CASE STUDY · COMMERCIAL CONSTRUCTION
A commercial general contractor · Mid-Atlantic · Anonymized at the client’s request
From a stack of drawings to a defensible budget — in minutes.
We built a commercial general contractor an estimating platform that reads a set of floor plans and returns a full line-item construction budget — priced across all 21 CSI divisions, benchmarked against the market, and exported as a client-ready proposal in the estimator’s own bid-sheet format.
<2 min
To a first-pass, line-item budget — work that used to take
a senior estimator the better part of a day
21
CSI divisions priced
on every run
−0.2%
Aggregate variance vs. the estimator’s own sealed bids
across six real projects, on the calibrated sector
2 modes
A detailed proposal for bidding, and a clearly-labeled
feasibility band for early conversations
Every deal starts with “what will this cost?”
Estimating is the bottleneck at the front of every construction deal. A credible budget means a senior estimator reading every sheet, measuring areas, counting fixtures, and pricing each trade — hours of skilled work before anyone knows whether the project pencils. That cost forces a hard choice: turn away early-stage inquiries, or burn senior-estimator hours on deals that may never close.
This client wanted to answer the question for far more prospects, far faster — without lowering the quality of the number, and without replacing the estimator’s judgment.
/ THE APPROACH
The AI is the first guess. The estimator is the last word.
01
Upload the drawings.
Floor plans go in — multiple sheets at once, full resolution, no downscaling.
02
The AI reads the plans and shows its work.
A vision model extracts the scope — square footage, space type, finish level, room and fixture counts — and pre-fills the entire review form. It grades its own confidence on every field: anything ambiguous is flagged in amber for a human to confirm.
03
The estimator confirms the scope.
Every field is editable. Nothing is priced until a person has reviewed what the machine read.
04
A calibrated engine prices the job.
All 21 CSI divisions, priced from rate tables built out of the estimator’s own historical bids — not a published cost book — then benchmarked against a market range so an off-the-rails number never goes out looking authoritative.
Calibrated against real bids — and it holds.
The engine was tuned by comparing its output, division by division, against a senior estimator’s actual sealed bids from six completed projects, and adjusting the rate tables until they agreed. In aggregate across that calibration set, the engine’s totals landed within a fraction of a percent of the estimator’s own — a −0.2% aggregate variance on the calibrated sector. That’s the Mirror Test: the engine had to reproduce bids the estimator already knew were right before anyone asked it to price something new. (Individual projects vary more; that’s why every output is benchmarked and reviewed.)
One validated production run turned a single set of inputs into a $413,983 detailed proposal and, in feasibility mode, a matching $373K–$455K budget band — two views of the same engine, agreeing with each other.
No staff displaced. The estimator reviews every field the AI fills, and final pricing stays with the estimator’s judgment and real sub-bids.
The same engine, calibrated to you
The hard part — getting a machine to reliably read a drawing set, translate it into structured scope, and price it in your format — is built and proven. The cost model calibrates to your trades, your tiers, your market. See the costing platform →
Answer “what will this cost?” with a number that holds — while the deal is still warm.
Bring a real set of floor plans — a project you’ve already bid, or the inquiry sitting in your inbox. We’ll run it through the engine and put the budget next to your own numbers, division by division.
Practical AI for small and mid-sized business. Working products, verified numbers, and your experts in charge of every decision.