Design Cost Data was first published in 1958 to serve the building community with a means to simplify the problem of probable cost estimating. Our philosophy is simple yet quite novel and sophisticated. We contend that one can take the historical costs of existing construction and that by applying cost-factors, such as scientific cost escalators and regional modifiers, make these figures pertinent to preliminary cost estimates for new construction projects.

Now more than 50 years later, DCD has evolved into one of the most respected publications in the architectural industry. DCD’s philosophy has worked so well, 11 years ago our company took it to the next step and used the information published in DCD to develop the framework for a new tool to run sq.ft. cost estimates quickly and accurately. D4COST software has gone through dozens of evolutions and hundreds of improvements and is now the fastest growing sq.ft. preliminary cost estimating software in the country.