the team. As a civil engineer and technical lead for the Army Facilities Component System at the Kansas City District, she and her team develop plans for military base camps in preparation for war. The plans are stored in a database and ready for use by the military, if needed.
“[Our projects have] to be troop constructable and all the materials we use are really specific to a contingency environment,” said Frentzen. “You don’t need something that’s going to last years and years. Things maybe only need to last five years. Getting our design team in the mindset that we don’t want the gold standard, that’s really challenging.”
For the Kansas City District’s cost engineers, the challenges of the job are often the same things that have kept them coming back for more.
“You get to go and actually see different things and then come up with a solution,” said Yannayon. “The solutions aren’t known. It may never have been done before and now we’re trying to do it. Locally, nationally, globally—there’s always something different, so that’s what keeps you interested.”
Working on projects in support of national security is also a draw for cost engineers like Frentzen.
“Being part of a program that has real world impact, seeing some of the things that we’re designing, the subject matter experts we’re meeting with, hearing about how our designs are being used—I think that’s really meaningful,” she said.
Dillon, Miramontez, Yannayon and Frentzen didn’t start their careers planning on becoming cost engineers. Their paths to the Kansas City District Cost Engineering Branch were all unique, but they all agree the work is gratifying.
“There’s no cost engineering degree, no Bachelor of Science in cost engineering. We probably all took different paths … but it’s been good for me,” said Miramontez. “I’m still learning, and I’ve been doing this a long time. It’s not something that is simple but it’s rewarding.”
| Date Taken: | 04.22.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 04.22.2025 13:37 |
| Story ID: | 495887 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 23 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, ‘More than one plus one’: Cost engineers play critical role in USACE construction projects, by Christine Paul, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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