The calculators are live and usable now; the platform they belong to is in development. This is a construction estimating and field operations system meant to run on a phone at the job site, a tablet in the truck, and a desktop in the office without switching products between them. The platform under construction carries a measurement taken on site through to quantities, an estimate, and a client proposal, with a change in one place reflowing everything downstream instead of being re-entered.
Why estimating tools make you pick a side
Estimating software divides into two camps and neither covers the whole job. The division comes from where each product started.
Office software assumes you are sitting down
The serious estimating packages are built for a desk, a large screen, and a plan set. They are capable, and they are unusable standing in a driveway with a tape measure in one hand. So the field work gets written on paper and typed in later, which is the step everyone claims to have solved and nobody has.
Field software stops at the measurement
The mobile tools are pleasant to use on site and end at capture. They record dimensions and photographs, then export something that has to be interpreted by whatever does the estimating. The handoff is the product boundary, and the handoff is where the work is.
The same number gets entered three times
A dimension is written on site, typed into a takeoff, and typed again into a proposal. Each retyping is a chance to transpose a figure, and the error surfaces at the worst moment, which is after a client has accepted a price built on it.
A late change means redoing the work in front of it
The client changes the scope, or a measurement was wrong, and now the quantities, the pricing, and the proposal all have to be revisited by hand. The cost of a change is proportional to how far down the chain you already were, which is why estimators resist changes rather than pricing them.
One measurement, followed through to a signed proposal
This is the path a single figure takes through the system, and where you are standing when each step happens. The calculators under the first three steps are live and usable now; the platform that carries a job across all five is in development.
| Step | Where you are | What you do | What the system holds afterward | What changes downstream |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Measure | On site, on a phone | Walk the area and enter dimensions as you take them, rather than writing them down to type up later | The measurement, attached to the job and the area it belongs to | Quantities become available for the scopes that apply to that area |
| Quantify | On site or in the truck, on a tablet | Confirm which scopes of work apply and choose the options on each | A quantity list tied back to the measurement it came from | Material and labour lines are populated ready for pricing |
| Price | Truck or office, any device | Review the priced lines and set your own rates and markup | A priced estimate where each line is traceable to the quantity behind it | Totals and margin update as rates change, without touching quantities |
| Adjust | Anywhere, at any point | Change a dimension, add or drop a scope, or move a rate | The revised figures, with the version before the change retained | Everything downstream of the change recomputes; nothing is re-entered by hand |
| Propose | Office or on site | Produce the client-facing proposal from the estimate as it stands | A proposal tied to the exact estimate version it was built from | The client reads a document that cannot have drifted from the numbers behind it |
What is usable today, what is designed, and what is still on paper
Live now: the calculators
The calculators are live and usable. A contractor can open one today and get a real quantity and a real number out of it. They run on a phone, a tablet, or a desktop, which is the same requirement the platform is being built to, tested first at the smallest scale.
Live now: connected rather than standalone
The calculators are connected, so a figure changed in one is reflected in the ones that depend on it rather than re-entered. This is the behaviour the whole platform is organised around, and it is already observable in the part that shipped.
In development: the job record that ties a day together
The platform in development is what turns a set of calculators into an estimate for a specific job, for a specific client, with a history. This is being built now. It is not live, and nothing on this page should be read as saying otherwise.
Designed, not built: the proposal step
Generating the client-facing proposal from the estimate version it came from is designed and specified. It has not been built. The design was done first because the proposal requirement changes what the estimate has to hold.
Planned: the field operations side
Everything after the proposal is accepted, which is where the field operations half of the name comes from, exists as a plan and nothing more. It is described here because it explains why the estimate is structured the way it is, not because it is coming soon.
Deliberately not claimed
This is not commercially launched and has no paying users. It does not cover every trade and is not being built to. There is no accuracy guarantee attached to any figure it produces, because an estimate is a judgement supported by arithmetic, and the arithmetic is the only part software can be responsible for.
Practice work this platform is built on top of
- estimate request intake for contractors — The same problem one step earlier: what a request must contain before an estimator spends time on it.
- workflow automation for construction companies — The operational systems around estimating, from change orders to job costing, where the platform's later stages are aimed.
- custom software and AI development — Product engineering rather than configuration, which is what a multi-device application requires.
Is this a fit for your business?
A good fit when
- Your estimators measure on site and type it up somewhere else afterward
- A late scope change means redoing the work in front of it
- You have priced the same assemblies enough times to know your standard job
- You want the tool used in the truck to be the tool used at the desk
Probably not a fit when
- You need a full ERP with accounting, payroll, and project management in one product
- Your work is large commercial with plan-set takeoff and quantity surveying
- You want something to buy and roll out across your whole company today
What to have ready
- Two or three recent estimates end to end, including whatever the client actually received
- Your current rates and markup approach, however informally they are held
- An estimator willing to be watched doing a real takeoff, which beats any specification meeting
Questions we get asked
Can I use any of this right now?
The calculators are live and usable, so yes for that part. The platform they belong to is in development, so no for that part. We state both halves together every time because the difference matters: a working calculator is not a working estimating system, and you should know which one you are looking at.
Is it for sale?
Not yet. It is not commercially launched and there are no paying users. The calculators are available to use, and we talk to contractors who want to be involved in shaping the platform, but nobody is being sold anything at this stage.
What happens on a site with no signal?
Poor connectivity is a design requirement rather than an afterthought, because much of the intended use happens where there is one bar or none. How that is handled is part of the build we do not publish. A field tool that loses a morning’s measurements when the signal drops is not a field tool.
Which trades does it cover?
The scopes we have built calculators for, and no more than that. It does not support every trade and is not being designed to. A tool claiming to estimate everything usually estimates nothing well, and the trades covered so far were chosen because we could watch people who do that work daily.
Related
- automated quoting and invoicing for a professional services firm
- a vetted marketplace with verification built into the core
- custom application development
- selected product, application and workflow projects
Tell us what the process looks like now and we will map what a system would need to do. No obligation, and you keep the map either way.