Confidence Through Clarity: How TSA Riley Transformed Cost Planning with RIB CostX 

Company Name: TSA Riley 

Location: United Kingdom 

Industry sector/s: Property & Infrastructure 

Products used: RIB CostX 

Using CostX gives us the ability to quickly make changes to give clients the live data and information and really help them speed up the design stages. 

Chris Donachie, Regional Director & Head of Cost Management, TSA Riley 

The Customer 

TSA Riley is a leading cost and project management consultancy firm with a reputation for delivering high‑quality commercial, healthcare, education, and public‑sector projects across the UK. Their property and infrastructure experience spans 27 sectors, from arts to aviation, energy to education, data to defence. The firm is based in the UK but also operates across the globe in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South-East Asia, and Ireland. 

The Mission 

TSA Riley was on a mission to modernize their measurement and cost‑planning workflows. Previously they relied heavily on manual takeoffs and spreadsheets, but then their projects became increasingly complex. They needed to reduce that reliance, eliminate inconsistent measurements across project teams, and to enable better accuracy and auditability. The firm was under increasing pressure to deliver faster, more transparent cost plans. They opted to transition from cumbersome manual processes to a more efficient, fully digital, model-based approach.  

The Solution 

The team at TSA Riley partnered with RIB Software to implement their CostX tool, deploying RIB CostX for 2D and 3D/BIM takeoff. They benefited from standardized templates and structured workflows, which helped improve visibility and quality assurance across teams. Through real-time measurement linked to cost plans, they were able to modernize and streamline their measurement and cost‑planning workflows. The transition to CostX resulted in faster, more consistent take-offs, easier error detection and correction, and a stronger audit trail, allowing them to track changes in cost plans throughout a project’s lifecycle and reconcile measures efficiently. 

The Result 

The practical benefits of implementing RIB CostX included increased speed with faster, more consistent take‑offs and greater consistency in cost planning , improved accuracy and transparency. The team was able to manage complex projects more confidently with better collaboration across multiple project teams. They were able to produce a stronger audit trail for client assurance purposes. Version control also improved as the system helped them reduce human error by consolidating measurement and cost reporting in one platform, eliminating the need to transfer data between different tools. 

This gave us the opportunity to have a standardized template, which gave us a more structured workflow, enabled our team to be able to work together and measure at the same time. 

Chris Donachie, Regional Director & Head of Cost Management 

Transforming Measurement and Cost Planning Workflows 

TSA Riley previously relied on traditional workflows built around manual take-offs and Excel spreadsheets for cost management – these methods became increasingly counter-productive as their projects grew in scale and complexity. Projects became technically more complex, often involving multiple buildings, evolving design information, and increasingly collaborative delivery models. 

However, inconsistent measurement was the order of the day. 

• Different team members would measure and record quantities slightly differently. 

• Quality control became more difficult and slowed down the process of reconciling cost plans. 

• Spreadsheet-based workflows couldn’t handle the complexity of new sectors like healthcare and residential development. 

• Maintaining accuracy across large volumes of data through manual processes became an increasing burden on the team. 

TSA Riley implemented RIB CostX as the central platform for measurement and cost planning. The tool enables both 2D and 3D measurement, including BIM-based takeoff, while introducing structured templates and standardized workflows across the organization.  

It marked a fundamental shift in the way teams approached measurement – from manual to digital. No more spreadsheets and manual markups. Cost planners could work inside a shared digital environment where quantities, drawings, and cost plans were all connected, creating a single source of truth. Within this space, multiple teams could contribute to measurements simultaneously, strengthening collaboration and improving quality assurance and traceability. 

TSA Riley’s teams finally had the consistent, controlled digital workflow they needed to support their growing portfolio of complex projects. 

We’ve now got the ability to talk through different projects at different levels throughout the globe, and we’re able to look at that together as a team across our regions. 

Chris Donachie 

Creating a Consistent and Collaborative Cost Planning Process 

Adopting CostX enabled the standardization of TSA Riley’s cost planning workflows, moving them away from spreadsheets to a single, consistent way of working across all sectors and diverse project types. 

The team no longer needed to transfer information between multiple tools, because they were consolidating measurement and cost reporting on one platform. They could instead generate quantities from drawings and feed them directly into cost plans, which helped reduce the risk of manual errors creeping in and eliminated repetitive data entry. 

Better Version control 

Whereas previously, updates to drawings or design revisions required teams to duplicate spreadsheets or rework large sections of cost plans, CostX automatically updates the associated measurements and cost information with each drawing change. That way, the team can respond quickly as designs evolve. 

CostX allows revised drawings to be incorporated into the model quickly, updating cost plans accordingly. The process streamlines engagement with stakeholders, enabling teams to provide faster, more accurate feedback during design development. 

Between Collaboration 

CostX allows TSA Riley’s global and regional teams to review drawings, check measurements, and discuss cost implications together in real time, even when working remotely. This serves teams working on large, multi-building developments, especially well as they can review and refine measurements collaboratively. 

Teams work together on complex areas, share insights, and validate quantities more efficiently than was previously possible with traditional workflows. It proves that through a more structured, collaborative cost planning process, CostX has enabled TSA Riley to deliver consistent outputs on increasingly complex project (team) demands. 

It’s definitely helped us move to much faster, consistent takeoffs [where] we can easily spot mistakes and amend and make sure that we’ve got improved accuracy and transparency for our clients. 

Chris Donachie 

Improving Accuracy, Transparency and Client Confidence 

With the improvements in accuracy and transparency throughout the cost planning process, Donachie explains that TSA Riley now begins every project in CostX, allowing measurement data and cost plans to be developed and tracked from the earliest stages of the project. 

Each time new information comes through the design process, the team can continuously update quantities and monitor cost changes, ensuring that there is always a clear and traceable record of how cost plans evolve throughout the project lifecycle. When design changes occur – and they often do – measurements can be updated quickly to demonstrate the resulting impact on project costs. It means that clients can make more informed decisions during the pre-contract stage, supported by accurate and up-to-date information. 

In fact, clients have increasingly asked to access measurement data directly from CostX during design meetings – they like using the platform to review quantities and understand how project decisions affect cost outcomes. 

And it’s not only clients that benefit. TSA Riley’s cost managers also review measurements, track revisions, and verify cost plan accuracy more easily with the structured workflows and built-in audit trails available. They can identify and correct errors earlier. Reconciliation between different project stages is more straightforward as a result, which ultimately helps strengthen internal quality management processes. 

CostX continues to add value through the integration of 3D BIM models into cost planning, particularly on technically complex developments where traditional 2D measurement is too time-consuming. 

• TSA Riley can match the increasing adoption of BIM for design coordination across the industry, aligning its measurement workflows with BIM models. 

• Detailed 3D takeoffs can be aligned with recognized measurement standards, which allows cost planners to extract quantities directly from design models. 

• When design teams produce BIM models suitable for cost analysis, this information can be leveraged to perform faster, more precise measurements. 

In the final analysis, they’ve achieved the ability to respond quickly to design changes, provide transparent cost data, and maintain a robust audit trail that strengthens trust with clients. 

The transformation for TSA Riley has been clear. Measurement tasks are completed faster, cost plans are more consistent, and the entire process is supported by a transparent digital workflow. By replacing fragmented manual processes with a unified platform, the firm has created a modern cost planning environment that delivers greater efficiency, accuracy and confidence – to the benefit of their teams and their clients. 

It gives you greater confidence and robustness in those early-stage estimates for projects to ensure that there’s no errors within them. 

Amy Gillard, Senior Quantity  Surveyor, TSA Riley