How We Produce Your Estimate
Five steps. What you send, what we do, what you get back — and what happens when something goes wrong, which is the part most firms leave off.
Step 1 — Send Your Plans
What you send: The drawing set. PDF, DWG, DOC, images or ZIP, up to 100MB per file. Specifications and schedules if you have them.
- Which divisions you need
- Whether you want quantities only or full pricing
- Your deadline
- Any format you need us to match
How long: immediate
Step 2 — Review and Quote
We review the set for completeness, scale and legibility, then price the work. If the drawings will not support what you have asked for, this is where we tell you — not after you have paid.
What you get: A flat price for the scope and a delivery date, in writing.
Step 3 — Approve
Confirm the price and the date. Nothing starts until you do. There is no work in progress before approval and nothing to pay for if you decide not to proceed.
Step 4 — Takeoff and Estimating
We measure the drawings, organized against CSI MasterFormat. Where pricing is in scope, quantities are priced and localized to your market, with general conditions and markup carried if the estimate calls for them. Every quantity is tied back to a location on the drawings as we go.
Step 5 — Delivery
If a number looks wrong, tell us. We will show you the takeoff and the assumption behind it rather than defending the total.
- An editable Excel workbook
- A marked-up plan set showing every measurement
- An assumptions and exclusions schedule
What Happens If
The five steps above describe the job going well. Here is the rest.
The drawings are incomplete. We tell you at Step 2, before you pay. Where a scope cannot be measured we carry it as a stated allowance and list it in the assumptions schedule.
Addenda land while we are working. Tell us as soon as you have them. If the change is small we absorb it. If it materially changes scope, we will tell you what it does to the price and the date before doing the work.
You disagree with a quantity. Send us the sheet and the line. We will show you exactly what was measured and where. If we are wrong, we correct it at no charge.
You need it faster than quoted. Ask. Sometimes it is possible and sometimes it is not, and there is usually a premium.
The scope changes after delivery. Quoted as new work, before it starts.
You are not happy with the estimate. Tell us specifically what is wrong. Vague dissatisfaction is hard to fix.
What We Need From You
- A complete, current drawing set — or an honest account of what is missing
- A clear scope — which divisions, at what level of detail
- A real deadline — not an artificially early one, which costs you a rush premium for no reason
What Happens Before We Deliver
Measuring is not the last step. Everything below happens between the takeoff being finished and the workbook reaching you.
Schedules reconciled against the plans. Door schedule against floor plan, hardware schedule against door schedule, panel schedules against device counts, mechanical schedules against the equipment shown. On an issued set these disagree more often than not, and every disagreement is either missing scope or a design question worth asking before you bid.
Quantities cross-checked against the marked-up set. Every quantity has to trace to a shaded area on a drawing. Anything that cannot be traced is either a measurement error or an allowance that was never labelled as one, and both get resolved before delivery rather than after.
Units checked against how the trade buys. Duct in pounds, not linear feet. Asphalt in tons per course, not square yards. Masonry in unit counts, not wall area. A quantity in the wrong unit is not an arithmetic error, and it will not look like one.
Assumptions written up as a schedule. Every judgment call, every place the drawings were ambiguous, and every quantity carried as an allowance with its basis stated. Written to be read by someone who was not in the conversation, because that is who will read it.
Arithmetic verified. Extensions, subtotals and markup bases. Unglamorous, and the single most common source of a number that turns out wrong for a reason nobody can locate later.
How We Handle Ambiguity
Every drawing set has places where the intent is unclear — a detail that contradicts a plan, a schedule that stops before the last few items, a wall type that appears nowhere in the legend. This is normal, and it is not a reason to stop work.
The failure is not making a judgment call. It is making one silently. A quantity that depends on an assumption nobody wrote down is indistinguishable from a measured one, which means you cannot tell which parts of the estimate are firm and which are a considered guess.
So the rule is simple. We resolve the ambiguity the way an experienced estimator would, we write down exactly what we assumed and why, and we put it where you will read it before you bid rather than after it has cost you money. Where an ambiguity is large enough to move the number materially, we ask instead of assuming.
And where the drawings genuinely cannot support a scope, it is excluded and named as an exclusion. A gap gets asked about; a plausible number inserted in its place does not.
Revisions, Addenda and Disagreements
Addenda during the work. Tell us as soon as they land. Small changes we absorb. A material scope change is quoted before we do it, so the invoice never contains something you did not agree to.
Addenda after delivery. These change the drawings the estimate was built from, so updating for them is quoted at the time. We would rather charge for it visibly than absorb it and recover it in your next quote.
If you disagree with a number. Send the sheet and the line. We show you the takeoff and the assumption behind it. If we are wrong we fix it at no charge, and most disagreements turn out to be scope rather than arithmetic — usually resolved in one conversation.
If the set turns out worse than it looked. We tell you before doing the work, not after. A quote given on a set that proves unusable gets revisited with you rather than delivered as a takeoff full of unverified quantities.
Start with Step 1
Upload your plans or tell us what you need. We’ll reply with pricing and a delivery date.
Need to add trades, ZIP code, target date or project state? Use the full quote form ↗
Questions About the Process
How does the construction estimating process work?
Five steps: the contractor uploads a plan set; Get Construction Estimate reviews it and returns a flat price with a delivery date; the contractor approves; the takeoff and pricing are produced; and the finished workbook, marked-up drawings and assumptions schedule are delivered. No work begins before the price and date are approved in writing.
What happens if the drawings are incomplete?
Get Construction Estimate states this at quote stage, before payment. Scope that cannot be measured from the drawings is carried as a stated allowance and listed in the assumptions schedule rather than buried inside a unit rate.
What happens if addenda arrive while an estimate is in progress?
Small changes are absorbed. Where an addendum materially changes scope, the effect on price and delivery date is quoted before the work is done, and the contractor decides.
What if I disagree with a quantity in the estimate?
Every quantity traces back to a location on the marked-up drawings, so any number can be checked against the sheet it came from. If the quantity is wrong it is corrected at no charge. Most disagreements turn out to be differing scope assumptions rather than arithmetic.
What file formats can I send?
PDF, DWG, DOC, image files and ZIP archives, up to 100MB per file. Scanned prints and photographs of printed drawings can often be worked from, and Get Construction Estimate states at quote stage whether a particular set is usable.