Product — Takeoff Lab
The platform

One platform.
Every project type.

Takeoff Lab is not a single tool. It's a complete preconstruction platform for utility-scale renewables and high-voltage infrastructure. Substation, MV collection, bid leveling, spec analysis, project scheduling, budgetary estimating, proposal generation — all in one place, all built on the same AI extraction engine. And all of it is customizable: we build to your process and integrate with the systems you already run.

The Takeoff Lab projects workspace — every tool in the left rail and active projects across substation, MV collection, scheduling and cable management
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What's inside

Seven tools today. One engine. Room for what you need next.

01

Substation Estimating

Read vendor drawings from every major EPC and engineering firm. Produce professional-estimator parity in minutes, with every number traceable to the sheet it came from.

02

MV Collection System

Upload a site layout, one-line diagram, or cable schedule. A full bid drops in 5 minutes with sub-2% accuracy.

03

Bid Leveling

Compare subcontractor bids side by side. Flag exceptions, normalize scope, choose confidently — and see what each vendor left out.

04

Spec Analysis

AI reads specification documents. Extracts requirements, flags exceptions, cross-references to project scope — and cites the page every answer came from.

05

Project Scheduler

Timeline management integrated with bid data. Tasks, dependencies, and what is actually driving your finish date. Substation scope for now.

06

Budget Estimator

Put a credible number on a project before drawings exist. Scope inputs, market conditions, and commodity movement are weighed against your own completed bids — so the budgetary figure you hand a client is grounded in what your firm has actually built.

07

Proposal Generator

The bid is done — now the proposal is due. Scope narrative, inclusions, exclusions, clarifications, schedule, and pricing draft straight from the approved estimate, in your firm's template and your firm's language. The estimator edits and signs off instead of starting from a blank page.

08

And whatever your process needs next

These seven are what's shipping today. The extraction engine underneath them is general — which means a tool that doesn't exist yet is a build, not a rewrite. If your team runs a step no software has touched, that becomes tool number eight.

See how we build it with you
Proprietary drawing conventions no standard extractor reads
Rollups and cost codes shaped to your bid structure
Integrations with the systems your team already runs
Entirely new tools for steps we haven't built yet
The workflow

Drawings to bid, in four steps.

01

Upload

Drawings, specs, cable schedules — whatever the estimator has. PDF, Excel, images.

02

Extract

AI reads like an experienced estimator. Materials counted, quantities extracted, vendor conventions understood.

03

Calculate

Your customizable calculation engine runs the numbers — your rules, your pricing, integrated with your systems.

04

Estimate

Real-time BOM. Estimator reviews, adjusts, overrides where judgment matters. Bid drops in minutes.

Traditional workflow
Drawings Estimator hand-counts Manual spreadsheet Bid
1–2 days
Takeoff Lab workflow
Drawings AI extraction Your calc engine Estimator reviews Bid
10–15 min
Case study

Case study: substation platform in production

A utility-scale renewables EPC ran a real substation bid through Takeoff Lab. Their professional estimator produced a $7,181,270.90 total. Our platform produced $7,183,887.74. A delta of 0.04%.

This is workbook-level parity on a real project — not a demo, not a synthetic dataset, not a curated benchmark. Real drawings. Real bid. Real accuracy.

Delta from estimator
0.04%
The differentiator · shipped today

The Brain — your firm's estimating intelligence.

Not a chatbot. Not a virtual assistant. Your firm's own institutional estimating knowledge, captured from every project and queryable in plain language. It learns from everything you put in — and compounds with every bid you run.

Other tools give you a bid. Takeoff Lab gives you a bid — and makes every future bid easier.

The Brain — the knowledge view, showing what the platform has learned from a firm's drawings, estimates and schedules and how often it has seen each thing
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"What did we pay for foundations on our last three substations?"

Avg $412/CY across the three most recent. Range $388–$441.

"Which vendors have we selected for high-voltage equipment?"

Primary vendor on 7 of 9 projects, secondary on 2. Breaker spec standardized since 2024.

"What's our average markup on projects over $10M?"

11.4% blended — 9.8% EPC-direct, 13.1% subcontracted scope.

"Which estimator's bids come closest to actuals?"

Your lead estimator — 1.2% mean variance across 14 completed bids.

Under the hood

Built to production standards.

3,000+

Automated tests

Every calc engine change verified against real project math. Regression discipline built in from day one.

IEEE · NEC
ANSI · IEC

Reference standards

Engineering physics baked into the platform. Bid backup that stands up to audit.

Live

Real-time reactivity

Every input surface updates the bid immediately. No refresh, no stale data. What the estimator sees is what the bid uses.

Connor Theisen, founder of Takeoff Lab
Founder

Connor Theisen

I came from preconstruction — takeoffs, budgets, proposals and schedules. I know what it takes to get a bid out the door, and how much of that work still runs on 20-year-old Excel workbooks and outdated, precarious workflows.

Takeoff Lab is built with a working EPC, on real drawings and real bids.

See the platform on your project.

Book a 30-minute demo. Bring your drawings. Watch us produce a bid against your workbook.

Book a demo