Pr3ciseConstruction estimating services for contractors who bid to win
Outsourced quantity takeoffs, bills of quantities and line-item cost estimates. You send the drawings, we send back an estimate you can put your name on — priced, broken out and defensible.
Outsourced takeoffs and cost estimates you can bid from.
Request a free quoteBidding blind is how contractors lose money twice
Roughly 70% of construction projects run over their original budget. Bid too high and you never get the job. Bid too low and you win the job that eats your margin for the next eighteen months. Both failures come from the same place: a takeoff that missed something.
An estimate is not paperwork. It is the document that decides whether the project makes you money, and it deserves more than the last two nights before bid day.
How we build your estimate
Four steps, the same on every job, so you always know what you are getting and when. The full list of trades and services we estimate is here.
Scope review
We read the drawings, specs and addenda before touching a number, and we come back to you with the gaps, conflicts and exclusions we find. That conversation alone catches most of the money.
Quantity takeoff
Every line item measured and organized by CSI MasterFormat division (or your own format) — materials, labor and equipment. Color-coded markups ship with the estimate so you can audit any quantity in seconds.
Pricing & value engineering
Current regional material and labor pricing, cross-checked against supplier quotes. Where a spec is driving cost without driving value, we flag the alternate and price both.
Delivery
Excel and PDF, in your template if you have one, with overhead, profit and waste factors broken out separately so your margin is visible and defensible in a bid review.
Who we work with
Different buyers, different deliverables. We adjust the output to how you actually bid — see what a finished estimate looks like.
General contractors
Multi-trade budgets and full bid packages, from conceptual through hard bid. Scope gaps flagged in writing so you know what the subs did not include.
Subcontractors
Single-trade takeoffs priced for bid day. Send the plans, get quantities and pricing back fast enough to still make the deadline.
Developers and owners
Conceptual and design-phase budgets for feasibility, lender packages and go/no-go decisions, updated as the drawings develop.
Architects
Independent cost checks at every design stage — SD, DD and CD or their local equivalents — so the design stays inside the owner's number instead of getting value-engineered after the fact.
Frequently asked questions about estimating services
Everything you need to know before outsourcing your construction cost estimation. If you would rather start with who actually produces the numbers, start there.
It is an outsourced preconstruction service that measures your drawings and prices the work, so you receive a line-item estimate you can bid from. We handle the quantity takeoff and the cost estimate: materials, labor, equipment, overhead and profit, broken out by CSI MasterFormat division. Outside North America the same work is usually bought as quantity surveying: a bill of quantities (BoQ) or pre-tender estimate — we deliver in that format too.
A full-time estimator is a fixed cost whether or not you are bidding. Outsourcing turns that into a variable cost per bid, removes the errors that creep in when your team is overloaded, and lets you chase more bids in the same week without adding headcount.
Drawings in PDF or DWG and the project specifications are enough. If you already have an internal template, an addendum set or a scope letter, send those too — we will match your format.
Standard turnaround is 24 to 72 hours from receipt of a complete document set, depending on scope and trade. We confirm the delivery date in writing before starting, and we hit it.
Both, plus developers and architects. General contractors typically come to us for full multi-trade budgets; subcontractors for single-trade takeoffs and bid-day or tender pricing.
Excel and PDF as standard, with a color-coded markup set so you can see exactly where every quantity came from. We can also deliver into your own bid template.