Industries / General contractors
Estimating built for bid day.
A general contractor’s estimate is an assembly of other people’s numbers. The database has to span every division, the takeoff has to feed it cleanly, and on bid day you need to level dozens of subcontractor quotes without a spreadsheet.
What’s different here
What makes estimating different here.
Breadth over depth
You price every CSI division rather than going deep on one. A database built for a specialty sub will not carry a GC’s scope, and a generic template will not carry your history.
Bid day is the constraint
Quotes land in the last two hours. Leveling them by hand is where scope gaps get missed and margin quietly disappears — that’s the moment the software has to earn its place.
Self-perform complicates it
Most GCs self-perform something — concrete, carpentry, sitework. Those scopes need crew-based costing sitting alongside the packages you’re buying out.
Alternates and value engineering
Owners ask for options. Rebuilding an estimate three ways by hand is a day you don’t have; it should be a structural feature of the estimate, not a copy-paste exercise.
How we set it up
What the implementation includes.
Kickoff to live in weeks, not months, using the internal tools we’ve built for implementation.
- A full-division Sage Estimating database structured to the way you break out work, not a stock template
- BidMatrix configured for your bid packages so subcontractor quotes level automatically and scope gaps surface before you submit
- Assemblies with real formulas for the scopes you self-perform, priced on your own crews and production rates
- Alternates and WBS set up so value engineering is a switch rather than a rebuild
- eTakeoff Dimension wired to the database so quantities move once, correctly
What you’ll likely run
The tools that carry the most weight here.
Starting databases
Database marketplace →- Commercial General Contractorby Construction Support Services
- Industrial General Contractorby Construction Support Services
- Industrial GC Databaseby Database Solutions
- Metric General Contractorby Database Solutions
- Comprehensive Industrialby Database Solutions
- Commercial Knowledgebase, Standardby Sage
- Commercial Knowledgebase, Extended with modelsby Sage
- RSMeans Building Construction Cost Data (BCCD)by Sage
- RSMeans Building Construction Cost Data, metricby Sage
- RSMeans Building Construction Cost Data, open shopby Sage
- RSMeans Light Commercialby Sage
- RSMeans Greenby Sage
- RSMeans Repair & Remodelby Sage
- RSMeans Assemblies Composite Databaseby Sage
- RSMeans Civil Composite Databaseby Sage
- RSMeans Commercial Composite Databaseby Sage
- RSMeans Facilities Composite Databaseby Sage
- RSMeans Master Union Databy Sage
- BNI Cost Databy BNI Cost Data
Tell us how your team estimates.
We’ll tell you whether your setup needs configuring, rebuilding, or something written from scratch.
- Response time
- One business day, usually the same day.