- Caltrans
- California counties
- City & municipal
- Federal-aid
Built by a former public works contractor
You lost the job by $4,000 on a $2M bid. The missing item was on page 47.
Constimator reconciles your estimate against the official bid form, line by line — catching the missing items, quantity busts, and unit mismatches that cost contractors jobs.
No credit card required · 30 days free · See what it catches on a real bid before you pay anything
One missed item can lose a job you should have won.
Public works is won by fractions of a percent. A bid item you priced as incidental, a quantity that doesn't match the bid form, a unit you read wrong — any one of them can make your bid non-responsive or blow your margin.
And it's all buried in hundreds of pages of specs and a bid form you're reconciling by hand, under deadline.
$124,700
The single bid item left out of the estimate in the sample project below — 6.7% of a $1.85M job, and enough to make the bid non-responsive on its own.
Constimator does that reconciliation for you.
Bid form reconciliation
See every mismatch before you submit
Every official bid item, against every line of your estimate. Here is the sample project, exactly as Constimator reports it.
| Bid item | Official | Your estimate | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| HMA Type ATON | 4,850 | 4,850 | Match — Addendum 01 applied |
| Cold Plane AC (2")SY | 12,300 | 12,300 | Unit converted SF→SY |
| 18" RCP Class IIILF | 640 | 655 | Quantity discrepancy |
| Minor Concrete (Curb & Gutter)LF | 2,150 | — | MISSING FROM ESTIMATE |
Missing bid item
Minor Concrete is on the bid form and nowhere in your estimate.
2,150 LF of curb and gutter the owner will judge your bid against. Leave it out and you are either non-responsive or you eat the scope at your own cost.
$124,700
2,150 LF x $58.00 — 6.7% of a $1.85M job
Quantity discrepancy
Your plan takeoff and the bid form disagree by 15 LF.
The plan profile totals 655 LF including inlet connections; the bid form lists 640 LF. You bid the bid form quantity — but you build the plan quantity.
$2,220
15 LF x $148.00 of pipe you install unpaid
Caught before it bit
The plans said SF. The bid form said SY.
110,700 SF and 12,300 SY are the same quantity — but carry 12,300 against an SF bid item and you have underbid it nine to one. Constimator converted and matched it, so nobody had to catch it at 1:45 on bid day.
Sample project shown for demonstration. The quantities, unit prices, and dollar impacts above are the real numbers from that sample estimate, not illustrations.
How it works
Three steps to a bid you've double-checked
Enter the official bid form
Item by item — description, unit, official quantity, spec section. Upload the plans, specs, and addenda alongside it so the whole set lives with the project.
Build your estimate your way
Keep estimating the way you already do — your quantities, your unit prices, your labor and equipment rates. Constimator never overwrites your numbers.
Reconcile before you submit
Constimator checks your estimate against the official bid form and flags anything missing or off — so you fix it before bid day, not after.
What it does
From bid documents to a bid you can trust
Reads your bid documents
Early accessUpload the plans, specs, addenda, and official bid form. Constimator reads them and pulls out what matters — project summary, scope items, schedules, and requirements — so you're not hunting through hundreds of pages. This is the newest part of the product and still being validated against real plan sets: treat it as a head start, not a replacement for your own takeoff.
Bid requirements in one summary
Early accessConstimator reads the DBE/DVBE participation goal off the specs — the percentage, which certification it calls for, and the link the specs print for obtaining the documents — tied back to the page it came from. The engineer's estimate and bid deadline you enter when you create the project sit alongside it. Goal extraction is new and still being validated against real spec books.
Reconciles against the official bid form
The differentiatorThis is what nothing else does. Constimator compares your estimate against the official bid form, line by line — every official bid item against every line of your estimate — and flags each mismatch:
- Missing bid items
- Quantity discrepancies
- Unit mismatches
- Low-confidence items that need a human look
Exports clean reports
Estimate summary and a full reconciliation report, in PDF or Excel, with every number's source clearly marked — official, AI-extracted, or your own entry.
Sample project
See it on a real project
- Engineer's estimate
- $1,850,000
- Working days
- 60
- Liquidated damages
- $2,500/day
- Prevailing wage
- Required
- HMA Type AMatch
- 18" RCP Class IIIQuantity discrepancy
- Minor Concrete (Curb & Gutter)Missing from estimate
Sample project shown for demonstration. Constimator is an early prototype built by a former public works contractor.
Explore the sample projectWho it's for
Built for public works contractors
Constimator is designed specifically for contractors bidding on:
State DOT projects
Caltrans and equivalent state work — standard spec sections, addenda, and the official bid form they publish with them.
County and municipal work
County road jobs, city street and utility work, and the smaller bid forms that still disqualify you for a missing line.
Federal-aid infrastructure
Federally funded projects with the extra requirements — prevailing wage, DBE goals, and the paperwork that rides along.
Works alongside HeavyBid, HCSS, Excel, or whatever you already estimate in. No rip-and-replace, no learning curve during bid season.
Pricing
Founding members
We're bringing on a small group of founding contractors to shape Constimator and lock in founding pricing as we grow.
$249 per user regular price — 50% off, locked for life
- Unlimited projects and bid forms
- Full bid-form reconciliation, PDF and Excel exports
- Document reading, with a monthly AI budget you set
- Direct input on the product roadmap
- Founding rate locked for life
Only 20 spots available
Billed per user. Add or remove an estimator any time — your seat count adjusts and prorates on the next invoice.
Every account starts with 30 days free and no credit card — run a real bid through it before you pay anything.
FAQ
Questions contractors ask
Isn't this just another AI takeoff tool?
No. Most AI estimating tools race to measure quantities off drawings. Constimator does something different: it makes sure the estimate you already built matches the official bid form the owner will judge it against. It checks your numbers, it doesn't replace them.
Do I have to stop using HeavyBid, HCSS, or Excel?
No. Keep estimating exactly the way you do now. Constimator reads the bid documents alongside you and reconciles what you built against the official bid form. No rip-and-replace, and no learning curve during bid season.
What documents does it need?
The official bid form is the one that matters — that's what Constimator reconciles against, and you enter its line items directly. You can upload the plans, specs, and addenda too, so the whole set lives with the project and Constimator can pull the bid requirements out of them.
Does it do the takeoff for me?
Not yet, and don't plan a bid around it. Constimator's document reading will pull a project summary and the bid requirements out of a plan set, but it's the newest part of the product and still being validated against real drawings. The part you can bet a bid on today is reconciliation: your estimate, checked line by line against the official bid form.
Does it work with any plan set?
Yes. Constimator reads standard public works plan sets, specifications, and bid forms as published — state DOT, county, municipal, and federal-aid. You upload what the agency posted; there's no special format to prepare.
What exactly does it flag?
Bid items on the official form that are missing from your estimate, quantities that disagree between the plans and the bid form, units that don't match between the two, and items the AI read with low confidence and wants a human to look at.
Do my numbers stay mine?
Yes. Your estimates, documents, and pricing live in your own organization's data and are not shared with other contractors or used to train anything. Every number in a report is marked with its source — official, AI-extracted, or your own entry.
How far along is Constimator?
It's early. Accounts, document processing, estimating, reconciliation, and exports are all real and working on your own data — but this is an early-stage product built by a former public works contractor and still being validated with its first contractors. That's what the founding member program is for.
Chase the right jobs. Bid them without the busts.
Let Constimator read the documents and reconcile your estimate against the official bid form — so your bid is complete, responsive, and right, before you submit it.