No onboarding, no portal, no contract to sign first. Email the drawings and you get back colour-coded markup and a live Excel spreadsheet with your rates in it — within 24 hours on most residential jobs.
The same five steps on every job, whether it is a single slab or a full commercial tender package.
Email the architectural and structural drawings, the specification and the scope of works in whatever format you have — PDF, DWG, or photos of a marked-up set. There is no portal to log into and no form to fill in twice. If something we need is missing, you will hear about it before we start rather than after.
Before anything gets measured, the drawings and the specification get read against each other. Where they disagree — and on a real set they often do — we note it. Discrepancies found at this stage are questions you can ask the builder. Found later, they are variations you have to argue for.
Every measured item gets its own colour and its own legend entry on the drawing. When the takeoff comes back you can see exactly what was counted and what was not, so you are never asked to trust a number you cannot trace back to a line on the plan. This is the part clients tell us they did not know they needed until they had it.
The takeoff is delivered as a working spreadsheet, not a locked PDF. Quantities sit in one column and your rates sit in another, so you can change a supply price or a labour rate and watch the total move. Plug in your own numbers, keep the file, and reuse it on the next job of the same type.
Quantities are re-measured independently and cross-checked against the drawing before anything leaves here. You get the marked-up plans, the priced spreadsheet, and a plain-English note on anything we flagged as unclear, excluded or worth querying with the builder.
Most estimating comes back as a number in a PDF. You either trust it or you re-measure it yourself, which defeats the purpose of sending it out. Both of the things below exist to solve that.
Every item measured gets a colour and a legend entry on the drawing. A suspended slab measured by thickness, four concrete beams, and 120 lineal metres of downturn are three different colours with three different totals — so you can hold the markup next to the spreadsheet and check any line in seconds. If it is not coloured, it was not counted, and that is deliberately obvious.
The deliverable is a working file, not a locked document. Quantities in one column, your rates in another. Change a concrete supply price or an hourly rate and every total updates. Plug in your own numbers, keep the file, and reuse it as the starting point on the next job of the same type — it is yours, not ours.
An estimate you cannot check is a risk you have taken on someone else's word. An estimate you can check line by line, priced at rates you set yourself, is a tool. That difference is the whole point of how we deliver.
You do not need all of it. Send what you have and we will tell you what is missing before we start.
| Document | Used for | If it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Architectural plans | Areas, layouts, room and opening sizes | We cannot measure areas — this one is essential |
| Structural drawings | Footings, slabs, steel, reinforcement | Structural quantities become assumptions we will flag |
| Specification | Materials, finishes, standards and systems | We price a common system and state which one |
| Scope of works | What is in and out of your price | We measure the full trade and you strike out the rest |
| Elevations and sections | Heights, roof geometry, wall heights | Heights get assumed, which affects several trades |
| Schedules | Windows, doors, finishes, fixtures | Counts come off the plans instead, less precisely |
| Energy report | Insulation R-values | Insulation values are left as a variable for you |
| Your own rates | Pricing the takeoff at your real cost | Rate column is left blank for you to fill in |
We will not invent a quantity to fill a gap in the drawings, and we will not quietly assume a system that has not been specified. Where we have to make an assumption to give you a number, that assumption is written down where you can see it and change it.
If your question is not here, email it through and you will get a straight answer, not a sales call.
The drawings, the specification and the scope of works you are tendering. Architectural and structural if you have both. Anything else that affects quantities — an energy report, a window schedule, a finishes schedule — helps, and we will ask if it matters for your trade.
If part of the set is missing we will tell you which quantities are affected rather than filling the gap with an assumption you cannot see.
PDF, DWG, images, or photographs of a marked-up hard copy. If you can read it, we can usually work from it. Scale matters more than format — a PDF with a stated scale or a known dimension is all we need to measure accurately.
Plans in by 5pm, estimate back within 24 hours on most residential jobs. Larger commercial tender packages take longer because there is more to measure — send the plans through and we will confirm the exact timing straight away, before you commit to anything.
You get the spreadsheet. It is a live Excel file with the quantities in one column and your rates in another, so you can change a rate and see the total move. The marked-up plans come with it so every quantity can be traced back to the drawing.
Yes, and we would rather you did. A national average rate card is no use to you because your supply prices, your labour and your plant hire are yours. Send your rates and we will build the sheet around them, or leave the rate column blank and fill it in yourself.
Send the revised set through and tell us what changed. Because the takeoff is built as a live spreadsheet with traceable markup, revisions are usually a targeted update rather than a rebuild, and we will confirm the cost of the revision before doing it.
Tell us which line and we will walk you through the markup. Everything is colour-coded back to a legend, so the conversation is about a specific measurement on a specific drawing rather than a difference of opinion about a total. If we got it wrong, we fix it.
The first estimate is free, so testing us costs you the time it takes to forward an email. Send the drawings and the scope, and you will have a marked-up takeoff and a priced spreadsheet back within 24 hours on most residential jobs. Prefer to talk first? Reply with "KEEN" and your number.