Tender & Estimating Software for Builders

A complete builder’s estimate covers far more than the visible trade quantities — it has to add up every cost of actually delivering the contract, from the measured shell of the building through to the allowances for work that isn’t finalised yet. A typical whole-of-job estimate includes:

• Structural and shell quantities — slab and footing area, external wall and cladding area, roof area and floor area, measured directly from the plans.
• Preliminaries — site establishment, supervision, site sheds and amenities, temporary fencing and services, and insurances, priced for the length of the program.
• Subcontractor packages — quotes gathered from every trade, from excavation and concreting through to electrical, plumbing, plastering and painting.
• Provisional sums — allowances for scope that isn’t fully designed yet, such as landscaping or a driveway that will be finalised later.
• Prime cost (PC) items — allowances for products the client hasn’t selected yet, such as tapware, tiles, appliances or floor coverings.

My Trade Hub’s estimation engine reads your architectural and structural plans and measures the shell of the building automatically — slab and footing area, external wall and cladding area, roof area and floor area — instead of you scaling each of those off the drawings by hand.

Because the takeoff is automated rather than manual, it is 60-75% faster than measuring the same shell quantities by hand, which matters most on the items that set the scale of the whole job and that you need early to sanity-check the subcontractor quotes as they come in.

The output is a structured, itemised set of quantities — not a single black-box total — so you can check every measurement against the plans before it feeds into your whole-of-job estimate.

Once the structural quantities are measured, pricing a build means combining them with your subcontractor quotes, preliminaries, provisional sums and PC items, then adding your overheads and margin across the whole contract — the takeoff is only ever one part of the final number.

Subcontractor quotes are the biggest variable — the same scope can come back from three different subbies at three different prices, so builders typically compare at least two or three quotes per trade package and keep a record of what each one actually includes, since exclusions are where disputes start later.

On top of the measured and quoted costs, add site-specific preliminaries, a contingency for the items still to be finalised, and your margin, so the final contract price reflects the real conditions of the site and the program, not a generic percentage on top of materials.

With the structural quantities measured, subbie quotes in hand and preliminaries priced, the next step is turning that whole-of-job cost plan into a document the client can actually sign — a fixed-price building contract for a direct residential client, or a complete tender submission for a developer, government body or head contractor.

My Trade Hub turns the priced cost plan straight into a client-ready quote or tender, with your branding, inclusions, exclusions and provisional sum schedule attached, so you’re not re-keying the same numbers into a separate contract document.

Because the slow part — measuring the shell and reconciling subbie quotes — is already done, assembling the actual contract or tender document takes a fraction of the time it used to, which matters when a client is comparing you against builders who can turn a price around faster.

Most builders move between two quite different pricing situations, and knowing which one you’re in changes how the price needs to be put together.

A new home build or renovation for a private client is usually priced as a fixed-price building contract — typically an HIA or Master Builders standard form — direct to the homeowner, with provisional sums and PC items clearly scheduled for anything not yet selected. A commercial, multi-unit or government project is won by formal tender: you’re pricing a defined scope against a full set of architectural and engineering drawings, often alongside a Bill of Quantities, in competition with other builders under a set closing date and evaluation criteria.

The estimating principle is identical either way — measure the shell, price the trade packages, add preliminaries and margin — but a tender adds a heavier layer of methodology, program and compliance documentation on top of the price.

Most builders’ under-quotes trace back to a short list of recurring mistakes rather than genuinely uncompetitive pricing.

• Under-pricing preliminaries by copying an allowance from the last job instead of pricing site establishment and supervision for this program and this site.
• Locking in a subcontractor quote that’s gone stale — material and trade prices move, and an old quote can leave a real gap in the final price.
• Leaving provisional sums and PC items vague, so the client assumes they cover more than they actually do and the final account becomes a dispute.
• Missing site-specific costs — difficult access, fall across the block, or extra fencing and traffic management — that a generic cost-per-square-metre rate doesn’t capture.
• Pricing from a drawing revision that’s already been superseded, so the contract price no longer matches what the client actually approved.

On small and mid-sized building companies, the builder or a working director usually prepares the estimate themselves — measuring the shell, chasing subbie quotes and pricing preliminaries between running current jobs on site.

Larger building companies employ a dedicated estimator, or a small estimating team, who works from the full drawing set and specification, manages the subcontractor quoting process, and assembles the cost plan into the tender or contract documentation a project manager will later run the job against.

Either way, the same bottleneck applies: someone has to manually measure the shell of the building off a drawing set before the subcontractor quotes and preliminaries can be reconciled into a single number, which is exactly the step My Trade Hub automates.