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✉ Email plans to kb@takeoffservicellc.net for a quick quote, or upload through the form belowReplies within 30 minutesEstimating desks covering all 50 states
Takeoff Services LLC
Where Bidders Win
PROOF AND REFERENCES

Reviews, References and the Proof We Are Allowed to Show

One client agreed to be named. Two more agreed to be published with the company name taken off. That is the entire wall, and it is short on purpose: the contractors who buy here bid against each other, so we do not publish who sends us drawings. What we do instead is put you on the phone with one of them.

1 named story, 2 anonymized reviews References on request, matched where we can No paid or incentivized reviews
Every published review is used with written permission for that exact piece, and comes down whenever the client asks. Nothing is paid for. NDA signed on request.

What we can actually show you

  • One named client story with figures that client stood behind
  • Two reviews with the company name removed at their request
  • A reference call with a client who agrees to take it, matched as closely as we can manage
  • A delivered package, anonymized, that you can audit line by line
  • Ten questions to put to us and to everyone else you are weighing
What you will not find: a logo wall, a star average, a review total, or a single sentence we wrote and then asked a client to approve.
1
Named client story published
2
Anonymized reviews published
7,500+
Projects estimated
1,600+
Contractors served
50
States served
START HERE

Why this page is short, and why that is the point

Most proof pages are long because nothing on them costs the company anything. This one is short because the thing that would make it long is the thing our clients hire us not to do.

One named client story. Two reviews with the company name taken off. That is the whole published wall and it is going to stay roughly that size, because the people who buy here bid against each other and a desk that publishes its client list has published a bid list. The volume figures at the top of this page count jobs and contractors, not reviews, and the distance between those two numbers is the entire subject of this section.

Think about what a grid of logos announces in this trade. It says these companies send us their drawings. Where four of those logos chase the same school district package, the fifth reads the page and learns who to watch. That is a competitive disclosure nobody signed up for when they attached a file.

So the rule runs the other way here. Nothing is published without written permission for that specific piece, naming the company, the state or the trade if any of those appear in it. Permission for one story is not standing permission for the next request. A client who says yes today can withdraw it later and it comes down, with no conversation about why.

That leaves a thin page and a real problem, because you still have to decide whether to send drawings to people you have never met. The rest of this page answers that, and none of it is a testimonial. A phone call with a live client in your trade. A delivered file you can audit before spending anything. Commitments written down with a remedy attached. Those are checkable. A row of five-star cards is not.

The trade we are making
A short wall costs us sales. A leaked client list costs a client a job. We would rather lose the sale, and if you would rather see the logos, that is a preference worth knowing about us before you send anything.
No logo wall, because a logo wall is a bid list your competitors can read
No review published without written permission for that exact piece
No discount, credit, free bid or priority ever offered in exchange for one
No quote drafted by us and sent to a client for approval afterwards
No aggregate score anywhere, because two reviews cannot be averaged into one
Permission withdrawn is a review taken down, on the day, without discussion
If a wall this short is not enough to move you, that is a reasonable place to land. The next step is a live client on the phone.Ask for a reference
NAMED CLIENT STORY

Matcon Builders, concrete and GC work across Florida and Georgia

One client agreed to be named and to put figures on the record. Matcon runs concrete and general contracting work in two states, they moved overflow bids to this desk, and what changed was not the payroll. Their own account and the outcome numbers are below.

Matcon Builders, in their own words. Recorded 2024.
2x
Bid capacity, same payroll
50%+
Estimating cost saved
24-96h
Delivery window held
Matcon Builders · Concrete and general contracting · Florida and Georgia
"Even with our in-house team, the partnership doubled our bidding capacity."

Matcon had estimators. That was never the problem. The problem was that every deadline week the same two people were the bottleneck, and jobs worth chasing went past unpriced because there were no hours left to price them.

They kept their estimators and added a bench. Overflow bids come to this desk as takeoffs and priced build-ups. Their team reviews the package, sets the margin, and submits. Nobody was replaced and nothing about how they bid changed except the ceiling on how many they could.

Inside a quarter they were submitting twice the bids on the same payroll. That is the whole mechanism, and it is the same one every retainer client is buying: not cheaper estimating, more bids out of the people you already have.

Matcon agreed to be named and recorded this themselves. Every other client on this page asked not to be, which is why the rest of it is written the way it is.
A story is one company's experience under one set of conditions, and yours will differ. That is why the reference call matters more than this does.Ask for a reference call
CHECKABLE, NOT QUOTABLE

Five things to check in a package, and where each one is visible

None of the five below is a client saying something nice about us. Each is a property of the delivered file, put here because you can open a sample and confirm it yourself. Where a claim could only be settled by taking our word for it, it is not on this list.

CHECK THE EXCLUSIONS

The assumptions sheet does the arguing

One page stating what was counted, what was assumed and what was deliberately left out. It is what a project manager holds up at buyout when a sub insists the scope was never theirs. Open any sample, read that page first, and judge whether a vague version of it would have survived that conversation.

Written before delivery, not reconstructed after a dispute
Names the sheet number behind every assumption it records
Ships with a one-trade order and a full set alike
CHECK THE TRACE

Every quantity ties back to a marked-up sheet

Each figure carries a labeled, color-coded markup on a named sheet, so a disagreement turns into a conversation about one wall rather than a fight about a total. Pick the largest number in a sample package and try to find the geometry underneath it. Under a minute is the standard worth holding any desk to.

Color-coded by trade across every sheet measured
Source takeoff files available on request, not on condition
Editable Excel or CSV, unlocked, no read-only export
See a sample package
CHECK FOR TWO NAMES

Somebody who did not build it checks it

The estimator rechecks their own quantities, then a second estimator audits the package independently. This is the one item on the list that a finished file cannot fully prove, so the honest test is external: look for two names on the delivery note, and put the question to a reference rather than to us.

Two independent passes before anything is released
Whatever will not reconcile goes back inside, not out to you
The same treatment on a single division as on a full set
CHECK WHO REPLIES

The estimator who measured it answers for it

Scope questions, the assumptions walk and every revision go to the person who did the work. On a monthly retainer or a dedicated estimator it is the same person job after job, which is the whole argument for continuity. Test it by replying to a delivery email and seeing who answers it.

A named estimator with a direct line, not a shared inbox
Your template and your cost coding learned once, then reused
A dedicated estimator runs 8 hours a day, 5 days a week
How the three models compare
CHECK THE DATE IN WRITING

A delivery date built backward from your bid date

Delivery runs 24-96 hours from an approved quote, and the date is chosen against when you actually bid rather than when a queue happens to clear. The checkable part is that the date is in the quote you approve, before you have paid anything, rather than promised on a call and never written down.

The date is written into the quote you approve
A date we do not believe we can hit is said so at quoting
An addendum updates the affected conditions, not the whole file
See how a job runs
Every item above names something in a file you can open. Put one bid through and check all five against what lands.Get a fixed quote
THE REVIEW WALL

Two reviews, filterable, and that is all of them

Two published reviews, both with the company name removed at the reviewer's request, filed by trade and by state so you can open the one nearest your own situation. Two is a small number and it is not going to be padded. What a wall this size can tell you is the shape of the buyer, never a consensus.

Burned by an overseas takeoff mill

★★★★★
"The numbers held on site."

Came in off a bad outsourcing run and would only risk one low-stakes bid. The first package landed with labeled markups and a written assumptions sheet, and the quantities matched what the crew actually installed. Every bid now runs through this desk.

Commercial drywall subcontractor · Texas
Client of record. Name withheld at their request.

Never outsourced before

★★★★★
"Sent our first bid, won it, and moved to the partnership the same month."

Was doing every takeoff personally, nights and weekends, and turning down work he had no hours to price. Now submits roughly 3x the bids on the same headcount, and has his evenings back.

General contractor · North Carolina
Client of record. Name withheld at their request.
Better than a testimonial

Talk to a client in your trade instead.

A quote on a website is a quote on a website. Ask instead to speak to somebody who has bid the work you bid, in a market you know, and ask them the awkward questions. We will arrange it before you commit to anything.

No client is contacted without their agreement, and no client of ours is ever named to a third party without it either.
Why there are two and not two hundred. Most clients here bid against each other, and several compete inside the same market. A desk that publishes its client list is a desk that will publish yours, so names go up only when the client asks for them to. That rule costs this page a lot of tiles, and it is the same rule that keeps your drawings off somebody else's marketing page. The endorsement policy is written out at our testimonials disclosure.
If two is not enough to move you, that is the correct reaction to two. Ask for a live client in your trade instead.Ask for a reference
SEE THE WORK INSTEAD

Skip the wall and open a real package

An anonymized delivered package: the workbook, the marked-up sheets, the assumptions page. Pick a figure and trace it. It costs nothing and it proves more than a review can.

See a sample package Get a fixed quote
WHERE THEY STARTED

The two situations our reviewers arrived in

Each reviewer came in carrying a different worry, and between them those two worries cover most of the people reading this. Neither company is named. What each of them was solving for is named, because that is the part that transfers to you.

COMMERCIAL DRYWALL SUB, TEXAS

Came off a bad outsourcing run

A shop that has paid once for cheap measurement is not shopping on price the second time. This one would only risk a single low-stakes bid, which is a completely reasonable way to buy. What a buyer in that position needs is a package that opens: live columns, a markup behind every figure, and a written record of what was left out on purpose.

Every line names the sheet and the markup it came off
Board square footage split by wall type, never averaged
Exclusions written before delivery, not after a dispute
Quantity takeoff services
GENERAL CONTRACTOR, NORTH CAROLINA

Had never sent a set outside the company

A contractor outsourcing for the first time is not weighing two desks against each other. They are weighing an outside desk against their own evening, and the questions are about control rather than accuracy: who sees the drawings, who owns the file afterwards, what the week looks like if the first job goes badly. Those get answered by an NDA before anything moves and a first job small enough that being wrong about us costs one bid.

NDA signed before a single sheet is uploaded
One bid, no retainer, no term and no minimum order
The package arrives in your own template if you send one
Takeoff services
Whichever of those two you recognize, the next move is the same: open a real file before you send us one.See a sample package
REFERENCES ON REQUEST

How to be put in touch with a client before you commit to anything

The strongest proof available to us is a contractor who has no reason to help us. Here is how that call gets arranged, what we tell them about you, and how long each step honestly takes.

1

Name your trade, your state and your job size

Tell us what you build, where you build it, and roughly what a typical drawing set looks like. A reference is only worth the call if the person answering recognizes your problem, so the search runs on your trade first rather than on whoever is likeliest to pick up.
About 2 minutes
2

We look for the closest match, not the happiest client

The temptation in every reference program is to route you to whoever liked us most. That client is close to useless to you, because they will not have hit the week you are worried about. We look for the nearest match on trade, state and volume, and say plainly how close it is.
Same working day
3

They are asked first, and they are free to decline

No number leaves this desk without that client agreeing to that specific call. There is no standing panel of volunteers here: each person is asked fresh, every time. Contractors are busy in bid week and a no is common, which is why this is the step that carries the time and why it sometimes ends in nobody.
1 to 3 working days
4

You get a name, a company and a direct number

Not a testimonial relayed through us and not an email introduction we sit in the middle of. A person, their company, the trade they run and the state they run it in, plus a number that rings on their phone. They are told your name and your trade, and nothing else about you.
Ask an estimator for a reference
On their yes
5

You call them with nobody from here on the line

We are not on the call, we do not ask afterwards what was said, and we do not follow up to find out. A reference the vendor is listening to is a testimonial with a phone number attached. Ask the questions in the next section, including the ones we would rather they were not asked.
Whenever suits you
A reference request needs no drawings and no quote. Call or email an estimator, or add one line to the form at the bottom of this page if you were sending a set anyway.Start the reference request
ON THE CALL

What a reference call is good for, and the questions worth spending it on

A reference call is not for finding out whether we are pleasant. It is for finding out what happened on the bad week. You get maybe twelve minutes, so spend them on questions a genuinely happy client can still answer honestly.

What was the worst week you had with them, and what did they actually do about it?
Did a delivery date ever move, and did you hear it from them or notice it yourself?
How long did it take you to find the wall behind a figure you doubted?
Did they ever tell you a set was too incomplete to price before taking your money?
What did they miss, and what did the fix end up costing you?
When you disagreed with a quantity, who picked up the phone?
Has a price ever changed after you approved it, and what was the reason given?
Did your own estimator work in the file, or retype it into their own?
What did the first job feel like compared with the tenth?
Which part of your scope do they still not fully understand?
If you stopped tomorrow, what would you lose that you could not rebuild?
Would you send them a set on a job you could not afford to lose?
Name the trade, the state and the size of job you bid, and the search for a match starts the same day. No drawings and no commitment are involved in asking.Request a reference call
USE THIS ON US TOO

How to judge any estimating desk, including this one

The most useful thing on this page, and the section that costs us most if we answer any of it badly. Ten questions, what a good answer sounds like, and the reply that should end the conversation.

Put the same ten questions to every desk you are considering, in the same words, in the same week. Comparing answers beats comparing web pages.
Who checks the work, and is it the person who did it?Two people: the estimator who measured it, then a second estimator who did not.Our system checks it, or one name with no second pass behind it.
Can I see a marked-up sheet next to the workbook?Yes, here is an anonymized one. Pick a line and find the wall it came off.We can send you the totals. The markups are internal.
What is written down about what you left out?An assumptions, inclusions and exclusions sheet ships with every package.It is all in the spreadsheet somewhere if you look.
Will the file be editable when it lands?Excel or CSV with live columns, unlocked, in your template if you send one.A flat PDF of totals, a locked export, or a login to view it.
Who do I talk to when I disagree with a figure?The estimator who measured it, on a direct line, same day.Raise a ticket and somebody will pick it up.
What is the price, and when do I learn it?One fixed figure in writing before work starts, nothing invoiced until you approve.We bill against hours, or the price settles once we are into it.
What happens when an addendum drops mid-job?Affected conditions get updated, and new scope comes back as a revised quote first.Any change is a new job at a new price, worked out afterwards.
Can you hit my bid date, honestly?Yes, and here is the date in writing. Or no, and here is why, said before you pay.We will do our best, or a date with nothing standing behind it.
What will you not do?A specific list: not your markup, not your bid signature, not your sub selection.Anything you need, said quickly and without an example.
Can I speak to a client in my trade and state?Yes, with their permission, and here is roughly how long that takes to arrange.Our reviews speak for themselves.
Swipe across. The middle column is the one to hold every desk against, this one included.
Run all ten past us on a call and past whoever else you are weighing. If somebody answers better than we do, hire them.Put the questions to an estimator
PUT THE QUESTIONS TO US

Ask an estimator all ten on one call

No drawings needed and no commitment attached. Ask the ten questions above, hear the answers from the person who would run your work, and compare them with whoever else you are weighing.

Ask an estimator Call (510) 810-0346
WHAT WE COMMIT TO

The five commitments, and how you hold us to each one

A promise with no remedy attached is marketing. These are the five things this desk actually commits to, what each looks like in writing, and what you do on the day one of them is not kept.

The price is fixed before any work starts

You approve one figure in writing and that figure is what you pay. If scope moves, a revised quote reaches you before the extra work happens, never as a line on an invoice afterwards. Hold us to it by keeping the approval email, which names the trades, the price and the delivery date.

The delivery date is set against your bid date

Delivery runs 24-96 hours from your approval, and the date is chosen against when you bid rather than when our queue clears. A date we do not believe we can hit is said so at quoting, before you have paid anything, and where one slips later you hear it the day the risk becomes real. Hold us to it by naming the bid date at upload and reading the date in the quote.

Revisions on unchanged scope are included

A figure you want rechecked, a reformat into your template, a question about an assumption, or an error of ours: all included, with no invoice. Added trades or a replaced drawing issue are new scope and come back as a revised quote first. Hold us to it by asking rather than absorbing it.

You get the estimator, not a queue

Scope questions, the assumptions walk-through and every revision go to the person who measured your job. Hold us to it on the first call by asking for that estimator by name. If what comes back is a generic reply from somebody who has clearly not opened your set, say so immediately.

Your drawings never become our marketing

Ask for the NDA and it is signed before a sheet moves. Nothing you upload is published, quoted or shown as a sample, and every sample on this site has the project identifiers stripped out. Hold us to it by getting that signature in writing first, rather than after the set has gone.

Five commitments are worth exactly one real job of testing. Put a bid through and check them against what lands.Get a fixed quote
WHEN IT GOES WRONG

What happens when we miss, written down before it happens

Every desk misses something eventually. What separates them is whether the failure was written down in advance with a remedy attached, or improvised in an email after you noticed. Here is ours.

Failures on our side, with the remedy attached

Set down here before they happen, so nothing has to be invented after you notice.

A delivery date we are going to miss

THE DATE

The failure that costs you the most, because a package landing after the bid opens is worth nothing at all.

  • You hear it the moment the slip is visible

    Not on the delivery date. The estimator tells you as soon as the risk is real, with a revised date and the cause, so pulling the work back in house is still an option you have.

  • Partial delivery beats a complete miss

    Where the full package will not make it, the finished trades go out first with the remainder named and dated. A bid form with two divisions outstanding is recoverable. Silence until bid morning is not.

A quantity that turns out to be wrong

THE NUMBER

It happens. What matters is whether the file lets you find it, and what the desk does once you have.

  • Remeasured at our cost, on our clock

    If the error is ours the affected conditions are remeasured and reissued at no charge, and the assumptions sheet is corrected so the same misreading cannot repeat itself on your next job.

  • Told, never quietly patched

    A corrected figure arrives with a note saying what changed and why. A workbook silently updated overnight is worse than the original error, because you need to know whether a number you already sent out moved.

A package that came back in the wrong shape

THE FORMAT

Right quantities, wrong container: not in your layout, coded to the wrong structure, or short of the markups you need to check it.

  • Reformatted as an included revision

    Unchanged scope in a different shape is a revision, not a new job. Send the spreadsheet you actually bid off, ideally at upload, and the package arrives in it rather than being remapped on your side.

Failures that are not ours, and what we owe you anyway

Two of these belong to the drawings and one belongs to the brief. None of them is a reason to go quiet.

A set that cannot answer the question

THE DRAWINGS

Missing sheets, no stated scale, or a schedule the plans reference that nobody ever issued.

  • Said at quoting, not after payment

    If the set will not support the trades you named, you hear it before you approve a price, with the specific sheets that are missing. A desk that measures through the problem and writes nothing down is the one you are trying to avoid.

Scope nobody named at upload

THE BRIEF

The division you assumed was covered, the alternate nobody mentioned, the bid form we were never sent.

  • A revised figure first, never a surprise line

    Added scope comes back as a new price in writing before any extra work happens. If that price does not work for you, the package you originally ordered still ships at the price you originally approved.

A working relationship that is not working

THE EXIT

Sometimes it is simply a bad fit and both sides can see it by the third job. Say so early and the last package still gets finished properly.

Tell us it is not working
  • Nothing is held back to force a renewal

    Files arrive unlocked, source takeoff files come on request, and there is no account, no export and no notice period. Stopping costs an email, and everything you have paid for is already yours.

If a desk you are weighing cannot tell you what happens on the day they miss, you have found the answer to a different question.Talk it through first
READY TO TEST IT

Test the commitments on one real bid

Name the trades and the bid date, and a fixed price comes back in writing with a delivery date built against your deadline. Approve it or walk away, and nothing has been invoiced either way.

Get a fixed quote See how it starts
DISCLOSURE

Our testimonial and endorsement policy, in plain words

There is a formal version of this on the legal page. This is the same thing said the way it would be said on the phone, because a policy nobody reads protects nobody.

The reason this matters more here than on most sites is the direction of the incentive. A desk that pays for reviews, or drafts them, ends up with a wall that predicts nothing about the work, and the contractor who relied on it finds that out at buyout rather than at purchase. So the rules below exist to keep this page useless as a marketing surface and useful as evidence.

The four rules are short. Nothing is bought. Nothing is ghostwritten. Every piece is published under permission given for that specific piece. Anything published comes down the day the client asks, without a reason being requested. Each of those is stated in full on the legal page, and the FAQ at the bottom of this page answers the versions of them contractors actually ask.

There is one rule that constrains how you should read what is here rather than how we collect it. A published outcome is one company's result under one set of conditions, in their market, with their crews and their bid mix. It is evidence that something is achievable. It is not a forecast of what you would get, and any desk presenting it as one has told you something about the desk.

None of this makes the page verifiable on its own, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. A written policy is a claim like any other claim. The parts of this page you can actually test without trusting us are the delivered file, the reference call and the ten questions further up, which is why they take up more room here than the reviews do.

Where the formal version lives
The full disclosure, including how endorsements are handled and what happens to a review after it is published, sits on the testimonials policy page. Where the two ever disagree, the legal page governs and this one is wrong.
Read the formal disclosure before you weigh anything published on this page.Read the testimonial policy
ALREADY A CLIENT?

Send us a review, and here is exactly what happens to it

If you have run work through this desk, the useful review is the specific one: the trade, the state, the week that nearly went wrong. Here is where it goes and how much of it stays under your control.

1

Write the specific version, not the kind one

Nice is worthless to the next reader. Name the trade, the state, the size of the sets, and what you were nervous about before the first job. If something went wrong and got fixed, that paragraph is worth the other four together.
About 10 minutes
2

Send it to your estimator or to the published email

Either route works: reply to the estimator who runs your packages, or send it to kb@takeoffservicellc.net. Nothing is posted from that message. It sits with us until you have answered the permission question below in writing.
Same day
3

We ask precisely what you will let us publish

Company name, trade, state, first name, none of it. You choose line by line, and you can approve the words while refusing the attribution. A no here is normal and it ends the conversation rather than starting a second ask.
Within 2 working days
4

It goes up in the form you approved, or not at all

The published version matches the one you signed off, and nobody here tightens it afterwards into something you did not say. If a line needs cutting for length we come back and ask rather than cutting it.
Talk to us first
On your written yes
5

You can take it down whenever you want

One message and it comes off, on the day, with no request for a reason and no attempt to talk you out of it. Circumstances change: you win a job against somebody who read it, or a partner is uncomfortable.
Any day after
Not sure you want your name anywhere near it? Send it anyway and refuse the attribution. Both reviews on the wall are published exactly that way.Send it through here
STILL NOT ENOUGH?

If two reviews are not enough, here is what to do instead

A short wall is a fair objection, and pretending otherwise would be the dishonesty this page argues against. Five ways to get more certainty than a testimonial would have given you. Four of them cost you nothing at all, and the fifth costs one bid.

Judge a file instead of a page

Open an anonymized package, pick any figure and try to trace it back to a wall on a specific sheet. If that takes longer than about a minute the package has failed, whatever a review says about it. The whole exercise runs in a few minutes, with no drawings sent and nothing spent, and it settles more than this page does.

Put one small job through first

Try One Bid exists for exactly this reason. One bid, no commitment, a fixed price approved in writing, and a package you can lay beside whatever your own desk would have produced. One real job tells you more than twenty reviews would, and it is the cheapest honest test available.

Take the reference call and ask the hard question

Ask the reference what went wrong and what happened next. A client who cannot name a single bad week has either not worked with the desk much or is not telling you all of it, and either of those answers is worth the twelve minutes it took to hear.

Ask us directly who we are wrong for

Put it to an estimator on a call. If the answer is a shrug, or anything you need, you have learned something useful. There are jobs this desk should turn down: a set too incomplete to measure, a two-page service order, or anyone wanting somebody else to own the bid decision.

Run the ten questions past everybody

Take the table further up this page and put it to every desk you are considering, in the same words, in the same week. Comparing answers to identical questions tells you more than comparing marketing pages, and if a competitor answers better than we do, that is your answer.

The quickest of those five costs you a few minutes and no drawings at all. The most useful costs you one bid.Get a fixed quote
FAQ

Questions about the proof on this page

What contractors ask when a proof page has two reviews on it.

The wall itself

Why do you only have two reviews?

Because publishing a client publishes who sends us drawings, and the contractors here bid against each other. Written permission is asked for on each individual piece, most people decline, and nobody is pushed twice. The result is a short wall and a client list nobody can read off it. Reference calls exist to fill that gap.

Do you have a logo wall or a client list?

No, and there is not going to be one. A grid of logos tells a competitor exactly who to watch in a market where four of those companies chase the same package. Nobody agreed to that when they uploaded a set, so they are not asked. Named stories happen only with written permission for that specific use.

Are the two reviews verified, or just anonymous?

Verified and anonymized are different things. We hold the identity, the trade and the state behind both, and the details were removed because the reviewer asked, not because the source is unclear. What you cannot do is confirm that from a web page, which is precisely why a reference call is offered instead.

Can I see a case study for my exact trade?

Probably not, and pretending otherwise would be the failure this whole page argues against. One named story is published. What you can have is an anonymized delivered package covering your trade and a phone call with a contractor running the same work in the same state, which answers far more than a written study.

References on request

Can I speak to one of your clients before I hire you?

Where a client agrees to take the call, yes. Name your trade, your state and roughly what your drawing sets look like, and we look for the closest match rather than the happiest client. Nobody is on a standing list, so each one is asked fresh and is free to say no. On a yes you get a name, a company and a direct number.

What if you have no reference in my trade or my state?

Then you are told that plainly, and offered the nearest match with the distance named out loud. Substituting a roofing contractor in Ohio for a mechanical sub in Arizona would waste your call. Where no honest match exists, judge an anonymized package in your trade and put one small job through instead.

Will you tell the reference anything about me?

Your name and your trade, so the call is not cold and they know why their phone is ringing. Nothing about your bid volume, your projects or what you might be spending. We are not on the call, we do not ask afterwards what was said, and we do not follow up to find out.

What we will not do

Do you pay for reviews or offer anything in exchange?

No. No discount, credit, free bid, gift card or queue priority has ever been offered for a review, and nothing published has been drafted by us and sent to a client for sign-off. If that ever changes, the exchange gets printed on the review itself rather than buried in a policy nobody opens.

Could my company be named as a reference without being asked?

No. No name and no number leaves this desk without agreement to that specific call, and one yes is never standing permission for the next request. Say no once and you will not be asked again unless you tell us otherwise. The same rule covers reviews, stories and anything else carrying your name.

Are the results in the client story a promise of what I will get?

No, and the law is right to require that said out loud. Those figures belong to one company, with their crews, their market and their bid mix, across one quarter. Your trade, your state and your bid volume all change the arithmetic. Treat a published result as evidence something is possible, never as a forecast.

Checking us yourself

What is the fastest way to test this desk without committing?

Open an anonymized package, pick a figure and try to trace it back to a wall on a named sheet. Finding the geometry should take under a minute, and the whole exercise a few minutes, at no cost and with no drawings from you. If the trace is slow or impossible, no amount of published praise would have rescued the package anyway.

What should I ask any estimating desk before sending drawings?

Who checks the work and whether a second person does it. Whether you can see a marked-up sheet beside the workbook. What is written down about exclusions. Whether the file arrives editable. Who you speak to when you disagree with a figure. And whether the price is fixed in writing before work starts.

What happens if you miss my delivery date?

You hear about it the moment the slip is visible rather than on the delivery date, with a revised date and the cause attached. Where the full package will not make it, finished trades go out first with the rest named and dated. A slip you learn about in time is recoverable. Silence is not.

Getting started

Do I have to sign anything before you look at my drawings?

No. Send the set, name the trades and your bid date, and a fixed price comes back in writing. An NDA is signed on request and asking for it first is entirely reasonable. Work starts only once you approve the figure, so until that point there is nothing to unwind and nothing owed.

What does it cost to find out whether this works?

One bid, quoted as a fixed figure in writing before anything starts, with no retainer, no term and no minimum. No rate card is published anywhere on this site, because every drawing set is different and a published rate would be fiction for almost everyone reading it. Send one set and the real figure for that job comes back before you owe anything.

I am already a client. How do I send a review?

Send it to the estimator who runs your work, or to the published email address, in your own words. We come back asking exactly what you will let us publish: company name, trade, state, any of it or none. It goes up in the form you approved, and it comes down whenever you say.

Judge the files,
not the wall

Attach the set, list the trades you want covered and give us the bid date. An estimator scopes it and sends back one fixed price in writing with a delivery date built against your deadline. Ask for a reference in the same message and the search starts that day.

Get a fixed quote
STEP 1 OF 2
What do you need?
Project type
When is your bid due?
Describe your scope
Under a minute · No account, no payment
Rather talk it through? Call +1 (510) 810-0346 or book a 15-minute scope call. Not ready? See a real anonymized package first.