Cost of plant/manufacturing facility?

Hi,

we are trying to figure out how much it would cost to build a

manufacturing facility for commuter trains(like metro north) for our school project.

more specifically, we would like to get some rough guesses on the cost to build a plant in Nigeria.

We would really appreciate some reasonable answers with explanations since we don't know much about trains and facilities.

Thank you!!

Well You'll go a long way with the Dollar in Nigeria. The Exchange rate on the Naira (Nigerian Currency) is not worth a whole hell of a lot.

In a country like Nigeria , any rail manufactering would be likely to be a joint partnership with a major international manufacterer , or the chinese . the only reason they would do it , would be if equipment was needed in nigeria , or there was a oil sweetner .

This is a profile on the Nigerian Railway Corp.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Nigeria


here's a link of photos of Nigerian locomotives from these pics theres not much to look at outher than ageing Junk from MLW, EMD, GE and a group of British, German, Japanese, and locos from China.
http://www.topforge.co.uk/Photographs/NRC.htm

JL904 - Understanding this is a school project, I suppose the best question to ask up front is: Did you select Nigeria, or was it forced on you? If it was your choice, why would you select Nigeria of all places to build commuter equipment? Given civil strife, corruption, the need to import most or all of your componentry, distance from markets, lack of specialized labor, infrastructure, etc. the country would be a longshot, competitively. Some other things to clarify:

You didn't specify as to whether you'd be building passenger cars or locomotives....and for what countries/markets.

Would you intend to be simply an assembly shop, or actually fabricate/manufacture many of the parts on-site?

A somewhat wild guess would put development cost between $75-150 million. A huge spread, I know... and a lot of money, but tooling costs are huge, you'd have to build the shop itself from the ground up, complete with overhead cranes, etc. and one significant expense is the importation of skilled managers for construction and setting up/running of operations. On that last point alone, you're probably looking at something in the neighborhood of $250,000 per manager per year when you factor in hardship pay (not many would move to Nigeria for $50k/year!), benefits and home travel, living expenses and security. Figure a minimum of probably 50 during construction. Two-year construction time = $25 million(!) in expatriot labor.