Cost Plan and Budget Agent
The Cost Plan and Budget Agent builds the elemental cost plan from drawings, area schedules and your rate libraries, then updates it at each design stage as the design develops. It tracks every change against the approved budget, from the concept estimate to the pre-tender estimate, and explains each movement in plain language so the client knows exactly where the money is going.
Ideal forQuantity surveyors
The difference
From 10-16 hours per stage update to 3-4 hours
Your QS spends the time testing design options with the team rather than re-measuring and re-typing the cost plan.
Done by hand
10-16 hours per stage update
With the Vanine agent
3-4 hours
Time returned to your team
75%
Indicative figures. We measure your own baseline in the first fortnight so the numbers you see are yours.
No surprises at tender
Budgets drift quietly through design development until tenders come in over. Stage-by-stage tracking shows the drift while the design can still be changed.
Explanations the client understands
Clients and boards want to know why the number moved, not just that it did. Each movement is linked to the design change, quantity or rate that caused it.
Your rates, your format
The agent works from your own rate library and benchmark projects, in the elemental format your QS team already uses, so outputs fit straight into your practice.
Capabilities
Every budget movement explained, at every design stage, before the client asks.
Built for client-side project managers, principal agents, quantity surveyors and cost managers controlling development budgets for South African developers, corporates, property funds and public-sector clients.
Elemental cost plan
Builds the cost plan by element from gross floor areas, area schedules and element quantities, priced from your rate library and benchmark projects.
Stage-by-stage updates
Updates the cost plan at concept, design development and documentation stages, and prepares the pre-tender estimate for comparison with tenders received.
Design change tracking
Compares successive drawing issues and area schedules to identify what changed, and prices the effect on each element.
Budget reconciliation
Reconciles each cost plan to the approved budget and the previous estimate, showing movements by element, contingency drawdown and escalation.
Escalation and contingency
Escalates the estimate to the expected tender date using Stats SA indices or your own assumptions, and tracks design and construction contingencies against the risk register.
Client cost report
Writes a cost report narrative that explains every movement in plain language, with a one-page summary for the client's steering committee.
How it works
From your systems to a result you sign off
Your quantity surveyor checks quantities and rates and signs off the estimate before the project manager reports it to the client.
Connect the places your cost plans already live.
Drawings and area schedules from SharePoint, Aconex or Autodesk Construction Cloud, plus your rate library and previous cost plans from Candy, WinQS or Excel. Already use something else? We connect that too.
- OpenAI Frontier
- Your own AI platform or models
- Microsoft 365 (Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Excel)
- Copilot Studio
- Candy
- WinQS and BuildSmart
- Bluebeam and Autodesk Construction Cloud
- Power BI
Runs each time a new drawing issue is received, or on request in Teams or OpenAI Frontier, using the models your organisation approves.
An updated elemental cost plan in Excel, a movement reconciliation and cost report in Word, and dashboards in Power BI where used.
Step by step
- 01
A new drawing issue or area schedule is received at a design stage.
- 02
The agent measures areas and quantities and identifies what has changed.
- 03
It prices each element from your rate library and updates the cost plan.
- 04
It reconciles the plan to the approved budget and explains every movement.
- 05
Your quantity surveyor reviews and signs off the estimate.
- 06
The project manager issues the cost report to the client.
Deployment
Runs inside the tools your team already uses
The same agent and the same cited output, delivered three ways: through the AI assistant you have rolled out, on a model you host yourself, or inside your own software.
In the frontier assistant you already pay for
We publish the agent as an MCP server. Add it as a connector and your team calls it from the chat they use every day, with no new tool to learn.
"Pull areas from the new schedule"
- project
- Mixed-use block
- stage
- Design development
On a model you host yourself
Run the agent on open-weight models in your data centre or private cloud. Your cost plans never leave your network, which keeps POPIA and data residency straightforward.
- Llama
- Mistral
- Ollama
- or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
Inside your own software
Trigger a run from your own workflows, and push the finished output into your ERP, GRC or reporting systems. We build the integration with your team.
- REST API
- Webhooks
- Batch jobs
- Embeddable review panel
Governed the same way, every route
Whichever way your team reaches the agent, identity, permissions and audit stay with your existing controls.
- Single sign-on through Entra ID, Okta or Google Workspace
- Reads only the documents each user is already allowed to open
- Every tool call written to an audit log you can export
How we deliver it
One agent, three ways to hold it
Start where your team already works, then take it as far into your systems as the value justifies.
DATA SECURITY & PRIVACY
Your cost plans stay yours.
The agent runs inside your tenancy, reads only what each task needs, and never trains on your cost plans. Every step is logged so your auditors can see exactly what it touched.
Built for regulated work.
+YOUR COST PLANS NEVER LEAVE YOUR ENVIRONMENT
More agents
More agents we build for South African enterprises
Each one is built on the same foundation: your documents, your rules, and your people signing off.
Precision AI for Institutional Workflows
