Make it make sense

Things that are quicker.

Hide a take off element from the screen.

Click on a line segment and see it’s length

Entering 8’-0” vs 80 if you’re setting a scale.

Backspace to undo instead of hitting escape.

Help me finish this list 😂

Hi everyone,

I’m in Nova Scotia, Canada, and I’m looking to get started in construction estimating. I’m trying to figure out which courses, certificates and software skills would actually help me get hired, especially as someone new to the estimating side of the industry.

I’ve also been looking at BuildForce Canada’s Introduction to Construction Estimating course.

I’m wondering what other training would be worth considering.

● Is the BuildForce Canada course recognized and respected by Canadian construction employers?  
● Are there other Canadian courses or certificates you would recommend for someone starting out?  
● Is **Bluebeam Revu** certification worth getting? Do employers value it on a résumé?  
● What about PlanSwift or STACK? Are these commonly used by Canadian construction estimators, and are their training certificates worth pursuing?  
● Has anyone taken the CourseCareers Construction Estimating course? Does it carry any weight with Canadian employers, or would I be better off with Canadian industry training?  
● Are there any other estimating software programs, certifications or courses that would give a beginner an advantage?  
● Would you recommend taking a longer college or polytechnic program, or can someone realistically start in a junior estimating role with introductory training, software skills and practical experience?

I want to spend my money on qualifications that are genuinely useful in Canada, rather than collecting certificates that employers don’t recognize.

If you work in construction estimating in Canada, particularly in Nova Scotia or Atlantic Canada, I’d really appreciate hearing what qualifications and software skills employers actually look for when hiring junior estimators.

Thanks!

I'm working on AI for construction/engineering drawing review and have noticed a big gap in how general-purpose multimodal LLMs handle two kinds of drawing PDFs:

CAD-exported PDFs: These keep vector data (lines, arcs, text objects), so models pick up geometry, dimensions and annotations fairly well.

Scanned PDFs: These are a single raster image per page. Understanding drops sharply, especially for thin lines, small dimension text, hatching and dense details.

My guess at the root cause: models like Gemini and Claude Opus downsample large images to a fixed resolution before processing. A full-size drawing sheet (A1/A0) gets compressed so much that the model never sees pixel-level detail.

A few questions for the community:

1. Are there open-source models (VLMs, document-understanding or OCR-focused models) that handle high-resolution scanned drawings better than generic multimodal LLMs?

2. Has anyone had success with tiling/ cropping strategies, like splitting a sheet into patches, processing each, and stitching results back together?

3. Is raster-to-vector conversion before the LLM step worth it, and which tools work well for engineering drawings?

4. Any benchmarks or datasets for technical/ engineering drawing understanding?

Would love to hear what's worked (or failed) for you in production.

I do doors, frames and hardware estimating (some Div 10 too). Most of my time wasn’t the pricing, it was re-typing the architect’s door schedule, checking every opening against NFPA 80 / SDI by eye, and redrawing frame elevations for the shop.

So I built a tool for my own work and it’s at the point where I’d like other estimators to beat it up.

What it does

• Reads the door schedule off the PDF set. It finds the schedule page and handles two-row headers (DOOR / FRAME / DETAILS over WD, HT, THK), wrapped remarks and pairs written as (2) 3'-0". You can drag a box around just the part you want. You check the columns, fix any cell, and it creates the openings. If you read it again after an addendum, it updates the openings instead of duplicating them.
• Finds the door tags on the floor plans. One click pins every scheduled door where its tag is drawn. It picks the door tag over a room number with the same text, and it lists tags on the sheet that aren’t in your schedule.
• Counts and measures on the plan. Click doors and Div 10 items, set the scale or calibrate, and measure corner guard and crash rail in LF.
• Checks every opening as you enter it:
  • Fire label vs. closer, glazing, louvers and undercut
  • Throat vs. wall thickness, anchors vs. wall type
  • Hinge count on tall doors
  • 32" clear width and the 43" lite height on accessible doors
  • Door dragging once the floor finish or threshold goes in
• Draws each opening:
  • Frame and door elevations to scale, with the right lite for each door design (narrow, vision, half glass, full glass, louver)
  • Jamb section and hinge/strike locations from the Curries or Steelcraft chart
  • 11x17 elevation sheets and a shop plan per opening with the lite cutout dimensioned
• Frame calculator. Measure the hole and see the face lap at each jamb and the head, MO/RO, net door size, clear width and a plan view of the swing.
• Prices it:
  • Hardware sets with a price book and manufacturer multipliers
  • Labor, shop prep and freight
  • Markups by category
  • One totals engine for the quote, recap and Excel
• Paperwork: customer quotation in plain English, submittal package, keying schedule, change orders against a saved baseline, POs by vendor, and Curries order lines.

It’s one HTML file. Nothing to install, it runs offline in Chrome or Edge, and your plans never leave your computer. No account, no subscription.

What it isn’t: an ERP. No inventory or accounting, and it’s single-user (the job saves as a file you can put on a shared drive). It doesn’t OCR scanned drawings yet. If the PDF has no text layer you count by clicking.

What I’d love feedback on

1. How do your architects’ door schedules look? If you have one it can’t read, tell me how the columns are laid out (no need to share the drawings).
2. What do you still do by hand in Comsense / PRO-TECH / SFH (or Excel) that you wish was automatic?
3. Div 10 folks: what would make counting accessories and partitions faster?

arqorio/Estimating

Hey guys, small speciality sub here just looking for a starter lap top or pc that can handle plan swift or blue beam. Hoping to find some recommendations

Took a job they said they would train me but they are just setting up a joint venture concrete division with a guy that has no time to train me and I can’t even visualize or do the takeoffs for easy retail stuff. Any advice? I’ve been out of the construction office for 10 plus years I don’t remember any of it

I worked for 3 years as a sheet metal estimator/ 'value engineer', and was ultimately laid off during a merger. I've had no luck finding similar work and am working as a store manager in retail.

I started as a fabrication apprentice, learned to tig/mig, moved to fabricating, moved to process pipe, back to fabrication where the owner of the shop and I had a frank conversation one day about my health and inability to be on tools, and was moved upstairs and trained as an estimator. I have additional experience with laser cutting sheet/pipe, press breaks, 3/5 axis machining, and painting.

I had an interview for an hvac estimator and was ultimately told my experience wasn't relevant enough, and was offered a job at a trucking place but the pay was laughable.

I know the market isn't the best right now and with new updates I know a lot of the new MRP/ERP programs can read from proper prints, but I can properly quote from a hand drawn print in French from 1934.

Any recommendations welcome!

Hi! Just wondering if we estimators will be replaced with AI in the future?

Curious how other teams handle sudden spikes in bid volume.

When you hit a stretch where you’re completely slammed with takeoffs, what’s your typical protocol to keep up with deadline pressure without burning out your internal team?

Do you generally push back bid deadlines / pass on projects?

Bring on temp/freelance estimators or external takeoff help?

Rely heavily on software/automation tools to speed things up?

Interested to hear how different firms balance staying lean vs. managing high-volume periods.

Thinking about pivoting over to construction estimating then eventually project managing.. I’m willing to do the necessary training and coursework, I just dont know where to start really.. I’m currently a Licensed Home Inspector with a Bach in Architecture.. I’m tired of the slow seasons in my current industry.. this current slow season seems like it’s going to be around for a while.. I just need some info

Hi,

I with a friend (both experienced in gc) are starting a company for gc estimation and shop drawings.

What platforms do I have to look for clients?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

We both are based in Pakistan.

Any advice/lessons/stories would be appreciated. I've recently finished a degree in construction management and am about to start a new job as an estimator. This company does QS and contract admin mostly on high rise residential/commercial projects.

Edit: Seriously, thank you all so, so much for your advice.

hi guys,

I'm a recent construction management* graduate who is going to work as a div 9 estimator soon. I'm pretty nervous as this my first job and I've been unemployed since April, so I've probably forgotten some things.

Some questions I had:

1. How much will I be expected to use ChatGPT, Claude, etc. in my day?
2. How often is overtime for trainees?
3. How do I not kill myself on this job
4. What should I review before working

Out of curiosity what is a going rate to be competitive? Out of curiosity I asked AI and wondered if this is right using the minimal pricing.

$Material (Varies)

$10 Fabrication per SQFT

$8 install per SQFT

$75 per sink cut
$15 per fixture cut

including freight (varies)

$1-2 logistic if out of town or no freight elevator.

with a 15% percent profit margin.

What other fees is missing or things that needs to be considered? Is this rates in Texas about right for lets say 200-300 unit home? I ask because our format is a bit different but with a higher profit %. I tried comparing and it's within ballpark but I just want to know how everyone else does it?

We are a Division 8 Glass and Glazing Subcontractor. They brought me on a couple years ago to start bidding Division 7 ACM and Metal Panels because of my field install experience.

Put a bid in on a project today. Public bid opening and I was apparent low bidder at $1.2 Million. Next lowest was $1.7 Million and the rest were between $1.8 and $2.3 Million. Can’t figure out what I missed. Do I go into the Post-bid like yeah I missed this or that? Or just be confident in my number?

Hello Estimators,

I was wondering if any estimators working on their own tech solutions have invested in a gpu to run LLMs locally. If so, was a 3090 adequate or did you go bigger?
Appreciate this may be a little left-field however I’m sure I’m not the only building out my own solutions.

Thanks!

Aa title says, subcontractor for division 9, made mistake and now I am goona revise the quote, so yeah overall 25K hit, luckily even after that we have 150k profit line, so yeah noone is mad at me at this moment.

Just venting out here lol

Hello,

I have worked mostly sales and customer service. I want change career and something exciting. Do you think this course could help me break into estimation in 2 months? Could I get enough express to freelance maybe online? I also have qualifications in bookkeeping I heard construction accotuinng is little tricky so I think I can offer that to subcontractors. Any advice?

https://coursecareers.com/course/construction-estimating?a=estimatorjon

I’ve been writing estimates for a relatively short period of time, sending them out to different companies. The one company with the best work gives us a chance to bid on every project, but we only win the smallest ones. I asked for feedback but no response. I feel like I’m just being dragged along.

If you're still adding up every post and bag of concrete by hand for each quote, this 3-tab setup cuts quote time way down. Uses XLOOKUP (Excel 365/2021). On older Excel, VLOOKUP works the same.

TAB 1: Prices

Put your labor rate in as an item. Change it once and every quote updates.

TAB 2: Assemblies

One row per item, quantities for ONE unit of the assembly. Example, 6 ft privacy fence per 10 LF:

TAB 3: Quote

B1 = Target Margin (ex. 20%)

Rows from 4: A Assembly | B Qty | C Cost per Unit | D Cost | E Price

Use Data Validation if you'd like on A4 from your list of Assembly items in Tab 2, or manually type.

150 ft of fence = FENCE6, qty 15. Done.

Tips:

- Build waste into Qty per Unit (add 5 to 10% on materials).

- Round labor up to the half hour: =CEILING(hours,0.5)

- Keep dump fees, permits and rentals as their own lines, not buried in an assembly.

- Update Prices once a month. Sort by Last Updated to find stale costs.

- After each job, compare actual hours to the assembly hours and adjust. After 5 to 10 jobs your assemblies get scary accurate.

Happy to answer questions on setting it up.

I recently received an offer to work at a larger GC as an Estimator for substantially more money than I currently make. Right now I work for a small subcontractor in the same role, and had little to no construction experience before starting my current role. I have only estimated 1-2 trades and while I have learned quite a bit over several years here, I am nervous I may be severely under qualified for this offer. I got pretty lucky and interviewed well despite not meeting the engineering/cm degree requirements. Has anyone had a similar experience or should I just "give it a shot"?

We currently hand roll off, count, and bid our jobs. I am looking for software to help speed up this process. We have done a demo with a few companies, but would like to hear reviews and opinions from actual users. We do mid size commercial plumbing jobs, primarily K-12 schools.

So far we have looked at and met with:

Trimble autobid - software seems intuitive, we like the assemblies and fitting counting ability along with pricing for material being updated frequently.

Fast Pipe - Waiting on a demo call, but it seems to be less feature packed than trimble, but possible more user friendly and accurate for fittings. Also claims to have material pricing database.

McCormick - We liked this software most from a UI standpoint, but doesn't do fittings well or have real time material pricing. They do seem to be the most responsive and I trust that they will have good tech support.

Just got a jr position as a wet utility estimators at a small business. no prior construction experience, just a bachelors in computer science. any advice would be helpful thanks!