A takeoff is half a day
Partitions to linear feet, ceiling and flooring to square feet, fixtures counted, then converted to crew-days and dumpster pulls. By the time it is done, three other bids came in.
Interior & selective demolition
You no-bid most of your inbox. That is the leak.
Forty bid invitations a month, and you price the twelve you have time for. The other twenty-eight go to whoever answered. Timber takes the plan set or the walkthrough photos, does the takeoff, prices it off your book, and hands you a bid to edit — so the answer stops being silence.
Same dayBids out while the invitation is still warm
TakeoffQuantities off the plan set, not a legal pad
Every ITBAnswered — or declined in writing, on purpose
Why this desk
Why demo contractors leave money in the inbox.
Nobody in this trade is short of bid requests. Everybody is short of the hours it takes to answer one.
So you triage by gut
You bid the GCs you know and the jobs that look clean. The rest get no answer at all — which is how you quietly fall off an invitation list.
Disposal is a guess
Haul-off is a real share of the number and it moves with tipping fees, material mix and how much you can divert. Guess low twice and the year is gone.
Unforeseen conditions eat the job
Hidden material behind the wall, a slab that is not what the drawing said. The change order gets written next week, if anybody writes it.
The method
How Timber runs it.
01
Take 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 demo number: occupied or vacant, shift, access, protection, who hauls.
- Plan sets and scope letters
- Walkthrough photos and video
- Access, hours and protection questions
02
Do the takeoff
Quantities by assembly — partitions, ceilings, flooring, casework, MEP strip. It converts to crew-days at your production rates and dumpster pulls at your hauler's rate. Every line shows the quantity it came from.
- Quantities you can check
- Crew-days at your production rates
- Haul-off and tipping at your real cost
03
Send the bid
You edit the number and the exclusions, then it goes out with the qualifications that keep you out of trouble. If the GC goes quiet, Timber drafts the follow-up. If conditions change on site, it drafts the change order that day.
- Exclusions and qualifications attached
- Follow-up drafted, not forgotten
- Change orders written the same day
On the board
What sits on a demo board.
Same operator for 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 exclusions
- Dust protection and elevator windows
- Crew-days against your production rates
Selective structural
- Shoring and engineering carried as lines
- Saw-cutting and slab work priced separately
- Permit and inspection notes on the job
- What you are explicitly not taking
Occupied buildings
- Night and weekend premium in the labor rate
- Noise windows and tenant notice
- Load-out route and freight elevator booking
- Daily clean-back as a real cost
Post-abatement demo
- Sequencing behind the abatement contractor
- Clearance as a gate before mobilizing
- Hidden material as a change order path
- One record across both scopes
From inbound to close
The bid you were going to skip.
This is not about bidding faster on the jobs you already bid. It is about the ones you never answered. A bid you decline in writing keeps you on the list. A bid you ignore takes you off it.
- Forward the invitation — plan set, scope letter or photos
- Timber does the takeoff and prices it off your book
- You correct the quantities and set the exclusions
- It sends, follows up, and writes the change order when the slab lies
On the desk
What the operator actually does.
Plan sets and photos both work
A drawing gives quantities. A walkthrough video gives conditions. Timber takes either and tells you which questions it still needs answered.
Your production rates
Square feet per man-hour by assembly, your loaded labor rate, your hauler. It prices like your estimator does, not like a national average.
Exclusions that protect you
Hazardous material, MEP disconnect, shoring, patching. The qualifications you always mean to include are on the bid instead of in your head.
Change orders the same day
A photo from the foreman and a sentence becomes a priced change order draft while the GC is still standing in the room.
Crew and load-out by text
Manpower, hours and dumpster pulls come back by SMS. No field app for a crew that turns over between jobs.
Job costing against the bid
Crew-days and disposal weight land on the job. You see which assemblies you underpriced before you bid the next one the same way.
Demolition is an answering business.
Ask a demo contractor what he needs and he will not say leads. His inbox is already full of invitations to bid — plan sets from general contractors, scope letters, walkthrough requests. The constraint is not demand. It is that a real takeoff costs half a day of an estimator who is also running two jobs, so most of what arrives gets no answer.
That silence is expensive twice. You lose the job you did not bid, and after enough silences the GC stops sending them. The list you spent ten years getting on quietly shortens.
Timber attacks the specific hour that causes 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 GC goes quiet it drafts the nudge. When the slab is not what the drawing said, it writes the change order that afternoon instead of next month.
Still yours
What stays human.
01
The number
Timber proposes and shows its work. You sign off. It will not send a bid without you, and every line traces back to a quantity you can check.
02
Site conditions
A drawing is not a building. Somebody still walks it. Timber turns what you saw into a priced scope — it does not pretend it was there.
03
Which jobs you want
It will tell you what a job is worth and what the risk lines are. Deciding you do not want that GC is still yours.
Demolition estimators
Forward us one bid invitation.
Send a plan set or scope letter you were about to no-bid, plus the rates you would have used. We will run the takeoff and show you the quantities and the number. If it cannot read your drawings, we will say so.
- We use your plan set, not a demo file
- Every quantity shown so you can check it
- You keep the bid either way
Or write ivan@felicita.group
Also on Timber
Other desks the operator covers.
FAQ
Common questions
Still deciding? Book a demo and we'll walk through your workflow live.
Contact our teamIs this a real takeoff or a guess?
It produces quantities from the document and shows each one, so you can check it against the drawing. On a clean plan set that is close. On a bad scan it will tell you what it could not read rather than invent a number.
Does it replace my estimator?
No. It removes the retyping and the measuring so your estimator reviews and prices instead of counting partitions. The judgment calls stay with the person whose name is on the bid.
Can it use my production rates?
Yes. Square feet per man-hour by assembly, your loaded rate, your hauler and tipping fees live in a skill. It will not price off a national average.
What about hazardous material?
It carries the exclusion by default and flags where a survey is missing. If you also do abatement, the two scopes sit on one job record.
Will it send bids without me?
No. Bids and change orders are drafts until you approve them. Follow-ups are drafts too.
We bid off scope letters, not drawings.
That works. It reads the scope letter, asks what the letter leaves out, and prices from your rates. Photos from the walkthrough make it sharper.
Answer the twenty-eight you skipped.
Forward one bid invitation. Get a priced demolition bid back to edit — same day, off your own rates.