What actually eats the time in estimating
Few contractors lose time to arithmetic. The time goes into reading the specifications, picking quantities off the drawings, hunting for contradictions by hand and typing the same information into three places. When you think about speeding up, think about these steps separately. A tool can be brilliant at one and useless at all the others.
The other truth is this: a wrong quantity costs more than slow estimating. Speed without cross-checking only moves the error into the tender faster.
By hand in Excel
Your own Excel template is free, it already exists and it bends to anything. Building one good template and an up-to-date unit price list is often the single biggest improvement a small contractor can make.
The limit comes when quantities have to be picked off the drawings by hand, when the same information lives in three files, or when the formulas exist only in one person's head. Then the error stays invisible until the job is already sold.
A ready-made estimating program
The market has several options, for example Admicom Ultima, Projekta, Easoft and Fondion. Massoi is the exception among them in that it reads quantities with AI straight from the drawings and supports PDF, DWG and IFC files. Massoi says it does in minutes what takes an experienced estimator 1–3 days. That is the vendor's own claim, not an independent measurement.
A licence usually consists of a fixed monthly price and a per-user charge, and your company's turnover can also affect the price.
A program fits when your projects are similar enough and you estimate regularly. It does not fit if every project is different, or if the program forces you to price by someone else's logic.
Outsourcing the estimating
Tender and quantity calculation can be bought as a service. TP-palvelu targets construction firms with a turnover of 0.5–20 million euros and limited estimating capacity. Other providers include m2-Laskenta, Areite and Nieminen Company. Areite prices quantity take-off per project based on an expert's estimate of the work involved, and per-project pricing is common in the field.
Outsourcing fits when tender requests arrive in seasonal peaks beyond what you can calculate. It does not fit when you need the price the same day, or when estimating skill is the competitive edge you do not want to move outside the firm.
Your own AI agent
The fourth way is to build an agent taught on your specifications, your hourly rates and your scoping rules. The agent reads the tender documents in full, picks the quantities, prices the job with your formulas and delivers the draft into the system you already use.
The difference from a ready-made program is that the agent follows your rules, not the software's. The difference from outsourcing is that the knowledge stays in the firm.
With us, one agent costs from 5 900 euros and 149 euros a month, the whole office from 12 900 euros and 349 euros a month, at 0 % VAT. The price is fixed and agreed in writing before work starts. For comparison, the average salary of a cost estimator in Finland is 4 198 euros a month (Duunitori 2024), about 5 000 euros a month with employer costs.
Comparison
| Method | Fits when | Does not fit when | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| By hand in Excel | A few tenders a month and familiar project types | Quantities must be picked off drawings by hand | No money, but your own time |
| Ready-made program | Similar projects and regular estimating | Your pricing logic does not fit the program | Monthly licence and a per-user charge |
| Outsourced estimating | Peaks exceed your own capacity | The price is needed the same day | Per project, by the amount of work |
| Your own AI agent | The same work repeats weekly and the rules exist | The process has not been written down yet | Implementation plus a monthly fee |
The table scrolls sideways.
An example from painting contracting
J&B Tasoitus ja Maalaus Oy is a painting contractor with a one-person office. The agent reads the building and room specifications, picks the quantities, prices the job with the company's own hourly rates and delivers the tender draft straight into the company's estimating app. The owner checks the numbers and sends.
The essential part is not the speed but the rule: a quantity from a single source is never accepted as a basis for a price. The agent takes the client's bill of quantities, measures the drawing itself and then runs a sanity check that says whether the number is physically possible. In one project the drawing's title block was missing the scale entirely, and the wrong assumption would have produced four times the actual area. The spacing of the seat rows revealed the true scale before any price was calculated.
When none of these is worth buying
- You price fewer than a couple of tenders a month, so no tool pays for itself
- Every project is different and no unit price list exists
- The pricing rules live in one person's head and must first be written down
- Nobody has time to review the results, and every draft needs a human sign-off
This applies to our own solution too. If there is not enough repetitive work, we say so straight out in the first free call and sell nothing.
What to ask before buying anything
- Where do the quantities come from, and are they checked against a second source
- Are your unit prices used, or the vendor's assumptions
- Can you see the reasoning behind the calculation, or only the final sum
- Where does the finished tender go, and does it reach your system without manual work
- Who owns the estimating data if you stop
- What the whole first year costs, implementation and monthly fees combined