Aisha, an experienced project manager, has successfully managed many new build$-$outs of office space for her east coast company. Her manager announced today that they will be expanding operations to the Midwest. The company had already signed a lease for $5,000$ square feet of office space in Cincinnati, and the offices had to be up and running in $3$ months. He asked Aisha for a cost estimate for this construction by the end of the day. How can she come up with a credible estimate so quickly?

a$.$ Tell the manager that you can't come up with an estimate in a few hours.

b$.$ Ask the manager questions about the new office space to understand the impacted departments that will be located there, the level of finishes desired, etc. then use the budgets of previous similar projects as a guideline.

c$.$ Create a work breakdown structure by using another previous project and create a bottom$-$up estimate for each work package.

d$.$ Go through all office buildouts for the past five years. Calculate an average construction cost per square foot and multiply the $5,000$ square feet by this cost per square feet to calculate the budget.