Most of your bid invitations never get an answer.
A typical interior demolition contractor receives around forty invitations to bid each month and prices the twelve there is time for. The rest go to whoever answered. Timber reads the plan set or the walkthrough photos, produces the takeoff, prices it against your own rate book, and hands you a bid to edit before it goes out.
Same day
Bids go out while the invitation is still current
Takeoff
Quantities come off the plan set rather than a legal pad
Every ITB
Every invitation gets an answer, including a written decline
Why demolition work is lost in the inbox.
Demolition contractors are rarely short of bid requests. They are short of the hours it takes to answer one properly.
A typical month
40 invitations to bid
0
received no answer at all
A takeoff takes half a day
Partitions convert to linear feet, ceilings and flooring to square feet, fixtures are counted, and all of it becomes crew-days and dumpster pulls. By the time the takeoff is finished, three other contractors have already submitted.
Invitations get triaged by instinct
You bid the general contractors you know and the jobs that look straightforward. The rest receive no reply at all, which is how a contractor quietly drops off an invitation list.
Disposal is usually a guess
Haul-off is a real share of the total and it moves with tipping fees, material mix and how much you can divert. Estimate it low twice on large jobs and the year's margin is gone.
Unforeseen conditions go unbilled
There is hidden material behind a wall, or a slab that is not what the drawing showed. The change order gets written next week, if anyone writes it at all.
What happens to an invitation you would have skipped.
Send in the invitation
Forward the bid email with the plan set attached, or send photos from the walkthrough. Timber reads what it can, then asks the questions that actually move a demolition number: whether the building is occupied, which shift you will work, how you get access, what protection is needed and who hauls the debris.
- Plan sets and scope letters
- Walkthrough photos and video
- Questions about access, hours and protection
Timber does the takeoff
Quantities are produced by assembly — partitions, ceilings, flooring, casework and MEP strip-out. Timber converts them into crew-days at your production rates and dumpster pulls at your hauler's rate, and every line shows the quantity it came from.
- Quantities you can check against the drawing
- Crew-days calculated at your production rates
- Haul-off and tipping at what your hauler charges
You edit and send the bid
You adjust the number and the exclusions, and the bid goes out with the qualifications that keep you out of trouble. If the general contractor goes quiet, Timber drafts the follow-up. If conditions change on site, it drafts the change order the same day.
- Exclusions and qualifications attached to the bid
- Follow-up drafted rather than forgotten
- Change orders written the same day
Takeoff
Every line shows the quantity it was calculated from, so your estimator checks the drawing instead of counting partitions.
Haul-off
Pulls and tipping are priced at your hauler's actual rate, then reconciled against the real weight when the job closes.
The work a demolition desk handles.
The same software handles a tenant improvement strip-out and a nights-and-weekends job in an occupied tower.
Tenant improvement strip-out
- Partition, ceiling and flooring quantities
- MEP disconnect scope and the exclusions around it
- Dust protection and elevator windows
- Crew-days calculated from your production rates
Selective structural
- Shoring and engineering carried as their own lines
- Saw-cutting and slab work priced separately
- Permit and inspection notes kept on the job
- A written list of what you are not taking on
Occupied buildings
- Night and weekend premiums built into the labor rate
- Noise windows and tenant notice periods
- Load-out route and freight elevator bookings
- Daily clean-back priced as a real cost
Post-abatement demo
- Sequencing behind the abatement contractor
- Clearance held as a gate before you mobilize
- Hidden material routed into a change order
- One job record covering both scopes
The value is in the bids you would have skipped.
This is not about bidding faster on the jobs you already bid. It is about the ones that never got a reply. Declining an invitation in writing keeps you on the list, while ignoring it takes you off.
- 1Forward the invitation, whether that is a plan set, a scope letter or photos
- 2Timber does the takeoff and prices it from your own rate book
- 3You correct the quantities and set the exclusions
- 4It sends the bid, follows up, and drafts the change order when site conditions differ
You still own the number
Timber shows the quantity behind every line so you can check it against the drawing. It does not send a bid on its own, and it does not hide how it arrived at a number. Anything you disagree with can be edited before the bid goes out.
Stays with you
The number
Timber proposes a price and shows its working. You sign off on it. It will not send a bid without you, and every line traces back to a quantity you can check.
Stays with you
Site conditions
A drawing is not a building, so somebody still has to walk it. Timber turns what you saw into a priced scope; it does not claim to have been there.
Stays with you
Which jobs you want
Timber will tell you what a job is worth and where the risk lines are. Deciding that you do not want to work for that general contractor is still your call.
What the demolition desk actually does.
Plan sets and photos both work
A drawing gives you quantities and a walkthrough video gives you conditions. Timber accepts either and tells you which questions it still needs answered.
Your own production rates
Square feet per man-hour by assembly, your loaded labor rate and your hauler's charges. Timber prices the way your estimator does rather than off a national average.
Exclusions that protect you
Hazardous material, MEP disconnect, shoring and patching. The qualifications you always intend to include end up on the bid instead of in your head.
Change orders the same day
A photo from the foreman and a sentence of description become a priced change order draft while the general contractor is still standing in the room.
Crew and load-out by text
Manpower, hours and dumpster pulls come back by SMS. There is no field app to install for a crew that changes between jobs.
Job costing against the bid
Crew-days and disposal weight land on the job record, so you can see which assemblies you underpriced before you bid the next one the same way.
The bottleneck is the estimator's time.
Ask a demolition contractor what he needs and he will rarely say leads. The inbox is already full of invitations to bid: plan sets from general contractors, scope letters and walkthrough requests. The constraint is not demand. It is that a real takeoff costs half a day from an estimator who is also running two live jobs, so most of what arrives never gets a reply.
That silence costs twice. You lose the job you did not bid on, and after enough unanswered invitations the general contractor stops sending them. The list you spent ten years getting onto quietly gets shorter.
Timber addresses the specific hours that cause it. Forward the invitation and it reads the plan set or the photos, produces quantities you can check against the drawing, converts them to crew-days at your production rates, and prices haul-off at what your hauler actually charges. You correct it, set the exclusions and send. When the general contractor goes quiet it drafts the follow-up, and when the slab is not what the drawing showed it writes the change order that afternoon rather than next month.
Declining an invitation in writing keeps you on the general contractor's list. Leaving it unanswered is what removes you from it.
Forward us one bid invitation.
Send a plan set or scope letter you were about to leave unanswered, along with the rates you would have used. We will run the takeoff and show you both the quantities and the number. If Timber cannot read your drawings, we will say so.
- We use your plan set rather than a demo file
- Every quantity is shown so you can check it
- You keep the bid either way
Or write ivan@felicita.group
Demolition questions.
Still deciding? Book a demo and we will go through your own workflow live — your documents, your rates, your schedule.
Timber produces quantities from the document and shows each one, so you can check them against the drawing. On a clean plan set those quantities are close. On a poor scan it will tell you what it could not read rather than invent a number.
Other work Timber runs
Answer the invitations you currently skip.
Forward one bid invitation and get back a priced demolition bid to edit, the same day and based on your own rates.
No credit card to start. Cancel any time.