ARCIFAB Lite — Price the work

WHY

A spreadsheet, or a tool that isn’t MEP.

Those are the two options an estimator actually gets. The spreadsheet works because one person made it work and keeps making it work. The tool was built for somebody else's trade, and every job is spent bending it toward yours.

And neither one builds a bill of material off the PDF. The drawing is sitting right there, and getting a real BOM out of it is still a person, a highlighter, and an afternoon. Whatever the highlighter misses shows up later as a short delivery or a change order. Lite runs the takeoff against the drawing itself and hands you the BOM, so the estimator spends the afternoon pricing instead of counting.

Why Lite exists

BEFORE THE ROOM

Where the number actually comes from.

Cutting head working a flat sheet on a slat table

The drawing is on the desk.

The set is right there, printed or on the screen, and every quantity the job needs is already in it. Getting them out is still an afternoon of counting, because a drawing is made to build from and not to price from. So the estimator counts. In Lite, the takeoff runs against the drawing itself and the bill of material comes out the other end.

The highlighter is the takeoff.

Colors by system, tick marks down the margin, a running tally on a pad. It is accurate as long as the person doing it is careful, and it is invisible to everybody else. Nothing about it can be checked afterwards, and none of it carries forward to the floor. In Lite, the count sits in the system where anyone can check it, and it carries to the floor as the BOM.

Electrician carrying a coil of flexible conduit on a job site

The field inherits the miss.

Whatever got missed in the count turns up later as a short delivery or a change order. The crew finds it, not the estimator. By then the number is a commitment somebody has to keep, and the difference comes out of the shop or out of the job. A count taken off the drawing itself, where it can be checked before the number goes out, is what keeps that difference off your books.

WHAT

Five things, one room.

Each one feeds the next inside the same system. Nothing gets re-keyed.

Labor

Your rates and your factors, held in the system rather than in one person's tab.

Material

Priced off your assemblies, the way your people already build a number.

Takeoff

Done against the drawing itself, so the count and the drawing never drift apart.

BOM

A real bill of material off the PDF, rather than a total that implies one.

Proposal

Comes off the estimate that produced it, in your format, under your name.

WHAT A WRONG NUMBER COSTS

The estimate is a promise the field has to keep.

Price it low and the shop wins a job it loses money on. Price it high and it does not win. What sits underneath both is whether anyone can see the process the number was built from. The first two figures below are what a wrong or slow count already costs in the field. The third is what a subscription costs you more every year.

Field labor cost estimated as waste or unproductive time, U.S. construction 11–15%

FMI, cited in ARCIFAB Insights, “You Don’t Know What You’re Missing.”

Reduction in rework and waste when the whole process goes digital Up to 20%

McKinsey, cited in ARCIFAB Insights, “You Don’t Know What You’re Missing.”

Typical annual renewal increase on a subscription platform 10–15%

As published in ARCIFAB Insights, “End the Annual Hostage Negotiation for Your Own Data.”

Bars are drawn on a common 0–25% scale. These are industry patterns, not your shop’s numbers, and nobody should pretend they are. They only mean something once you can see your own process well enough to compare. Figures as published in ARCIFAB Insights.

HOW

Evaluate the operation, then stand up the room.

The same six steps we run for every room. Lite is the smaller room and gets the same treatment.

We look first

How you already price work — the rates, the assemblies, the spreadsheet everyone quietly depends on.

A dedicated system

Your own system, with your name on it, rather than a seat on somebody else's platform.

We keep it running

In-house IT you do not have to train. Your estimator estimates.

How Lite gets stood up

The drawing is right there.
Make it a bill of material.