Takeoff vs. Estimate: What Each One Is, and Which One You Need

Ask three contractors what a takeoff is and you will get three answers, and all three will be partly right. The words matter when you are buying the work from somebody else, because a service that sells "takeoffs" and a service that sells "estimates" are selling different documents at different prices, and the one you need depends on what you plan to do with it.

What a takeoff is

A takeoff is the measuring step. Somebody reads the plan set, finds every piece of scope for a trade and turns it into quantities on a basis that matches how the work is bought: area for insulation and drywall, length for footings and trim, volume for concrete, counts for piers and fixtures. The output is a list of quantities, ideally with the sheet each came from and a marked-up drawing showing where. There are no prices on a takeoff, and a good one does not need them to be useful.

What an estimate is

An estimate is a takeoff with money attached. Each quantity is multiplied by a rate — yours, or a published one — and the lines a plan never shows are added: equipment, mobilisation, waste, markup, tax. The total at the bottom is what the job is expected to cost, or, if the rates are sell rates, what it is expected to be sold for. An estimate is only as good as the rates behind it, which is why the right rates are the contractor's own.

What a bid is

A bid is the estimate dressed to go out: on your letterhead, with your scope, exclusions and terms, as an offer the customer can accept. The numbers may be identical to the estimate; the difference is that a bid is a document you stand behind, which is why a contractor should read every line of an outsourced estimate before it becomes one.

Side by side

Which one to order from a service

Order quantities only if you have your own pricing worked out and want to keep control of it, or if the estimate will feed a spreadsheet you already run. Order a priced estimate if you want a document you can review and send, and — this is the part that matters — only if it will be priced at your rates. A priced estimate at somebody else's rates is a document you will have to re-price anyway. Some services, including ours, let you enter your price list once and choose it on each order, which gets you the ready-to-send document without giving up the rates.

The one check that applies to both

Whether you ordered a takeoff or an estimate, confirm one printed dimension on the plan against the measured figure before you do anything else. A wrong scale is wrong everywhere by the same ratio, which is exactly why it does not look wrong, and it is the one mistake that survives into both documents unchanged.

Written by the team at Opulence Built, who also run an insulation and concrete contracting business. We mention our own software where it is relevant and say so when we do.