Trades
Three to five days to produce an estimate. One in four or five of them wins.
Most contractors win 20-30% of what they bid, and estimators spend three to five days per project on takeoffs and supplier pricing. The arithmetic of that is worth doing before adding another estimator.
Bidding more is the expensive answer. Bidding better is the available one.
Win rates in this trade run 20-30%. Estimators spend three to five days per project on manual quantity takeoffs and phoning suppliers for current pricing. That means the majority of the most skilled, most expensive administrative work in the business produces nothing, and the standard response, bid more, multiplies the cost of the losses along with the wins.
The second number is what happens after award. Nine out of ten projects experience cost overruns, averaging 28%, and only 31% come within 10% of the original budget. Change orders alone are estimated at $44 billion a year in direct cost across US construction. A meaningful share of that traces back to information that existed somewhere and did not reach the person who needed it.
The audit does not try to make you a better estimator. It examines which parts of the estimating, scheduling, approval and site-communication cycle are repeated identically every time (and are therefore a system's job) and which genuinely require your judgment.
None of this is a crisis. That is the problem.
Every item below is survivable on its own. Together they are the reason the week is full and the forecast is a guess.
- 01A takeoff that takes three days and loses to a competitor on price alone.
- 02Four calls to suppliers for prices that changed since the last job.
- 03A variation agreed on site, remembered differently by two people, invoiced by neither.
- 04A quote sent a fortnight ago that nobody has chased.
- 05A crew waiting because a delivery slipped and nothing told them.
- 06A completed job whose retention nobody has diarised.
The audit domains, read through this trade.
Each of these is one of the nineteen operational domains the audit examines, stated in the terms this industry actually uses.
Three to five days per estimate, at a 20-30% win rate
The work is skilled, repetitive and mostly unrewarded. Estimates assembled from a live price list, with standard scopes reused rather than rewritten, and follow-up that runs on its own, change both sides of that ratio at once.
Variations agreed on site and lost by Friday
Change orders account for an estimated $44 billion a year in direct cost across the industry. The ones that hurt most are the small ones agreed verbally, remembered imprecisely and never invoiced. Capture at the point of agreement, with a signature, is the whole fix.
The call that comes in while you are on a roof
Inquiries in this trade arrive during working hours, when everybody who could answer is working. The competitor who answered is not better; they were reachable.
A program that only exists in one head
Crews, deliveries, inspections and subcontractors coordinated by phone and memory. It holds until something slips, and then the cost is a crew standing still, which is the most expensive thing on any site.
Progress claims and retention chased manually
Nine in ten projects run over, averaging 28%. Cash position depends on claims going out on time and retentions being pursued, and both are currently a person remembering during an evening that was meant to be free.
Quotes that were never revisited
The quotes you lost were mostly not refusals; they were silences. A structured follow-up sequence over weeks converts a share of them, and nobody in this trade has the evenings to do it by hand.
Clients who have no idea what is happening
Most disputes on domestic and small commercial work begin as a communication gap rather than a workmanship one. A place the client can see progress, variations and next steps prevents the phone call that turns into a complaint.
Finished work that generates no public evidence
This is a referral trade with a search-driven front end. Photographs and a review requested at completion, automatically, compound into the reason the next inquiry arrives at all.
Third-party research, not our own claims.
We have no case studies to show you and will not invent any. These are published figures for the trade, and they are the reason the audit asks what it asks.
of bids won by most contractors
Construction bid strategy research, 2026
per project on manual takeoffs and supplier pricing
Construction estimating statistics, 2026
projects experience cost overruns, averaging 28%
Construction statistics, 2026
of projects come within 10% of original budget
Construction statistics, 2026
annual direct cost of change orders across US construction
Construction industry analysis, 2026
Start with the score.
Sixteen questions, about four minutes. Several are about the estimate, how long it takes, and what happens to it after it is sent.