Background

Concrete contractors win or lose work on the bid. An estimator takes a drawing set that can run to dozens of sheets — structural, architectural, civil — and turns it into quantities and prices for every footing, slab, deck, and panel. It's slow, it's expert work, and a single line missed on a big job can erase the margin on the whole project.

ConcreteIQ is takgio's answer: AI that reads the drawing set, builds the takeoff, and prices the concrete scope — so estimators spend their time on judgment instead of counting. It's built to change how concrete contractors win work.

The Challenge

• Drawings aren't data. Quantities hide in schedules, details, notes, and sheet references that a person has to cross-read. The same wall can appear on three sheets with three different descriptions.
• Every scope is different. Foundations, slabs on grade, elevated decks, and tilt-up panels each price differently — and reinforcing steel alone can swing a bid by six figures.
• Silence is the dangerous failure. An estimating tool that quietly skips a line is worse than no tool at all. A missed scope doesn't show up until the job is won — and losing money.

Our Approach

Built with an estimator, not just for one. ConcreteIQ was developed alongside a practicing concrete estimator and tested against real bids, with every divergence between the app and the hand bid investigated rather than tuned away.

The drawings are the answer key. When ConcreteIQ’s number disagrees with a hand bid, the team treats the drawing set — not the human number — as the answer key. That doctrine is exactly what surfaced the result below.

Built so nothing slips through quietly. ConcreteIQ refuses to finalize a bid while any line is unpriced. Anything it can't price is flagged in front of the estimator instead of silently dropped.

Results

On a live bid for a $1.67M school project, ConcreteIQ analyzed the project's drawing set in under 11 minutes. Its takeoff came in about 8% above the hand-priced bid — and instead of tuning the app down to match, the estimator chased the gap. When the rebar detailing arrived, it showed 209,781 pounds of tilt-up panel reinforcing — more than 90% of all the rebar on the job — that the hand-priced bid had carried at zero.

• $144,219 of steel had been left out of the bid.
• The contractor re-issued the bid $165,000 higher, with the panel reinforcing added and no other line changed.
• Early beta feedback from established concrete contractors has been strongly positive.

Had that bid won as submitted, the job would have been under-priced by six figures. That is the value of an estimating tool built to account for every scope — and of trusting the drawings over the spreadsheet.

Why It Matters

ConcreteIQ is document intelligence applied where the stakes are highest — the bid that decides whether a job makes money. It's the same discipline behind every takgio product: extract structure from something long and messy, and never let a critical detail go missing.