Outsourced Estimating — Your Estimating Department, On Demand
Most contractors do not need a full-time estimator. They need estimating capacity that scales with their bid volume, which is not the same thing. We work as an external estimating department: you send plans, we send back takeoffs and estimates, and you pay per project instead of per year.
Get a Free QuoteWhen Outsourcing Estimating Makes Sense
We would rather tell you this up front than sell you something that does not fit.
Your bid volume is uneven. Four bids one month and twelve the next is normal in construction, and it is impossible to staff for. A salaried estimator is idle in the trough and drowning in the peak.
You are bidding trades you do not self-perform. Carrying an in-house specialist for a division you touch four times a year does not pay for itself.
You are turning down bids. If work is going un-bid because nobody has time, the cost of not bidding is larger than the cost of an estimate.
Your estimator is out. Vacation, illness, or the gap between one leaving and the next starting. Bidding does not stop for hiring.
You are entering a new market. And do not yet have local labor and material data of your own to price against.
When It Doesn't Make Sense
There are three situations where outsourcing is the wrong purchase, and we would rather name them than have you find out after paying.
You bid constantly and always in the same trades. Past roughly thirty to forty bids a year in a consistent scope, a salaried estimator is cheaper and faster than outsourcing all of it. The right move then is to hire, and use us for overflow and for the divisions your estimator does not cover.
Your drawings are consistently incomplete. Outsourced estimating works best with a real plan set. If most of your work is design-build off sketches, an estimator sitting in your office who can ask questions across the desk will beat any external firm.
Your margin depends on relationships we can't see. If your pricing reflects negotiated supplier terms and crews you know, take the quantity takeoff and price it yourself. That is cheaper and it will be more accurate than anything we could produce. We would rather quote you the takeoff than sell you the estimate.
What Outsourcing Estimating Replaces
A salaried construction estimator is a substantial annual commitment once you add payroll taxes, benefits, software licences, cost-data subscriptions, and the overhead of a desk. That commitment is fixed whether you bid four projects in a month or fourteen.
Against that, per-project pricing means you pay for estimating on the jobs you actually bid, and nothing in the months you don't. There is no cost of an idle month, no recruiting cycle, and no single point of failure when one person leaves.
What outsourcing does not replace is judgment about your own business — which jobs to chase, what margin to carry, how much risk a particular client represents. That stays with you. We produce the numbers; the bidding strategy is yours.
How Contractors Use Us
Overflow
You have an estimator. In peak season they cannot cover everything, so the surplus comes to us. This is the most common arrangement.
Specialist divisions
Your estimator covers the trades you self-perform; we cover MEP, or curtain wall, or whatever sits outside their depth.
Standing arrangement
No in-house estimating at all. Everything comes to us on a rolling basis, with an agreed format and turnaround.
One-off
A single large or unusual bid, with no commitment beyond the project.
What You Receive
- An editable Excel workbook — quantities and pricing by CSI division, or quantities only if that is what you asked for
- A marked-up plan set showing every measurement
- An assumptions and exclusions schedule
- A scope summary stating exactly what was and was not covered
- Your house template, populated, if you have one
How a Standing Arrangement Works
For contractors sending regular volume, the setup work happens once and then gets out of the way.
Format agreed once. Your workbook, your division structure, your markup lines, your level of detail. After the first project, every subsequent estimate arrives in the same shape, which matters more to a contractor comparing bids across a year than any formatting preference we might have.
Scope boundaries agreed once. What is always included, what is always excluded, and how we treat the recurring gray areas — firestopping, patching after MEP rough-in, temporary works. Settling these once removes the argument from every project after it.
Your rates on file. Your labor rates, burden, equipment rates and markup structure, applied by default. The estimate then reads as something your team produced rather than something they have to reconcile.
Turnaround agreed by project size. Rather than negotiated per job. You know what a two-division fit-out takes and what a full podium takes before you send it, which is what makes the arrangement plannable.
Still priced per project. No retainer, no monthly minimum, no volume commitment. A standing arrangement is a process agreement, not a contract to buy a certain amount, and you can stop sending work without a conversation.
What We Cover as Your Estimating Department
Forty-one trade scopes and seventeen sectors, priced to your local market. The divisions contractors most often hand over are the ones their in-house estimator does not carry.
What We Need From You
For a one-off, the plan set is enough. For a standing arrangement, the items below are worth settling once.
- The drawing set and specification for each project — PDF, DWG, images or ZIP
- Whether you want quantities only or a fully priced estimate
- Your estimating template, if you want estimates delivered in it
- Your labor rates, burden and markup structure, if you want yours used instead of a published basis
- Your standing scope inclusions and exclusions, for a rolling arrangement
- Typical bid volume and seasonality, so we can tell you honestly whether outsourcing is the right purchase
- Any named-project conflict concerns, before you send drawings
What Moves the Price
Division count and estimate level. A single-trade takeoff and a fourteen-division priced estimate with general conditions carried are different products at different prices. Both are quoted from the same plan set, so you see the difference before choosing.
Drawing completeness. A construction-document set prices line by line. A schematic set needs allowances, judgment and a conversation, and both take longer than measuring a finished design.
Whether it is priced or quantities only. Quantities alone cost meaningfully less. If you have your own cost data, that is the product to buy, and we will say so rather than quoting you the estimate by default.
Repeat work in a settled format. Once the format, rates and scope boundaries are agreed, subsequent projects skip the setup entirely. Regular volume is genuinely cheaper to serve, and if you are sending enough of it we will tell you when a different arrangement would cost you less.
Turnaround. A compressed deadline displaces other work and is priced accordingly. On a standing arrangement this matters less, because turnaround is agreed by project size up front — so you already know what a two-division fit-out takes before you send it, and an unrealistic date gets caught in the conversation rather than at delivery.
Where Outsourced Estimating Goes Wrong
Scope boundaries never written down. The recurring disputes are not arithmetic, they are scope — who carries firestopping, who patches after rough-in, whether temporary works are in. An arrangement that never settles these in writing re-litigates them on every project.
Format changing between projects. A contractor comparing this year's bids against last year's needs the workbooks to be the same shape. An external estimator who delivers a different layout each time forces re-keying, which is exactly the work outsourcing was meant to remove.
The estimator's rates used instead of yours. A published labor basis is a reasonable default and a poor substitute for your own history. If your crews are faster than the published unit and your supplier terms are better than list, an estimate built on averages is wrong in a direction that costs you bids.
Assumptions delivered without being flagged. Every estimate contains judgment calls. Delivered silently, they surface after you have bid. The assumptions schedule exists so the judgment is visible before the number is used, not after.
Buying the estimate when the takeoff was enough. The most expensive mistake on this page is paying for pricing you were always going to overwrite. It is also the easiest to avoid, which is why we ask what you intend to do with the output before quoting.
How It Works
1 · Send your plans. PDF, DWG, DOC, images or ZIP, up to 100MB per file. Tell us the scope you need covered and any format you want it delivered in.
2 · Get your quote. A flat price for the scope with a delivery date, confirmed in writing. There is no charge for the quote and no obligation once you have it.
3 · Approve. Nothing starts until you confirm. If we think a different service would suit you better, this is the point at which we say so.
4 · We estimate. Takeoff first, then pricing against your rates or a published basis, then an internal review before anything is sent. For standing arrangements the format and scope boundaries are already agreed, so projects go straight from quote to work.
5 · Delivery. The workbook, the marked-up plan set and the assumptions schedule, with a walkthrough of anything that looks off to you.
How Pricing and Turnaround Work
Per project, flat, quoted from the plan set. No retainer, no monthly minimum and no hourly billing — including on a standing arrangement.
What moves the quote: division count, whether you want quantities or pricing, drawing completeness, estimate level and turnaround. If you send us regular volume we will tell you honestly whether a different arrangement would cost you less.
The price and the delivery date are fixed in writing before you approve anything. There is no hourly billing, no retainer and no monthly minimum, and we do not start work on an open-ended basis.
Tools and Standards
Quantities, rates and assemblies are read against the published references that govern this work. Where a project specification conflicts with any general reference, the specification governs:
- CSI MasterFormat — the division structure every estimate is organized against
- NECA, MCAA and SMACNA labor units for the MEP trades, with the condition column stated
- AACE International 18R-97 for classifying estimate maturity against design completeness
- The Davis-Bacon Act and state prevailing-wage determinations, where applicable
- Your own rates, burden and markup structure, which override any published basis
- Your house template and division structure, where you provide them
- An NDA as a matter of course, on request
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to commit to a minimum volume?
No. There is no retainer and no minimum. Send one project or fifty.
Can you work as our estimating department permanently?
Yes. We agree format, turnaround and scope boundaries once, and after that you send plans and get estimates back. Still priced per project.
Is outsourcing cheaper than hiring an estimator?
Below roughly thirty to forty bids a year, generally yes. Above that, hiring is usually cheaper for your core trades and outsourcing is better used for overflow and specialist divisions. We will give you a straight answer if you tell us your bid volume.
What if we already have an estimator?
Most of our clients do. We take overflow and the divisions they don't cover.
Will you sign an NDA?
Yes. Your drawings, pricing and bid strategy are confidential and we treat them that way as a matter of course.
Do you work with our competitors?
We work with many contractors, and we do not share information between them. If you have a specific conflict concern on a named project, tell us before you send the plans and we will tell you plainly whether we can take it.
Can you use our estimating template?
Yes. Send it and we will populate it.
What happens if we disagree with a number?
Tell us. We will show you the takeoff and the assumption behind it. Most disagreements are scope, not arithmetic, and they usually get resolved in one conversation.
Can you cover a trade our estimator doesn't know?
That is one of the most common reasons contractors use us. Send the division and the drawings; you keep the bid strategy and we supply the depth in that scope.
Every Division, Priced the Way the Spec Is Organized
A cost estimate is only as good as the trade knowledge behind each line. These are the trades we quantify and price, grouped the way a specification is.
Project Types We Estimate
Cost drivers change with the building type. Each sector page covers what moves a number on that kind of work.
If You Need Something Narrower
A full priced estimate is not always what the job calls for. These are the adjacent services, including the takeoff-only options that cost less.
We Estimate in All 50 States
Labor rates, wage rules and material costs are priced to the job’s market, not to a national average. Pick a state to see how that works locally.
Send us a project and see how it works
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 ↗