Earlier this year, industry analysts reported that digital takeoff and estimating software are helping contractors slash pre-bid cycles - reducing manual effort by as much as 80%.
But in many firms, the reality still looks very different: With more projects entering the pipeline, competition for bids has never been tighter – and time has become every estimator’s most valuable resource. Many firms still spend 45–60 hours per project manually tracing drawings, calculating material quantities, and managing last-minute plan revisions.
That was the challenge faced by JBW Installations, a masonry and siding subcontractor in the Southeastern U.S. Their four-person estimating team and eight-person support model were producing only 4–8 proposals a month, as each takeoff took 45–60 hours. Manual quantity extraction and tracking of drawing revisions became a bottleneck, limiting the number of bids they could realistically submit.
After adopting AI-based takeoff software, Beam AI, JBW cut more than 50 hours per project, increased bid submissions to the 24–40 monthly range, improved bid-win rates by 40%, and achieved a 1.7× revenue increase—all without adding additional estimators.
Beam AI helps contractors and suppliers across multiple trades by:
- Accurate quantity extraction: AI reads every symbol and legend directly from digital plans, removing manual measurement errors.
- Addenda tracking: You can toggle between up to 10 drawing revisions with a clean variance view to detect every change.
- Collaborative exports: You can easily share bid-ready Excel or PDF reports across teams to keep everyone aligned.
See it for yourself — book a demo and experience how AI is transforming construction takeoffs for the decade ahead.
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