Get to a defensible number faster
Estimator is its own permission level, scoped to the work of winning jobs: leads, clients, estimates, proposals, and the supplier side needed to price them. It does not open crew, invoicing or the company's reports.
This role opens
- Leads and clients
- Estimates and proposals
- Vendors, purchase orders and bills
- Projects, tasks and the schedule
- Documents and photos
It does not open
- Crew and crew scheduling
- Invoices
- Compliance
- Payments
- Reports
These are the actual route guards, enforced on the server — not a menu that hides links.
A first draft you argue with, not from
Describe the job in plain language and Bridge AI returns an itemised estimate — labour, materials and subcontract lines with quantities and rates. It is a draft, and it is meant to be edited. Every line is yours to change before anything is sent.
The value is not that the AI is right. It is that starting from a structured list beats starting from a blank spreadsheet, and the lines you would have forgotten are visible as things to delete rather than gaps you never noticed.
Tax and markup handled once
Set the job's province and GST, HST or PST applies at the correct rate. Markup is applied per line, and the estimate shows the resulting margin before it goes out — which is where a 20% markup revealing itself as a 16.7% margin gets caught rather than discovered at closeout.
US jobs price in USD with state sales tax, using the same workflow.
Where an approved estimate goes
An accepted estimate becomes the job's budget rather than a document that gets filed. The number you quoted is the number the project is measured against, so job costing compares actuals to your estimate rather than to something retyped later.
That link is the reason estimating and job costing belong in the same system. An estimate that does not become a budget is just a PDF.
No digital takeoff
BuildersBridge does not do quantity takeoff from drawings. If your estimating starts with measuring off a plan set, you will still do that in the tool you use now and bring the quantities across.
Saying so matters because several competitors lead with takeoff, and an estimator who assumed it was here would find out on day one. What is here is the pricing, the tax, the markup and the handoff into the job.
Questions
- Does BuildersBridge do digital takeoff?
- No. There is no quantity takeoff from drawings. Estimating starts from a described scope or from quantities you bring in, and the AI drafts the priced line items from there.
- Can an estimator see what jobs are worth?
- They can see estimates, proposals and the supplier costs that price them. Invoices, payments and the business reports are restricted to other roles.
- Is the AI estimate sent to the client automatically?
- No. It is a draft in your hands. Nothing reaches a client until you have edited and approved it — an AI-generated estimate is never a binding quote.
- Does the estimate carry through to the job?
- Yes. An approved estimate becomes the project budget, so job costing measures actual cost against what you quoted rather than a separately entered number.