For construction, fit-out and design companies.
One estimating system for the companies that price building work. Below is what it does for each kind of company, each kind of work and each role, and what it does not do yet.
By sector.
Construction contractors
A tender arrives as drawings, specifications and the client's bill. Writguard sorts the pack and shows only what is missing, measures on the CAD and PDF drawings, prices from your own rate book and your subcontractors' quotes, and holds the quotation until a named person approves it.
Uses take-off, BOQ preparation, supplier quotes, tender and quotation and revisions.
Fit-out companies
Partitions, ceilings, floors, doors and joinery. Lengths and areas are measured on the general arrangement and the reflected ceiling plan, doors and fittings are counted from one example, and every rate comes from your rate book, a supplier's quote or a build-up you can open.
Uses take-off, estimating and rate build-ups, supplier quotes and tender and quotation.
Design and build studios
When you design and build, your own drawings become the bill. Each number stays tied to the sheet and revision it came from, so a design change shows up as flagged quantities on the quotation rather than as a surprise later.
Uses take-off, revisions, and the first number after a meeting, which is in design.
By type of work.
Quantity take-off built
Set the scale from two points, then code measures the lines of a CAD file or a PDF drawing that you point at. Box one symbol and Writguard finds its copies, turned, moved or mirrored, as a grid you tick before anything is counted. On a scanned sheet a person measures by eye, and the quantity counts only when a named person confirms it.
limit: how accurate symbol counting is on drawings we have not seen is not yet measured.
BOQ preparation built
The bill as a grid, with Excel in and out. A client's bill is read in as it is, sorted into item types, and the gaps that matter are listed, not every blank cell.
Estimating and rate build-ups built build-ups in review
A rate is recommended only from a confirmed row of your rate book or a valid supplier quote. Otherwise the line says it needs a price. Past jobs appear as a range beside the line, never as the rate, and your estimator sets every final rate. Build a rate up from labour, material, plant and subcontract, each on stated price terms.
limit: we claim no pricing accuracy.
Supplier quotes and levelling built
Requests for quotes are drafted in your company's layout, and a named person approves, edits or declines each one. Replies in Excel, PDF or plain text become quotes. VAT is converted with its working shown, a supply-only quote stays out of "lowest" until a person adjusts it, and a quote in another currency is refused.
limit: sending from your company mailbox is not built yet; you send approved requests yourself.
Tender and quotation built
Margins, markups, VAT and alternates on the quotation. Checks run over the whole bill, and the quotation is issued only when every finding is fixed or accepted with a reason and a named person approves it. An issued version is never edited; a revision carries its list of changes.
Drawing revisions built
When a new revision replaces a sheet, every quantity measured on the old one is flagged through to the money, and the quotation waits until someone re-accepts it on the new sheet, re-measures it, or keeps it with a reason.
By role.
Quantity surveyors and estimators built
The tender's stages across the top, the bill beside the drawing, and the source of every number one click away: the drawing it was measured on, the rate-book row, the supplier's quote, or the person who typed it. Code does the arithmetic. AI only drafts wording and suggests item types, and it never writes a number.
Business developers and owners in design
A first number on the phone after a meeting: the area, the type of job and the location go in, and a range comes out with what it is based on beside it, never a single figure. Then it goes to the QS.
limit: it ships only after a blind test shows how far off the range is.
Coming next.
The other work in a construction, fit-out or design company. None of it is built yet.
Site records and cost actuals not built
Site diaries, controls and what the job actually cost, against what was priced.
Design stages, approvals and drawing control not built
Stages, client approvals, samples and the drawing register, kept with their revisions.
Client approvals and handover not built
The client's record, approvals and communication, through to handover.