Hire another estimator, automate takeoff, or keep the spreadsheet?

With Mirage, engineers build the takeoff agent around your drawing conventions and output format and run it; your estimators review and sign off, and the quantities land in the system you already price in.

• Traced quantities. Every quantity carries the sheet, detail and specification reference it came from, with a flag where the set is unclear.
• Same tools. Output in Excel or the import format of your estimating system. Nothing is migrated.
• Addenda without a full re-read. Each addendum is compared with the previous set and only the changed quantities go back to the estimator.
• A staged commitment. A proof of concept on your documents one week after the first meeting, then a fixed-price pilot you can stop after, then an annual subscription priced by volume.
• Limit: review remains. A person still checks every takeoff. Plan for that time in the comparison.
• Limit: drawing quality. Clean vector sets hold up well; low-resolution scans and hand-marked sheets need more review.
• Limit: your time up front. Capturing your measurement rules takes hours with the estimators, and the pilot needs a reviewer.
• Limit: not for low volume. A few takeoffs a month do not repay the setup.

Every input below is invented and round, so you can see the arithmetic and then replace each one with your own. Nothing here is a Mirage result; the only Mirage figures are its published starting prices.

The team: 10 bids a month, 16 hours of takeoff per bid, a loaded cost of 60 per hour in your currency, 140 productive hours per estimator per month. The automation scenario: the agent handles 70% of takeoffs end to end, a reviewer spends 4 hours per automated takeoff, and the costs are Mirage's published starting prices, $10,000 to launch and $1,000 a month, used here as a placeholder for a quote.

• Current process. 10 bids × 16 h = 160 estimator hours a month on takeoff alone, worth 9,600 at 60 per hour. Every extra bid costs 16 hours nobody has.
• Automate the takeoff. Hours freed = 10 × 0.7 × (16 − 4) = 84 hours a month, worth 5,040, or 60,480 a year at full run. Year-one cost at the starting prices: 10,000 + 12 × 1,000 = 22,000, plus your team's time in the pilot. The hours stay capacity until they replace overtime, outsourced takeoff or a hire you were going to make.
• Hire another estimator. Adds 140 productive hours a month for the whole estimating job, not only takeoff: at 16 hours of takeoff per bid, about 8 more bids' worth of measuring, or the pricing and client time the team lacks. Its cost is the loaded monthly cost of the role, which only your payroll knows; divide it by the bids that person prices to get the cost per bid.
• Combine. Automation frees 84 hours; if the pipeline needs more than that, size the hire on the gap that is left rather than on today's backlog.
• Redo it with your figures. The automation side, with your own volumes, review time, hourly cost and quote, is what the calculator below computes, including the month the costs are paid back.

Use one unit for all three: the cost of a completed, reviewed bid, and the number of bids the team can price in a month. For a hire, take the loaded cost of the role from your own payroll and the bids one estimator prices. For automation, take the setup and annual cost from a quote, the review time per takeoff and the share of takeoffs it handles. For the current process, count the overtime, the bids declined and the hours spent keying quantities.

The calculator gives the hours freed, what they are worth at your hourly cost, and the year-one budget that still breaks even. See the automation ROI calculator

A bid due tomorrow, a takeoff backlog or an estimator leaving: what to do this week, before any decision on hiring or automation. See the guide to estimating under pressure

The step-by-step method once you decide to automate. See how to automate an estimating department