If you work in estimating, you must have days where plans come in late, the addenda show up even later, and the bid date won’t move no matter how much you wish it would. You jump between tracing walls, reading specifications, double-checking quantities, recalculating something for the third time, and answering questions from project managers. And somewhere between all that, you’re expected to maintain accuracy, turn bids around faster than ever, and still find time to strategize.
That’s why when someone claims that estimating teams can “save 90% of their time,” it doesn’t sound real. when you break down where your hours really go, you begin to see that most of your day isn’t spent estimating, it’s spent preparing to estimate. It’s spent navigating PDFs, switching between sheets, manually tracing assemblies you already traced a dozen times before, or digging through documents just to find basic clarifications.
Time is not lost in big chunks. It's lost in hundreds of micro-interruptions. And that’s why saving 90% of it is not only possible, it’s what the most efficient teams are starting to treat as the new normal.
What 90% time saved actually looks like in reality
When people talk about time savings in estimating, they often focus on the surface-level outcome, you finish a takeoff faster. But the impact goes much deeper. When your software can detect assemblies for you, quantify materials without re-tracing, and help you navigate drawings intelligently, it changes the entire rhythm of your day.
You no longer spend hours tracing the same items over and over. You aren’t jumping between sheets trying to match floor plans and elevations manually. You aren’t worrying about missing a slab edge on a last-minute revision because you had no time left for a full review. Instead, you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, estimating, not drafting.
And that’s the shift most teams don’t fully understand until they experience it. Saving time isn’t about doing less work. It’s about redistributing your energy to the parts of the job that actually require expertise: scoping, strategizing, validating quantities, reviewing specs, understanding risks, and building a strong bid.
Tools like Bid Dashboard from Beam AI go a step further by pulling all bids, addenda, RFIs, ITBs, and due dates into a single organized view, so you never lose track of critical deadlines again.
When 90% of the takeoff process becomes automated, the remaining 10% becomes drastically more valuable. You’re not cutting corners, you’re focusing on the corners that actually matter.
➔ You take on more work without adding stress
Saving this much time doesn’t suddenly make your job easy. It simply widens your capacity. When you’re no longer spending most of your week on manual takeoffs, you can push out more bids without compromising quality. Instead of picking two bids to prioritize and skipping the rest, you can submit five or six strong proposals—and do it confidently.
Responding to opportunities becomes more manageable. Handling last-minute addenda becomes far less painful. Alternates that used to feel like extra work now fit naturally into your workflow because you have the bandwidth to handle them.
Both Pilkington Construction Co. and Blach Construction saw transformative improvements after adopting Beam AI. Pilkington cut takeoff review time from a full week to just a few hours, which helped them double their bid turnaround speed and ultimately achieve 1.5× business growth by taking on more opportunities without increasing team size. Blach Construction reduced takeoff time from 5 days to 1 day, improved accuracy with automated revision handling, and dramatically increased their bidding throughput, all while reducing human error and strengthening confidence in their outputs. Together, these results show a clear pattern: when takeoff time drops, teams get more capacity, produce more accurate bids, and pursue more work with the same team, creating a measurable competitive edge.
And capacity is everything in a competitive bid environment. More bids when accurate and on time mean more wins.
➔ Accuracy improves because you actually have time to review
Most estimating mistakes don’t happen because someone didn’t know what they were doing. They happen because processes were rushed. Maybe the drawings were reviewed too quickly, or a detail on the elevation didn’t get double-checked. Maybe you didn’t have time to revisit the structural sheets after the architect dropped a revision.
When your takeoff time is cut dramatically, your attention shifts back where it belongs: review drawings, scope judgment, and risk analysis. You have time to validate the quantities, compare alternates, catch scope gaps early, and ask RFIs before it's too late.
This is where improved estimating accuracy becomes a natural outcome. Not because the software replaces your skill, but because it gives you room to use it.
➔ You break out of the constant “catch-up cycle”
The truth and you know it well is that estimating often feels like chasing the work instead of owning it. A plan drop here, a revision there, a suddenly accelerated bid, a project manager needing clarification, before you know it, your entire schedule collapses into reactive mode.
That cycle disappears when the repetitive elements of your job shrink by 90%.
You’re not tracing the same wall types over and over. You’re not switching back and forth between dozens of sheets trying to align items manually. You’re not spending half your time preparing just to spend the other half verifying.
- You finally feel in control again.
- Your team collaborates instead of firefighting.
- Your senior estimators have time to guide junior estimators.
- Your reviews become thoughtful instead of rushed.
➔ You start building a predictable, scalable estimating engine
One of the biggest impacts of time savings is something teams don’t realize until months later: consistency. When processes rely heavily on manual effort, results depend heavily on who is doing the work. One estimator might be best with foundational estimating, another might be faster with drywall, another might be great with finishes but slow with sitework. Manually created takeoffs vary from person to person.
But once your workflows become streamlined, your output becomes uniform. The software gives you a consistent baseline, and your review process keeps that baseline aligned with your standards. That means your historical data becomes cleaner. Your pricing becomes more stable. Your risk assumptions become more grounded in actual patterns.
This is where teams begin to see the ROI of estimating software, not as a cost-saving measure, but as an operational strategy that strengthens every part of the business.
With this, scalability stops being a hiring problem and becomes a workflow problem you’ve already solved.
➔ Your bid costs drop, not because you cut people, but because you cut waste
When contractors talk about time savings, they often assume the benefit is reduced manpower. But in reality, the biggest advantage is improved allocation. You’re not eliminating roles, you’re elevating them.
A mid-size subcontractor might spend hundreds of hours a month on bid work, much of it repetitive. Once those hours shrink, your team doesn’t suddenly have nothing to do. They’re able to focus on the work that strengthens your pipeline: strategic bidding, preconstruction planning, value engineering cycles, project handoff, or refining production rates.
And because your team is no longer drowning in the basics, they finally have the capacity to influence revenue instead of just managing workloads. The cost of estimation per bid naturally drops, but the value of each estimator rises.
So what does 90% time saved really mean?
Saving 90% of your time in estimating means you finally get the chance to work the way you were meant to. When the repetitive parts of takeoff stop dominating your day, your focus shifts back to the areas that genuinely matter, reviewing scope thoroughly, understanding the drawings with clarity, catching details before they become problems, and thinking through the numbers with enough time to make confident decisions.
It changes the rhythm of your work in a better way. Last-minute addenda no longer feel disruptive. Reviews don’t feel rushed. You’re not constantly juggling deadlines or trying to make up for lost hours. Instead, your day feels more structured and manageable, and the quality of your bids naturally improves because you’re able to give them the attention they deserve.
So the real meaning of saving 90% of your time is getting back the hours you used to lose in the mechanical parts of the job, and redirecting them toward the judgment and expertise that actually define good estimating.
Time savings translates to better wins
The earlier you catch scope gaps, the earlier you see risks, the earlier you price accurately, the stronger your bid becomes. When your takeoff and review process is faster, you aren’t scrambling to meet deadlines, you’re getting ahead of them.
- Early bids stand out.
- Accurate bids reduce risk.
- Consistent bids build trust.
When you can turn around proposals that are thorough, accurate, and on time, you start winning more. Clients notice. GCs notice. Partners notice. And the competitive advantage compounds with every project.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, the value isn’t in speed alone. It’s in the freedom that speed gives you. Saving 90% of your time doesn’t mean you do less estimating. It means you finally get to do the estimating you always intended to do: the thoughtful, strategic, high-value part that actually influences profitability.
It means more bids without losing your evenings.More accuracy without more stress. More structure, less chaos. More confidence, fewer compromises. It means your team finally stops running at capacity and starts operating at potential. That is what time savings was always supposed to unlock.
If you’re ready to experience what this looks like in practice, Beam AI helps estimating teams automate the repetitive 90% of takeoffs so you can focus on the parts that actually require your time. You can see it firsthand, book a demo and watch your estimating workflow transform.
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