“It would take me three to four hours of pricing. On here, I’m uploading and it’s done in 15 minutes.” – Miles M.
Hours → Minutes: “A couple of smaller projects… would take me three to four hours of pricing; on here, I’m uploading and it’s done in 10 or 15 minutes.”
Bigger jobs, same story: “It might take me eight hours to price it, and this thing’s kicking it out in an hour or less… probably 30 minutes.”
Competitive outcome: “We used Makeoff exclusively on a bid last week… we won that project. We were maybe 3% lower than the other bidder.”
Pricing swings (copper, PVC, steel) made manual book lookups and spot quotes slow and risky. Trenching labor was hard to benchmark; one line “trench” could mean 1″ PVC or a full duct bank. Gov/education specs (e.g., compression EMT) and temporary power notes were easy to miss late at night. Solo estimator also running projects: time was the scarcest resource.
“Time is valuable when you’re a small company. I’m stretched thin doing a million things. If I can save a couple hours here or there, that lets me tackle something else.”
– Miles M.
1.) Upload → Answer (no babysitting) “I literally uploaded it and then walked away… 10, 15 minutes later it came back.”
2.) Practical knobs, not guesswork “I changed trenching from Normal to Easy and it came up exactly what we would charge.” “I feel like the $570 on stainless steel boxes is pretty fair.”
3.) Reality‑checked pricing “Super close and accurate across the board to what our distributors are sending.”
4.) VE without rebuilds “Great now I can hand the GC a second price while the next guy is still on his base bid.”
