Estimating is where engineering firms lose time they never bill for. Someone reads a drawing set, counts devices, cross-references a schedule, checks what a similar job cost two years ago, writes down the assumptions, and builds a proposal — often over a weekend, often for work that will not be won. A project estimation agent attacks that bottleneck: it reads the documents, drafts the takeoff and the line items, flags what is missing, and hands an estimator something to correct rather than something to create.
Status: working prototype, actively refined. We are building this as a custom workflow integration for specific estimating processes — not as a general-purpose estimating product. That distinction matters, and we explain why below.
What the Agent Does
The agent works across the documents an estimator already uses — drawings, specifications, equipment schedules, scope documents, labour tables, material catalogues, and prior estimates:
- Scope extraction — read the specification and scope documents and set out what is actually being asked for.
- Equipment and device counting — take off quantities from drawings and schedules rather than by hand-tallying.
- Line-item drafting — build the estimate structure with materials, labour, and subcontractor allowances.
- Gap detection — identify what is missing, ambiguous, or contradictory in the documents, which is usually where estimating risk actually lives.
- Historical comparison — check the draft against comparable jobs you have already delivered.
- Assumptions and exclusions — produce the qualifying language explicitly, instead of leaving it to memory.
- Proposal drafting — assemble a first-draft proposal from the approved estimate.
Where drawings are the source, this connects directly to our CAD agent work — the same ability to read DWG geometry, layers, blocks, and annotations that drives drawing automation also drives a defensible device count.
The Estimator Approves. Always.
An estimate is a commercial commitment. A number that goes out the door binds your firm to a price, and an AI-drafted figure released without review is not an efficiency — it is an underwriting decision made by software. So the agent drafts; a human estimator reviews, corrects, and releases. Nothing reaches a client automatically.
This is the same human-approval pattern we build into every consequential agent, and estimating is one of the clearest cases for it. The value is not removing the estimator — it is giving them a drafted position and a list of flagged gaps instead of a blank page and a deadline.
Why Workflow Integration, Not a Product
Estimating is not generic. Your labour rates, your assembly logic, your historical job data, your standard exclusions, your vendor pricing, and the way your firm scopes work are specific to you — and they are most of what makes an estimate accurate. A generic estimating product has none of that and has to be taught it anyway.
We build the agent around your existing process: your document formats, your estimate structure, your historical data, your approval chain. It is more work than installing a tool, and it is the reason the output is usable rather than a plausible-looking number you cannot defend.
Where We Are Strongest
Estimating building-automation, controls, and mechanical scope is where our domain knowledge compounds. Counting devices off a controls drawing, reading an equipment schedule, understanding what a BAS point list implies about labour — that is the work our Niagara practice does daily. An estimation agent built by a team that has commissioned the systems being estimated makes better assumptions than one built purely from documents.
Being Straight About the Limits
This is a working prototype, not a finished product. Drawing sets vary enormously in quality, and an agent reading an inconsistent or poorly layered drawing will miss things — which is exactly why gap detection and estimator review are core to the design rather than bolted on. We would rather tell you where it needs a human than sell you an autonomy claim that fails on your first real bid package.
Tell us how your firm estimates today — the documents you work from, where the hours actually go, and what a good estimate has to contain — and we will scope what an agent can realistically draft for you, and what should stay with your estimators.