Manufacturing has the widest legitimate spread of any commercial type we model, and the spread is not noise. A plain assembly building on a slab and a process plant with bus duct, compressed air distribution and equipment foundations are the same property class on paper and completely different studies in practice.
The signature fact: the whole result turns on one distinction, applied line by line. A system that serves the building is 39-year property. A system that serves identifiable process equipment is 5-year property, even when it is bolted to the structure. A dedicated feeder and disconnect running to a press follows the press; the panel that lights the plant does not. Neither the square footage nor the sale price tells you which of those a building has, which is why a manufacturing study is only as good as its walkthrough and its electrical drawings.
Modeled range for manufacturing
| Configuration | Modeled accelerated share |
|---|---|
| Light assembly in a conventional industrial shell | ~6–10% |
| Typical manufacturing plant with documented process support | ~14% |
| Process-heavy plant: dedicated power, compressed air, cranes, equipment foundations | ~25–38% |
The 6–38% figure is the engine’s quality-control envelope used to flag a study for review, not a target and not a distribution of client results. The ~14% central is what the model produces for a conventional plant. Documented process equipment legitimately pushes a plant to the top of that envelope, which is exactly why the documentation has to exist before the number does.
How Cost Seg Smart scopes a manufacturing study
Manufacturing does not have its own standalone component library in our engine. Studies are built on the industrial library plus the process component sets, compressed air and process power among them, with engineer review of every equipment-serving system. We say that plainly rather than implying a per-plant template we do not have.
We also capture equipment-serving property as named components, never as a percentage carved out of a building system. A study that reclassifies “30% of the electrical” has produced a number nobody can trace back to a thing. A study that reclassifies the 480V feeder, disconnect and busway serving line 3 has produced a number that survives being asked about, and it is the same engineering either way.
What reclassifies in a manufacturing plant
5-year personal property (Section 1245)
- Dedicated process power: transformers, panels, feeders, busway and disconnects serving identifiable equipment
- Compressed air: compressors, dryers, receivers and the distribution piping serving production
- Process piping: process water, gas, steam, chemical and vacuum lines serving equipment
- Dedicated process exhaust, fume collection, dust collection and the make-up air serving them
- Equipment foundations, housekeeping pads and structural supports built for a specific machine
- Cranes, hoists, monorails and their runways
- Production low-voltage: controls wiring, machine networking, process instrumentation
- Office and break-area furnishings, production-floor signage
7-year specialty (Section 1245)
- Specialty benching, tooling storage and shop casework functioning as furniture
15-year land improvements (Section 1250)
- Truck aprons, trailer parking and heavy-duty yard paving
- Employee parking, curbing, site lighting, fencing and gates
- Yard drainage, retention, monument signage and landscaping
- Underground fire loop and yard hydrants, which are site work even though interior sprinklers are not
39-year structural (Section 1250)
- Shell, roof, slab on grade and structural steel
- General plant lighting and the building electrical service
- Base HVAC serving the building rather than a process
- Interior fire protection, including in-rack and overhead sprinklers
- Restrooms, offices and standard interior finishes
The two lines that get argued
Floor coatings. Epoxy and urethane floor systems are usually a building finish and stay long-life. Where a coating exists to serve a process, a chemical-resistant containment area for example, the facts can support a different answer. It is a facts question, not a default.
Process versus comfort HVAC. A unit that conditions the plant for people is building property. A unit sized and installed to cool a specific machine or hold a process tolerance is equipment. Plants routinely have both, and the split has to come from the mechanical schedule rather than an assumption.
Illustrative, modeled
On an $8.0M plant with roughly $6.4M of depreciable basis and documented process support, an accelerated share near 14% moves about $900,000 into short-life pools; a process-heavy plant with dedicated power distribution, compressed air and equipment foundations can move several times that. These are modeled figures from the component engine rather than completed client studies.
Cost Seg Smart produces manufacturing studies with engineer review of the process systems, and per-property figures are produced at study time. Fees are published at costsegsmart.com.
FAQ
Our production equipment is already on our fixed-asset schedule. Does the study touch it?
No, and it must not. Equipment you purchased and are already depreciating stays where it is. A cost segregation study addresses what was bundled into the real property purchase price or the construction cost of the building. Picking up equipment a second time is a real error we screen for, not a theoretical one.
Is the concrete pad under a press 5-year or 39-year property?
A pad poured to support a specific machine generally follows that machine. The building slab it sits in does not. The distinction is whether the pour exists because of the equipment, and the structural drawings normally answer it.
We are planning an expansion. Is it better to study now or after?
Both, usually, and separately. A study on the existing plant establishes the current schedule; the expansion is its own placed-in-service event with its own basis. Running them together after the fact tends to blur which dollars belong to which year, which is the thing you most want to keep clean.
Can a manufacturing study reach 38%?
It can, with documentation. That is the top of the review envelope rather than a goal, and a plant reaching it should be one where the process-support systems are itemized and traceable. A study that arrives at a high number without that itemization has an evidence problem, whatever the number says.