Name: The Future of Takeoff & Estimating with AI
Uploaded: 2025-09-24T18:30:40.429Z
Duration: 58 min 19 s
Description: The Future of Takeoff & Estimating with AI

Transcript for "The Future of Takeoff & Estimating with AI": Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's live event, the future of takeoff and estimating with AI. We're really excited to have you join us as we explore how artificial intelligence is transforming one of the most intensive and detail driven parts of the construction industry. Whether you're an estimator, project manager, subcontractor or business owner, today's discussion is about more than just software. It's about how we can work smarter, faster and with greater accuracy. For decades, takeoff and estimating has relied heavily on manual effort. How many of you are still doing manual takeoffs? Countless hours spent reviewing drawings, counting items, and double checking measurements. Now with advances in AI, we're beginning to see a shift from repetitive clicks and markups to intelligent systems that can recognize patterns, interpret drawings, and even flag inconsistencies before they become costly mistakes. In this session, we'll look at the current state of AI in estimating what's possible today and what is just around the corner. We'll also discuss challenges like data accuracy, integration with existing workflows, and adopting in an industry that values precision above all else. Our goal is to give you practical insights into how AI can support your work, improve efficiency, and ultimately help you stay competitive in a changing market. Before we dive in, a quick thank you to all our participants. So many of you submitted thoughtful questions in advance, and we'll do our best to address as many as we can throughout today's program. So let's get started and explore how AI is shaping the future of takeoff and estimating. But first, I would like to introduce our presenters. Teo Thail sorry. Teo Borshe is a seasoned technology executive, serving as vice president of product strategy at ConstructConnect, leading our flagship estimating, takeoff, and platform services portfolio. With over twenty years of experience driving software innovation in the construction industry, Tayo is the architect behind customer focused solutions that streamline pre construction workflows and empower estimators with high impact automation. He is based in Atlanta, Georgia, and he champions the integration of AI, machine learning, and computer vision here at ConstructConnect. Tayo's leadership is rooted in deep domain expertise in construction tech, a track record of building high performance teams, and a passion for solving complex challenges through digital transformation. He continues to shape ConstructConnect's roadmap, directing product innovation towards a future of smarter, more efficient preconstruction and estimating workflows. He is our main AI guy and the one you wanna hear from in this space. We also have Blake Beal, who serves as product manager on the takeoff and estimating team at ConstructConnect. He leads the develop development of Takeoff Boost, which is our innovative AI powered solution, revolutionizing the construction takeoff process. Since joining ConstructConnect in July 2024, Blake has championed advancements in automated wall detection, ceiling takeoffs, and others which you'll learn today, generating time savings for construction professionals, and much more. He is very customer centric, designed, and delivering exceptional user experiences. He's dedicated to transforming construction technology through intelligent automation. His work focuses on streamlining workflows and empowering construction professionals with intuitive, innovative solutions that address real world pain points. He's the SMB on digital takeoff and estimating. And last but certainly not least, we have our wonderful customer, Sherry Winslow. Sherry is the lead estimator at AKS Interior Systems. She brings over thirty years of experience in the construction industry. Her career spends estimating, project management, and accounting slash bookkeeping, which gives her a very well rounded perspective on all sides of construction, from owners and general contractors to subs. For the past five years, Sherry has led estimating at AKS and prior to that, she spent a decade as a successful freelance estimator covering all aspects of building construction. She holds the Gold Seal Certification and is passionate about sharing her knowledge and insights to help guide and inspire the next generation of construction professionals. You're gonna hear a real life experience using AI in the construction industry from Sherry and learn how it's made her life and work a little easier. So are you ready? Let's dive into how AI is helping contractors just like you build smarter, safer, and help you win more projects that will impact your bottom line. Without further ado, I'm gonna pass you over to Tayo. Thanks for that great intro, Natasha. I really appreciate it. As Natasha mentioned, I'm Tayo Borshe, vice president product strategy at ConstructConnect. So I'm gonna kick us off with, you know, through a just take us through the evolution of takeoff and estimating. So a really quick story about my my dad. He went to, he went to trade school. He was a carpenter in the army. He had his own, general contracting business for a while. He used to used to, keep around his his trusty pencil that he sharpened with his carpet knife. Definitely in that old school camp of, you know, pencil to paper, the manual take off estimating approach. Just trying true methods that a lot of people still do today. You know, they're they're very in control, but it all it ultimately is a very, you know, manual tedious process with a lot of repetitive tasks. If we flash forward to the nineties, we had tools like on screen takeoff that, you know, brought takeoff and estimating into the digital age. A lot of efficiency gains where you're drawing linears and areas and, you know, getting auto you know, automatic calculations, you know, off those items, doing things like overlays. Obviously, like, big efficiency gains there, which has been around for a while now. And flashing forward to to the age of AI, so we're seeing, you know, a lot of improvements. We see, like, how quickly AI is evolving. Ultimately, we're still in the very early stages, whereas as exciting as things are as far as, like, AI capabilities, even though it's still very early. And so what we're seeing now is really just, you know, really just in its in its infancy as far as, capabilities and potential. So a quick quote from, KPMG. They found that that 83 of engineering and construction companies say their biggest priority is improving the estimating accuracy of materials and equipment. This, you know, obviously, a pretty high percentage, but it speaks to the importance of getting getting those numbers right, getting that accurate estimate early on because of you know, lies you you know, even the smallest mistake can lead to to very costly overruns. Right? It could mean tens of thousands of dollars when it comes to to the construction phase. So so how can we make this job a bit easier? And that's what, you know, what we'll be what we'll be talking about so we we can really hone in on the the accuracy of these numbers. So if you think of the, you know, the different types of construction takeoffs, right, we obviously have they could run the gamut from a a small remodel project, right, something that might take a few hours to something that could take several days. Right? It could be a a multi story office, office park, office complex, you know, large live work play type of community. This can obviously be very stressful. Right? Dependability on, your construction is is is extremely important. Right? Everyone wants to know, that an that a project is gonna come in, you know, on budget, on time. This can be very stressful where you wanna find those nuances, unique aspects of a project. And, you know, if you're spending your time doing repetitive low value tasks, right, it makes it really hard to to really analyze the project well and and, you know, and find those nuances in a in a timely fashion. So, you know, we had a we actually had a customer that that told me once that whenever he whenever he won a job, his his initial thought was, why did I win? Like, what did I miss? Because he was, you know, worried about that that thing that he missed because, like, what's you know, because he'd gotten bitten in the past. And, such as, you know, just talks speaks to the stress of the the overall stress of the process and just wanting to simplify this and making it making it a bit easier on the estimator. So how can AI benefit preconstruction? So a a few different ways here that, you know, the AI is just used in various industries. So, you know, we talked a little bit about automating repetitive tasks. So if there's something that is, you know, very consistent and you can you can pick up on these consistencies, then AI can be really good at automating those types of things. Uncovering insights from large datasets. So when it comes to preconstruction, if you're thinking about, you know, large document sets, so, obviously, like, hundreds of plans and specifications that might be on a project or large numbers of projects. So you might be looking into, you know, thousands of projects and which one should I should I bid on. You know, predicting future outcomes. So what's your what's your likelihood to win, you know, amongst, you know, a range of projects, things like that. So, you know, a lot of a lot of various, ways that AI can be applied. You know, a lot of what we're gonna be talking about today is most of mainly around that automation of repetitive tasks, for time savings. We'll touch a little bit on the others as we go through. Another quick quote here, from a Gallup study in 2024. So they found that ninety nine percent of US adults use AI weekly, but nearly two thirds don't realize it. So I think, you know, if you use, you know, I'm sure a lot of you subscribe to to Netflix. You shop on Amazon. Some of you may use ChatGPT. You know, all of really AI is becoming extremely mainstream in everything. Right? If you're using, like, recommendation engines, things like that, you won't necessarily see a feature advertised as an AI feature, But there's a high likelihood that, you know, in a lot of those products that you use that AI is being leveraged behind the scenes in some form or fashion. And so just really wanna bring this up in the fact that it's, you know, it's not necessarily about, like, oh, you're gonna see this specific AI feature. It's becoming very commonplace. Right? Every just about every industry is scrambling to get generative AI into their products, leverage the power of these large language models, like ChatGPT in order to, to just, you know, experience the benefits and time savings that that, that they can provide. So what is AI assisted take off? So when we talk about, you know, the relationship of these capabilities to take off specifically, You were talking about a lot of the, you know, repetitive of these automated, the automation of these repetitive tasks. So, you know, it's certainly not a replacement for skilled estimators. So when it comes to finding those nuances of a project, those unique aspects, AI is certainly not gonna be able to do that. And it's certainly not gonna be a 100% accurate. So when it comes to, you know, we I think we're all familiar with, you know, the pain sometimes of of the, you know, a different approach from various architects. Right? Our all architects don't, don't design things in the same way when it comes to their to their plans. They might use slightly different symbols. Sometimes the plans aren't the best quality. Right? So you're at a a bit, a bit at the mercy of the the quality of the plans. Yeah. So it's not gonna and it's not gonna do everything a a human can do, like I mentioned, finding those unique aspects. So, what it can do, though, is give you a really great rough draft to give you a a great head start, on a project and and just kind of remove some of those low value tasks from your plate so that you can focus on more important things. So at ConstructConnect, we like to say that AI won't replace estimators, but estimators who use AI will replace those who don't. This really just comes down to gaining that competitive edge. So, you know, as AI evolves, I mentioned that kind of, you know, being really in the in its infancy. So, you know, it's you're if you're not leveraging it, you're there's no doubt that at at some point your your competitors will lead, and they're gonna be gaining those efficiencies, you know, across their teams while you're still doing those, right, those repetitive tasks that AI can potentially do for you. So, like, we use this, we're using AI, for instance, in, you know, in product management and, in ConstructConnect. We have a lot of written documentation, for instance. And, you know, we'll we'll get our thoughts into something like a chat g p t, get a nice draft of of, you know, maybe a document that we're working on. Is it perfect? Am I gonna submit that to, you know, our leadership team right away? Absolutely not. Right? We're gonna have to go through and refine those things. It's the same idea with, you know, with this AI assisted take off. Right? You get that that nice rough draft that you can then, edit from there. So touching a bit more about that. Right? It's it's really about it's this concept of being easier to to edit than create. So, you know, if you think of starting something from scratch and kind of you know, let's see how, like, a a scenario of a of a junior estimator, right, that's getting started, on a branding project. They have a completely clean slate. There's no conditions, no takeoff done whatsoever. If you can get that nice head start with, you know, the AI assisted takeoff, you can then, like, you know, kind of start to get a a quick understanding of the lay of the land, dive into to some of those, conditions that were created, and, you know, at least take that, you give a little take a little of that edge off of, like, just getting started on something. So it can really be helpful for for someone that's a a little more junior as well. And, you know, and, obviously, for those larger projects, it can take a lot of that, you know, those mundane tasks off your plate. You can go in and just do a little little analyzing, look for some some small corrections, and then move on from there. But really giving you more time to focus on those higher value tasks, You know, really analyzing the scope of work, thinking about potential logistical problems or unique aspects of the job that could, you know, that could lead to headaches down the road, making sure that you're not missing those items. I'm gonna take you through, just a these are all items from a sample plan. Alright. So you have some idea of, like, what a an estimator would do looking at a a sample plan. So these are all representative of these lines of, you know, various linears. You know, the different colors represent different, different types of walls. Right? So, you know, all of these things needing, again, even a digital takeout tool to be done manually by an estimator. You know, we have various items here that would represent counts, various areas that are all uniquely shaped that need to be, you know, kind of just drawn in your digital tool. So this is, again, one, one sample plan from, you know, take out from a table plan that includes a tally of 18 different material conditions, 91 wall segments, 49 uniquely shaped areas, 87 doors and plumbing fixtures. So, you know, imagine going through here and doing all these things by hand. Right? It can obviously be very, very tedious and time consuming and certainly not, you know, not representative of the high value task that a season estimator should really be focused on. So all of those items came from this Takeoff Boost, full plan results. So Takeoff Boost, again, is our, AI automation feature in on screen takeoff today. Takeoff Boost created the results that you're looking at in approximately thirty seconds. So you can see, obviously, the value, the time savings that can be there to, you know, to get these items quickly and then go ahead and be able to to edit from there. We'll take a quick look at, these are some quotes from, one of our customers for Takeoff Boost, Rick Wright Junior. He's a senior commercial, estimator at Jordan Drywall Systems. He mentioned that in a in a previous month, he was able to get 50 bids done with takeoff boost as opposed to a typical 30. So, obviously, speaking to that time savings or any any some other some of the other quotes here, he talks about that monotonous, part of his job. Right? Drawing drawing boxes and lines, these low value tasks. His kids even even laughing at him about the you know, saying he's coloring again as he's as he's working on his takeoff. So, and just mentioning here that he, on the far right here, that he can spend half a day drawing boxes and lines when it comes to these, these areas on linear. So this is just a, you know, perfect example of what some of these these early capabilities with AI are enabling us to do and and the time savings that we have so that, you know, people like Rick can, can focus on those higher value tasks. So last thing I wanna leave you with before I pass it off to to Blake to look at, Takeoff Boost live in action. You know, I've talked to all of these concepts in relation to a single plan or a single project. So ConstructConnect collects hundreds of thousands of projects a year. So imagine if you can take some of these capabilities, these automation capabilities and apply them to these hundreds of thousands of projects. Imagine the intelligence that you could get as far as, you know, regional analysis, trying to find the right projects for you, you know, recommendations, things like that. So that's what we're really excited about as far as this the, you know, the potential that, that these capabilities can give us down the road and the value that we can provide to our customers. So I'll go ahead and pass it off to, to Blake Beal to get a a look at Takeoff Boost. Thanks, Dale. Hi, everybody. Alright. I am excited to show you Takeoff the boost in action. Please bear with me while I get my screen pulled up here. Okay. Perfect. Everyone can see that. Giving a nod. Alright. Perfect. Thank you. So what I'm gonna show you is how we can save you time from drawing those boxes and lines like Tayo was saying. I've got three plans I'm gonna walk through with you. The first one here is a floor plan. I also got two reflected ceiling plans. So, for the sake of this takeoff, let's say that we want to Takeoff some walls, toilets, doors. We wanna get the square footage for each of these rooms. Maybe we're doing, some epoxy on the floors here or we simply just want the square footage for for each room here within this floor plan. So if I kinda zoom in a little bit, you can see, you know, obviously, we've got our icons here for toilets. We've got, our doors here. This is a double door, single door, and then our wall symbols are the squares here. So just think about how long would it take you to do that. If you wanted to draw every single line segment for every single wall here, you gotta go and make the conditions. You gotta make your wall type b condition, your wall type g condition. You gotta draw every single square, the size of this closet, make sure you're counting all the doors correctly. How long will that take you to do, manually? Now I want you to see how it works with Boost. So now actually, so we're gonna come in here. We're gonna click take off Boost, our green button up here on the top, and we are going to select that area to get our areas for each one of these rooms here. Our walls, we know the wall tag is a square, so I'll select square here. And then we wanna count doors and some plumbing fixtures, like bathtub, sinks, that kinda thing, and I'm gonna run Takeoff Boost. I don't have to stop. I don't have to wait for this to keep running. I'm gonna go on over to my reflected ceiling plan page. And for those of you that have seen Takeoff Boost before, everything that I showed on the floor plan, that's nothing new. This is brand new functionality here that that we're excited to be releasing here in the coming weeks. So I've got this reflected ceiling plan and it has our ACT grids, our gypsum wallboard. If I come over here, I select take off boost again. This time, I just wanna do an area take off. I just wanna take off that gypsum wallboard, and that ACT grid. But I don't need to select that area to just get some generic results for that. I can actually select ceilings here and it'll identify those different areas. So I'll run takeoff boost again, and I'm gonna flip over to the next page. Now this is this next page is also a reflected ceiling plan. The difference here is that we've got a little bit more detail on each one of these areas. While I zoom in here, you can see this is ACT one, ACT two. We got some gypsum wallboard here. So we can actually use boost to differentiate these areas as well. Whenever I come in here, I select ceilings. I can just like with walls, select that tag here. It's also a square. Then I'll run take off boost. Now let's go back over to our first page. And you can see it's already taken off all of those conditions. It's drawn all the squares. It's also done it on those two reflected ceiling plans that I've just shown you. Look at all of these conditions it's made. You didn't have to make any of these manually. We created that for you. And, of course, it it can be difficult to work with these results if you're just looking at them all upfront like that. So we've gone a step further too and created these different, layers for you. So I've got my main room here, the square footage count that I could get for that floor. You can pull that anywhere. Here's our corridor here. But I wanna go and I wanna make sure that these wall, these wall types are correct here. So I'm gonna turn off my net areas layer. I'm gonna zoom down and we'll see that I also take off the walls just to verify my counts really quick. We can see that, yep, it's counting that door correctly. Got these sinks here. The toilets is counted all correctly. So all of these things that you have to go and find on yourself and not only make the conditions for, but start popping down points. Now if I turn on my walls, we can see that we got our type b wall here. It's done that correctly. It's done this type b wall correctly. Now for whatever reason, it didn't capture this b type. Might maybe just noisy lines here. But what it did is it said, hey. I don't know what this wall was, but I know there was a wall here. So I'm gonna throw it under this generic wall condition. Now what you can do is, we also know that this wall type b that this yellow line here, I didn't catch. But there's b types all around it. Right? So that's that's probably a wall type b as well. I can just shift click on both of those, right click, and then easily reassign to the wall type b condition. So it's easy as that as fixing some of these results here. And that new that reassigned flow is also new. It's something that'll be available, in the coming months as well. So that way, if we flip over to our reflected ceiling plan here and you can see it's done a pretty good job as well, as at detecting the, the different ceiling types. We've got our gypsum wallboard in green and our ACT grids, in blue here. So this one didn't have any symbols, but did a really good and solid job at detecting those different types. Now one thing that you'll notice for the the keen eyed viewers here is we do have a couple of gypsum soffits that it did not catch. In this hallway, maybe there was some kinda water fountain here. Didn't actually catch those. But again, we got tools to fix that as well. Right? So I can come over here to my break tool on the far right and I can just split that off. I'll split this one off as well, and then I can just select both of these and then right click and then reassign those over to the gypsum wall condition. So like Tayo was saying, it's a lot easier to edit than, creating a blank space here. So Boost is gonna do, most of that manual job for you, but, of course, you wanna go back in. You wanna check double check these results and, make sure that, everything is working correctly there. But it is fairly easy to edit them too. Alright. And our last example here, we can see that on these tags, Boost not only differentiates the ACT and the gypsum wallboard, but it can tell you, this is an ACT one. This is an ACT two over here. We got gypsum wallboard. We've broken these just like with walls, these ceilings out into a separate ceiling condition, separate from the net areas condition. So that way, you know, hey. These are all my areas that boost couldn't tell that were specific to ceilings, and here's all the ones that were specific to, net areas on the floor. So it just kinda further delineates that separation even in cases where we're not entirely sure, what the type was. And, again, you'll notice it didn't capture these a c t twos for some reason, but, again, it's really easy to come back in here and then reassign that over to the a c t two condition that it did make. So, yeah. This is really easy. It's a really good boost to your workflow to make sure that you can, get you started in the right direction. It saves you time from drawing boxes and just working with those results. And don't take don't just take it from me, as of course. We also have our wonderful Sherry Winslow that I'm excited to turn the conversation over towards so you can actually hear, from somebody who uses Boost every day in action. And Sherry's actually gotten to, try out some of these new capabilities herself. So yeah. Sure. I'd love if you could just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your background, kind of projects you go over, all that. Hello, everyone. I'm this is my first time doing webinars, so excuse me if I'm nervous. But anyway, I think, Natasha gave a quick bio on me, most of all of which was correct. I've been estimating for three years and currently working for, a steel framing drywall and acoustics contractor. We typically go after all projects, small, large. We do do a lot of specialty acoustics. So we're interested in projects that have a lot of that kind of work to it, like baffle ceilings and and a lot of stuff that many typical drywalls, at least in our area, are not interested in. We're currently doing the the new library in Guelph, Ontario, which has quite a bit of acoustic wall panels and ceiling panels and baffle ceilings and a lot of a lot of very interesting things. So it's, makes it for a challenge, but a good challenge. So it's it's good. What we go after and we also go after, we're a Trescor certified installer, so we look for projects that have that. And we also, in we get install aluminum grading systems like interior off like, t c three fifty and that kind of that kind of system for, office setups and stuff. So we do a lot, actually. We're quite varied, and we're looking to grow. So Takeoff Boost is a great addition to what we do here, and it helps us bid a lot more stuff. That's great. Tell tell us a little bit about how how long you've been using Boost and what initially drew you to trying it. We've probably been using it. I don't think we've hit the year mark yet. So we're we're fairly new to it. And our first, and it was we were interested in it because we are something that is looking to expand quite exponentially, and we knew we could do that if we had a little bit of help. So we tried it. The price is right on the way, and that helped a lot. And our first, our first experiences with it were very positive. I mean, going from the old old fashioned way that, Tayo described earlier, it even on screen itself is a great improvement. I've been using it for probably fifteen or sixteen years now, but getting the boost was it just made things so much faster. And even though there are certain things that we didn't pick up on, as your demonstration shows, like, they're just very easily remedied by reassigning to where they belong. And, it just cuts down on a lot of the the menial stuff, so, that was appealing. And then recent upgrades that have been made, I'm on the kickoff champions team, so we have kind of early access to some of the upgrades coming. And great improvements are being made every time there's a new release. So and it just makes things more and more accurate every single time. So the ceiling addition is great. That really helps. What what was that that initial ramp up time? Whenever you first got Boost, you were trying it out. You know, was it was there a learning curve to it? What what was it like kind of going from that manual to using Boost? It was just so much faster, obviously. But it I found it was just, it I used to spend a lot of time even just setting the conditions up. Right? You go through your wall of sandbags, and I got this, and I got this, and I got this, and I got this. And I I we have quick bid also. So when I set up the conditions, I will also cost it at the same time. So it does math as I go. And that was just very time consuming, to set up. Like, I would have jobs with literally hundreds hundreds of conditions to it And take off this just does it for you, basically. And you may have to add a little information because it's gonna call it, you know, well tight. So you might have to kinda make some notes to it. What like, what is that? What's that well made of or what's in that? And, so there's a little bit of there's nothing you wouldn't have to do anyway. So it's not a it's not a huge deal, but, I just it was just so much faster and just less It's more the media stuff is gone. You know? And you're you're only focusing on the important things. Yeah. That makes sense. I'm glad glad to hear that. What what percentage of projects would you say that you're using Boost on? I would say narrow is probably in the 80% range. And the only reason that's not a 100 is I I will I might even try it on some projects, but then totally remove all the take off because the drawings just aren't conducive to AI. There's there's too much there's too much noise, you know, going on on the plane. Too many lines, too many they they try to cram too much information on one page, so it it makes it a little confusing. But I would say around 80% of the projects that we're doing right now, I I use this for. I will at the beginning of the week or at the end of the week, depending on my schedule, I will I'll look at all my projects that have coming up that I haven't loaded into into OnyxStream, and I'll load them in, and I'll auto name them. And then I'll just set boost and just and I'll do, like, four or five projects in, like, half an hour. I've done. And it's all set up, and it helps from especially the specialty part, like, specialty ceiling. Because it's something you need to get pricing out for, you need to send quantities and specs and stuff to your supplier to say, like, I need pricing on this. And it's it's already the the quantity is already done. You don't have to wait until your your tape off is done and all this. You're you're literally sending it to them the same day that you made them in the on screen. You're giving them enough time to give you that price back. So that helps too. Yeah. You so you said you're able to do those, those projects in a half an hour. How how long do you feel like that would have taken you without? Oh, jeez. Well, I did yesterday, I did I think I loaded three projects up and did on screen or did the boost, for the floor plans and the ceiling plans in, like, twenty minutes, and that probably would have taken me couple days if I was doing them all from scratch. Wow. Because one was a a multi rise. It was multi multiple floors. So it would have taken a long time to and even though, obviously, the ability to copy and paste, which is, you know, or repeat the page and all that kind of helpful stuff, you you still gotta get the first one done. So it just helps that way. Yeah. That that makes me think of, you know, something you were saying you said whenever you first came on about, the price being right. You know, do do you feel like you're really getting your money's worth out of it? Oh, yeah. You know, speak to that a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just an example I just did, I did I did three projects in, like, say, half an hour because it's a wrong number. And instead of three days, like, how much how much money is that? And that's just in one day that we saved. Right? Awesome. Yeah. Just a couple more questions for you, Sherry, here. If if you had to go back to manual estimating tomorrow, what would you miss the most? I wouldn't I wouldn't have enough time to do what I need to do. It would be I'd be working more hours for sure, but just the ease of of, the, like, the mindless take off of the drawing of boxes and the lines, and it's just it's the monotony. Right? So you get rid of all that, and everything you do from that is is challenging now. It's not mindless. Like, it's not provoking, and it's just more enjoyable. I know people think I'm crazy because estimating is crazy, but, it I like the challenge of it, and, it just gives me that, which is helpful. And the one thing I do wanna say is because we are growing we're hiring estimator, and I think on screen in general, but Boost is also gonna help that person. This this person is generally estimating from scratch. No. It's nothing. They have field experience, but they have no office experience and no academic experience. And I think this is gonna really get rid of that monotony because anyone can draw a line. Right? So it's not gonna take, as long to teach them their lives, so to speak. So I'm looking forward to that. That's great. So you feel like it's it helps with onboarding newer newer kind of inexperienced people. Yeah. We don't have to waste time with those monotonous tasks. We can focus on the real learning, right, the real teaching. So Yeah. Or where you can really add value as an estimator. Exactly. Exactly. Great. Yeah. Sherry, I have a last question for you. What would you tell another estimator who's on the fence about using AI in their takeoff? I would just just try it. Like, you just until you experience it. And I we saw, you know, ads for it and stuff before we bought it, and it's like, oh, it can't be that good. You know? But it is. Like, it really and even, like, if even if it doesn't get it a 100% correct, you you reassign a couple things, it's just such a time saver. Like, rather than spending a couple hours drawing the boxes, you're literally picking 10 things and reassigning it somewhere else. That takes two minutes. So it's it's it's really a no brainer as far as I'm concerned. So and worst case scenario, if you do boost and it doesn't give you the result you need and you look at it, you know, it's too much reassigning. I'm gonna waste more time than I would've. Then get rid of it. Do it the old way. Whatever. Do it. Yeah. That makes sense. It's really like like anything else. Right? Just you the only way you can learn it is by doing anything. You I think we yeah. We spoke with others who, they you I think as you learn like, you were kind of mentioning earlier, you kinda learn what plan boost works really well on those, like, clear architectural plans. And then, well, there's a lot of architects out there who will say they get fairly creative with how they they draw things and boost maybe doesn't work so well on those. They kinda get a sense where where it's right to use, where it's not right to use. Yeah. And sometimes, even if you're not sure, like you say, you could just run boost. And if you find it it it picks up on too much stuff that you didn't wanna see, let's see. You can just get rid of it. Like, it's it's pretty easy. Or maybe you wanna retain part of it, you know, whatever. But it's it's pretty easy to edit, so that makes it worthwhile. And a lot of our techs and I think that's, going back to what Tayo was saying about, the quality of drawings and stuff. Like, that's your guy from your perspective and the design perspective of of the software, and that's your biggest roadblock. It's gonna be, you know, with with so many varying symbols and every architect has a different way of doing things, and you have to teach yourself how to read all of that, which is a big ask. But it's doing a great job. I'm glad to hear it. That's definitely what we wanna do is save you time. If it's not saving you time, we're not doing our jobs. Yeah. We have, I've been tasked here at AKS with, tripling the size of our company in three years, so I need all the help I can get. Well, yeah. Thank you so much for your time, Sherry. I think, are we heading to question now? Might are we having Natasha come back up? Awesome. That was great. Blake, thank you so much for that demo. That was fantastic. Sherry, again, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you being here. We can talk all we want about boost, but it's there's nothing like the experience of a a customer who truly uses it to, to show the the impact. Before we go into the q and a section, I'm gonna share a poll. If you could just take a second to to answer the questions on your screen. If you have a wonderful story that you'd like to share, please respond yes, and we definitely will contact you. Give it one more second. Alright. And if you didn't have a chance to answer, you can always reach out to our customeradvocacy@customeradvocacyatconstructconnect.com. Alright. Okay. I know we answered a lot of questions you may have. We saw more questions come in, and so we'll try our best to get answers to all of them. The first question I have is for Tayo. What are the biggest challenges the construction industry faces when adopting AI for take off and estimating? Yeah. I would say I mean, Sherry, feel free to chime in on this as well. But from my perspective, I think it's just the the change of of workflow, right, and, like, the ability you know, trusting the results. So I think when it comes down to, like, the, you know, kind of working with, like, an editing mindset as opposed to creating, I I think that's obviously, you know, it's a big change for people as well as, we're not expecting protection or, as I mentioned, AI is not perfect. So being willing to, you know, take those efficiency gains and go in go ahead and make a, you know, some adjustments kinda work more on that editing mindset. That's awesome. I had a a comment on the trust issue that Tayo just mentioned. So when we first started trying Boost, it it worked great, but there were quite a few, items that didn't pick up on correctly and that we had to reassign into the right place. So there was always that little, oh, is it gonna pick it up? But I will say the recent release, the the newer releases of it have really improved that. So the the the trust in it has definitely increased. So I just wanted to put that out there. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much for that answer. The next one is how can AI be better used in estimating as a whole? I know we went over some of this, but is there anything you'd like to add? Yeah. I think, I mean, I mentioned some of these. I think in general, there's, you're obviously in those early phases, right, looking at looking at just, you know, automating some of these repetitive tasks. But I think when it comes to, you know, further down the road, I think, like, historical analysis of bids. Right? If you have if you're looking at, like, kind of just doing overall analysis of historical bids, seeing, like, where your bids are coming in and things like that because it really could be a potentially, really useful flow. Likelihood to win jobs, like I mentioned, like, getting into a project selection if you're trying to kind of see if you can only if you only have time to bid so many jobs, like, which one should I bid? You know, trying to trying to help hone in on that. And then just, you know, in general, you know, like, trend analysis, things like that, will be really interesting, I think, as this as we're able to scale more of these capabilities. So just a kind of a few ideas. Awesome. Thank you so much, Tayo. I have a question for you, Blake. With AI becoming the new verge of competitive nature, how will there be any competitive bidding if all contracts come in around the same mark? Yeah. Great question. So I think I don't think AI necessarily eliminates the competitive advantage. I think it just shifts them. Right? Take off is just kind of one piece of estimating. You still have, you know, your labor cost, your late relationships, your project execution capabilities, all those kinds of things. It's great. You make a differentiation. Right? Now if your if your bid is relying on maybe getting a more accurate measurement than most people, it's I don't think it's the the best thing to be to be competitive on. Right? You know, at the end of the day, the the building is the building and everyone's gonna have the same measurements or at least ideally get to the same measurements. I think this actually helps, like, smaller estimators compete with larger estimating teams because they're able to do those. It's a lot faster now. So I don't I don't think it necessarily eliminates it. I think it kinda just shifts the advantages and what what's, you wanna focus on in your bed. Awesome. Thank you so much. This question came through quite a bit, pre event as well as in the chat. Can AI read and count the alphanumeric labels on items and fixtures? That one's for you, Blake. Yeah. I think we, saw this with Boost. Right? So whenever we're determining, a a wall type or a ceiling type, we have to read those. And, really, what we're doing is this this technique called computer vision. It's essentially teaching it to know what a b one is, right, or a a a c t dash one is. Right? And those are there's certainly challenges faced with that. I mean, kind of the same things that you would face as a human whenever you get a one. Is that a one or an l or an I or and then eight is sideways. Is that a b? You know, those kinds of things. But those are things that we kinda face as humans too. So, it's definitely something that is a core part of the making sure that you can automate takeoff is detecting those kinds of characters. It's great. Gets in the way of that is that they are expected to use the same symbol for, like, everything. You know? Instead of a wall being a diamond and a window being a square and something else being a circle, they're like, they're all diamonds. Then it gets a little messy but yeah. I would not I think it reads it quite well to be honest. The other question that came through quite a bit, Blake, was can various file forms be uploaded to this program and have it extract scope? So JPEGs, PDF, text, doc, etcetera. Yeah. I think there's there's maybe two questions there. The first one is, you know, what kind of formats does Boost itself take? It's really like, if you can upload it in the on screen takeoff, Boost will read it. Essentially, on screen is, you know, a part of, sending it to Boost. And so if you can upload it on screen, whether it's a PDF or a TIFF, that's that's what Boost will read as well. Now there's that there the second part of that about extracting scope, I think that's, you know, more along the lines of, like, what you find in a scope document itself or a spec document. And so that's one where you might upload that to something like chat g p t or cloud or something and kind of ask it questions in that sense. But as far as I'm aware, those those tools kinda take any format as well. They kinda work with whatever you can give them. I'd share it. I'd be curious your thoughts. I don't know if that's something that you've ever tried. No. Actually, I I we only PDF and TIFF files, just to be clear. Most of the drawings we generate are PDF, so it's not a big issue. And scope, our our our trade's pretty obvious, but it did it did find a question for me or for me to ask you, Greg, is there ever going to be in future upgrades to boost to look for a certain word say in on the drawing. Like, for instance, we're we're an authorized installer for a TrustScore product. And a lot of times, I might see a Spectrum TrustScore and go, yay. There's TrustScore. I got something to price now, but I can't find it on the drawing. So we're not supposed to search for that kind of that kind of search as opposed to a wall or ceiling. That's a great question. It's definitely something that we've talked a lot about. And there's you know, it's tough. There's there's things that, there there's really kind of two main whenever people think of AI, they usually think of, like, chat g p t. Right? And chat g p t is really good at, like, reading documents, for, like, scope. And then there's the vision side, which is, like, what we're doing on the takeoff and, you know, actually finding the walls and the areas and things like that. Can actually be significantly harder. Like, if you try to get chat g p t to do that, it's not gonna do a very good job. But, like, to your question about finding specific words and things like that, that's definitely something that we've talked a lot about. I I don't have a great answer on when or if that will get implemented, but it's it's certainly something that's been that's been discussed before that we'd like to do. We actually have a a clause on all our quotes that say and I'll I'll put it in English instead of leave the leads. But if you mention it in the spec, but you don't show me where it is on the drawing, it's not included. That that happens all the time. Yeah. They get put a spec through and it's got all these little things and you're like, well, that's lovely. But where does it go? Yeah. So yeah. I was just curious. That was a great question, Sherry. Good. Here's another question that continuously comes up when we talk about AI and in every facet, every business, every job. What is the best way for us to gain confidence in the takeoff performed by AI? Just do Yeah. I think that yeah. Exactly. It's an individual preference, I think. To tell something, you have to try it. You have to use it. And if you get a positive, experience with it, then you it's good. You test it. Yeah. Learning by doing. Right? I mean, I you you'll you'll never learn to play an instrument unless you sit down and play it. So it's the same thing with any new tool or process. Mhmm. Mhmm. That's a great answer. Just do it. Yeah. I know you'll get used to too what it picks up on. Do you or you can look at a plan and go, I know it's not gonna touch or that. You know? Or it might touch it, but it's just a wall. Because there's no sign of saying in because there's too much too much going on around it. And you and you get used to what it can pick up on and what can't. And then well, if it misses something, it's really obvious because it's not colored. So it's easy to cut. Awesome. Blake, we have some trade specific questions. Now I won't go through each of them, but you wanna just give us kind of a high level on what boost does cover. So there were some questions on whether there's been any significant develops with concrete estimating, drywall estimating, electrical takeoffs, any, trade specific kind of updates you can give us? Yeah. I'll say boost definitely works best for interior the interior drywall trade. That's really kinda where it started and where I think it performs best. We we have a next immediate focus on painters. So if you're a painter, I'd love to talk to you. We got some exciting updates coming very soon for that. But we also have other teams out there that are dedicated to really expanding what what Boost can do for things like concrete and electrical. You know, the short end of it, at the end of the day, we want we want everyone to be able to automate their takeoff. So it's really not a matter of if, it's more a matter of when. Awesome. That's great. I'm so sorry. I I still sorry, Natasha. Oh, no. Some of my customers from my freelance state, and so I do do takeoffs for painting and masonry and other things that you're talking about. But And and boost it it works in most instances except for, exterior elevations it struggles with when I'm taking off, like, brick and air or something like that. But but it it is very adaptable. You just have to tell it what you're looking for. I have a question for you, Theo. I'd like you to answer first and then, Sherry, I'd love for you to weigh in if possible. But the question that came through was what benefits can estimators achieve in work stability and family quality time with faster and more accessible AI resources. Yeah. And I I think, obviously, it all comes down to time savings, right, focusing on those higher value, the higher value tasks. And and that might very well be spending more time with the in the opposite because you're able to save time, you know, not having to do these mundane tasks. So I think, that to me is, you know, a key aspect that we that we hear. And then that was, you mentioned on that, from RipRight as well, the customer that I talked about. But, yeah. So I think it's it's about, you know, saving you that time and then use you know, you're able to spend time on the the things you, that give more value to you. Sherry, anything you wanna add or any insight that you have found in, the real world regarding this question, time back, anything that you can share? Mine's probably not the greatest response. He's might tell me workaholic because rather than, you know, saying, oh, I got, you know, eight hours worth of work done before so I can take the afternoon off. No. I just keep working and I just do one work. Not sure that's probably what you wanna hear, but if I could, I would take the the afternoon off. But there's always there's always more more to do. So But having Boost allows you to do more. To do more. Yeah. And like I say, I our sales department here has been tasked with a substantial growth ask, so I just keep plugging away. Sherry, I have some questions for you. Is the takeoff software so is takeoff boost easy to establish? How long did it take you to get up and running? What's the trend the the transition, the learning curve? Do you wanna give some, some feedback on how that was for your team? Yeah. It was it wasn't much at all. I mean, you you buy a license just like you would for on screen or or a quick bill if you have that as well. And once the license is you just activate the license and that little green button that, the wife is hitting, and it pulls up a window. You tell it what you want to look for. Actually, set the scale, of course. Yes. You set the scale. Let's get that. And, you just tell it what you want it to look for, and, and then you say go and it and it does it. So the there was really no learning curve. It's just they still pop up when you tell it what what what you want what you wanna see. Yeah. Yeah. And one thing to note as well, if, you know, if you are an existing OST user that does not currently have boost, you can do a a free and app trial as well. So just look for that, look for that green button, and you can go ahead and try now. Awesome. I know we did have a question come through during the webinar asking if there was a free trial. I think this question is for you, Tayo, or any of you can answer. But how would AI be useful to someone just starting a company? For example, fencing rental. What AI tour tools are affordable but scalable, or those who have limited budgets? How how can they start using Boost using AI? Yeah. I would say I mean, just a kind of a housing context first. I think I mean, it's honestly it's a very it's a pretty reasonably cost pretty reasonably priced tool. So I think that's one thing, right, for someone just starting out. So it's not it's not very expensive. It can be purchased at the, you know, the user level so you can easily get in and try it out from, you know, see if it works for you. So if you do have OST, you know, give it a try, see if it see if it benefits you. I think also it kind of plays if you're if you are just starting out, kinda plays into what Sherry touched on and I talked touched on around the junior estimators. Right? So trying to give you kind of a head start on, you know, conditions that are created and the takeoff that's created and just kind of getting you a little bit of that assistance and a head start if you're trying to just, like, dive into it, a brand new takeoff. So, yeah, those those would be the things that they come to mind from my side. I don't know if Sherry would like to be able to add there. I was gonna say the only thing I would add is if you're in your company, I mean, you obviously you wanna price a lot of work. Do you wanna get in the door? Do you wanna, you know, establish yourself in something that that will take off boost would allow you to just price more work, get more work. You know? And from the senior perspective, if you had someone just doing the, you know, the minor they thought as we're calling it, it would it would leave someone with more experience, maybe that company owner who's just starting out to do all the pricing because we got all the quantities done. Okay. They put the the solace to it, and it's finished, you know, Depending on how complex the traders were talking about. But I mean, a lot of the leg work would be done by by literally anyone. I think it's you wouldn't have to have a lot of estimating training knowledge to in order to use this. This is Thank you so much. Will AI software handle multiple takeoff items on each page slash, or elevation, Blake? Sorry. Mute button was a little slow there. Yes. I think as we saw in the the demo there, I was able to take off three pages at once. You can take off up to five pages at once. But really what that means is if I'm taking off and I'm going through those five pages and the first one finishes, then I can take off another one. Right? So it's kinda continuous. It's just five at any given moment whenever it's running. So it really should give you as many as you need whenever you when you need to take it off. And it's being multiple items. Like, it's taking off walls and sinks and doors and toilets, like, whatever you've asked it to do. You don't have to run it separately. It's all done in one shot. Well, I think that brings us to the end of our q and a section. Before I do my conclusion, Sherry, Tayo, Blake, anything you wanna add? Any last comments, last thoughts? I just wanna thanks again to Sherry for for joining us. It's super valuable, like, customer perspectives. I really appreciate that and appreciate all of you on the webinar that joined us. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sherry. Thank you, Theo and Blake as well for joining us. If you'd like if you like what we showed you today and are ready to maximize your workflow, click the doc section at the top of your screen and hit try take off boost now. Thank you to our speakers, and thank you all for joining us today for faster, more accurate takeoffs and estimating with AI. As we've seen today, AI isn't here to replace the estimator. It's here to empower them from streamlining takeoffs to improving accuracy to freeing up time for higher value decisions like spending time with your family. AI is reshaping how we approach estimating. The future isn't about removing the human element, but about combining your expertise with the speed and precision of technology. The big question you may have is, with AI, what will my job look like in three years? What will my teams look like? Well, the future of work is hybrid, AI and humans working together. I encourage you to take what you learned today, explore these tools, and see how they can fit in your own workflows, and think about the opportunities they can unlock for your business. Keep an eye out for a follow-up email with today's recording, additional resources, and ways to connect with us. We have a webinar coming up in December, talking about OST and our project intelligence platform. So whether you're looking to grow your business, grow your pipeline, stream your estimating process, please join us for that. Thanks again for your time and attention and commitment to building a better future with the help of technology. Now you can focus on what matters most, which is analyzing results, optimizing pricing, and winning more bids. We'll see you in December. Thank you, guys. Have a great day. Thanks.