Quantity takeoff services for estimators who already hold their own rates, from a team that works as an extension of yours: line-item counts, lengths, areas and volumes read off your drawing set before a dollar is attached to any of them. Every figure carries the sheet number and the markup it came from, so you can check it in seconds rather than take it on trust.
What ships with the quantity file
Three questions estimators ask before they send a set.
A quantity takeoff is the audited scope of work expressed as numbers: every condition on the drawing set resolved to a quantity and a unit, with the sheet and the markup that produced it recorded beside it. It is finished when every condition has either a quantity or a written reason it does not. That is the whole job of quantity takeoff services, and it stops where price begins.
Specialty subs who already hold their labor and material rates, general contractors checking a sub's numbers before award, and developers, architects and owners who need early-scope quantities. If the pricing is yours, the measurement is the only part worth sending to a quantity takeoff company, and it is the part that eats the week in front of a bid date.
Delivery runs 24 to 96 hours after the 50 percent start payment. The date is set against your bid date at the quote stage, so you know it before you commit, and a multi-division package can be staged so the trades on your critical path land first.
Every construction quantity takeoff reduces to one of four measurement types.
Devices, fixtures, doors, frames, hangers, anchors, connection plates, cleanouts. Counted against the schedule mark rather than the plan symbol, so an item drawn on a floor plan, a ceiling plan and a detail is counted once instead of three times.
Conduit, pipe, duct, base, curb, guardrail, plates, joint reinforcement, edge form. Measured to the routing shown, with drops, risers and offsets taken off the riser diagram instead of averaged into the horizontal run.
Board, sheathing, flooring, roofing, paving, formwork contact area, split by assembly so nothing averages. Drywall takeoff services are the clearest case: board separates by layer, thickness, type and finish level, because one gross wall area hides three different labor units.
Concrete, grout, cut and fill, aggregate, rebar tonnage, steel by member weight. A concrete quantity takeoff reports cubic yards by placement, with bar taken off the reinforcing schedules, lap splices read from the schedule or the structural notes, and chairs counted from the support spacing the notes or specifications call for, rather than assumed as a percentage of the pour.
The measurement itself, trade by trade.
| Cast-in-place concrete (CSI 03) | Cubic yards by placement, not one gross pour, reinforcement counted off the schedule. | Footings, slabs and vertical work; reinforcement and embeds |
|---|---|---|
| Masonry (CSI 04) | Unit counts by wall type, grout and reinforcement carried against the wall they serve. | CMU and structural block; brick, stone and veneer |
| Structural and miscellaneous metals (CSI 05) | Member by member off the framing plans and connection details, in the weight a fabricator buys in. | Beams, columns, joists and deck; stairs, rails and supports |
| Wood, framing and composites (CSI 06) | Framing quantities in the units a lumber package is actually built from. | Dimensional framing and sheathing; engineered lumber and trusses |
| Thermal and moisture protection (CSI 07) | Roof, wall and below-grade assemblies measured by layer, not as one envelope number. | Roofing, flashing and insulation; barriers, sealant and firestopping |
| Openings (CSI 08) | Every opening matched to its mark so hardware and glazing never go missing. | Doors, frames and hardware sets; storefront, curtain wall and glazing |
| Finishes (CSI 09) | Tied to the finish schedule and the room, never to a gross floor area. | Framing, board and ceilings; flooring, base, paint and coatings |
| Earthwork (CSI 31) | Volumes calculated from existing and proposed grades, not lifted from a summary note. | Cut, fill and site preparation with shrink and swell stated as a factor; clearing, erosion control and shoring |
| Utilities and paving (CSI 32-33) | Runs measured to the profile, structures counted to the schedule, surfaces split by section. | Storm, sanitary, water, site electrical; paving, curb and site concrete |
Mechanical, electrical and plumbing carry the most parts per square foot and the least tolerance for a guess. Our MEP takeoff services quantify all three, ordered on their own or measured alongside the rest of the set.
One-line, panel schedules and floor plans read together, so feeder sizes and conductor counts come from the one-line and the schedules, and horizontal lengths are scaled from the routed plans.
Conduit and wire on separate lines by size and type, because a change in either moves the labor unit.
Runs by trade size and material, EMT, rigid, PVC and MC kept apart, supports counted against the run.
Counted by type mark and reconciled against the schedules before the file ships. Communications and fire alarm devices are counted here, on their own lines.
Fixtures by type mark off the schedule and ceiling plan, emergency, exit and exterior on their own lines.
Air side and water side quantified apart, so a duct revision leaves the piping lines alone when the addendum lands.
Sheet metal reported both ways, footage and calculated weight, because some shops bid by the foot and some by the pound.
Elbows, tees, takeoffs and dampers counted by type instead of buried in a straight-duct total.
Equipment by schedule mark, piping by size and material with insulation carried against it.
Fixtures reconciled against the plumbing schedule and the architectural plans, so one that appears on only one becomes a question.
Every system on its own lines, measured by diameter and by material.
Counted by mark and reconciled to the plumbing and architectural sheets together.
Measured where the drawings show a laid-out system, flagged where the set leaves it performance-specified.
Main, branch and drop piping by diameter, heads by type and temperature rating, hangers and bracing as drawn.
Send one drawing set and see the price first
Coverage, the fixed price and the delivery date come back in writing before a single condition is drawn.
A quantity you cannot audit is a quantity you have to take on faith.
Every sheet is checked against a known dimension before a measurement is taken. A sheet that plots out of scale, or a title block that disagrees with the geometry, comes back as a flag rather than a measurement taken through the problem.
Conditions are measured in PlanSwift and marked up in Bluebeam, one color and one label each. A type X wall is not the color of a type B, and a slab on grade is not the color of an elevated deck.
Every line carries its markup label and the sheet it was read from. Read a figure in Excel, find the color on the drawing, and you are looking at the geometry that produced it.
Totals roll up per sheet before they roll up per trade. A sheet nobody measured shows as a visible gap instead of quietly pulling a total down, which is the failure mode that surfaces on site.
Counting, calculating and flagging are three different operations.
| Devices, fixtures, doors | Counted by mark | Schedules first, plans second | EA, with the mark on the line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rebar and structural steel | Calculated from schedules | Bar and framing schedules | TON, plus member counts |
| Performance-specified scope | Not measured | Spec sections, design-build notes | Written exclusion with the reason |
| Conflicting or missing detail | Not assumed | Wherever the conflict sits | Dated open question, before the bid |
Ask before you upload, not after the bid
Not sure whether a division is worth measuring, or how a performance-specified scope would come back?
A drawing set is written by several people and issued in pieces. Disagreements are normal. What matters is whether they get recorded or absorbed.
The more specific document governs, so a wall section beats a plan graphic and a detail beats a section. The choice is written on the assumptions sheet with the sheet numbers on both sides, so you can overrule it in five seconds if you read the set differently.
Both get counted and the difference gets named. Fixtures, doors and equipment are reconciled against their schedule before the file ships, and where the two disagree you get the schedule count, the plan count and a question, rather than one number hiding the other.
What happens between an upload and a delivered file, walked through on a single realistic scope. This is a composite of typical work, not a client project.
Take a two-story shell and core with a 38,000 square foot footprint: cast-in-place foundations, structural steel above, a single-ply roof and storefront on two elevations. The set arrives as a 96-sheet PDF at the 90 percent issue, bid date eleven days out, divisions 03, 05, 07 and 08 ordered.
Concrete goes by placement: footings and grade beams off the foundation plan and footing schedule, slab by area and thickness with thickened edges on their own lines, form contact area by face, rebar off the bar schedule in tons. Steel is taken member by member and reported as footage and weight. Roofing splits into membrane area by slope, two insulation layers, edge metal by the foot, curbs counted. Openings come off the door and frame matrix by mark, hardware by set number, storefront by elevation.
The set disagrees with itself twice. The roof plan shows a mechanical curb the framing plan does not, and a door mark on the finish plan is missing from the schedule. Both leave as dated questions with the sheet numbers attached.
A file that quietly includes things it should not is worse than one that stops at a clear line.
Put the measuring on a monthly partnership
Shops sending several sets a month get a priority queue, addenda recalculations included, and the same divisions, condition names and markup format on every package.
Every package is checked twice, by two people, against the drawings rather than against the first estimator's spreadsheet. Two steps, not three, and the same two on one division as on a full set.
The estimator who measured the job reruns their own work before the package leaves their desk. Every sheet that carried a measurement is checked against its dimension string a second time. Two markups on the same geometry are found, one is removed, the totals rerun. Runs that stop at a match line and never resume on the next sheet are traced across.
A second estimator who did not measure the job audits it against the drawing set itself. The auditor recalculates conditions cold from the sheets rather than reading the first numbers back. Selected areas, volumes and runs are remeasured from the drawings and compared against the file. Nothing leaves until the workbook, the markups and the written scope agree with each other. Anything visible on the sheets and absent from the file must appear on the exclusions list, or it goes back.
Editable, labeled, and formatted the way your office already works.
Three files, on one division and on twenty.
A live, unlocked workbook you can sort, filter and extend with your own pricing columns, delivered in your template or coded to CSI 01-49, whichever your cost codes expect. One row per condition, one column per field, no merged cells and no header art sitting above the data.
The full marked-up PDF set, one color and one label per condition, on every package rather than only the large ones. It turns a spreadsheet figure into something you can point at in a scope meeting.
One page: every judgment call, everything measured by division and sheet, everything visible and deliberately not measured with its reason, and every open question with the date it was raised.
What estimators ask about quantity takeoff services before they upload a set.
Short, practical write-ups on the questions that come up before a bid goes out.
Name the divisions you want measured and your bid date.
