We get asked how long a takeoff takes in Monaro. The honest answer is "it depends on the set", which satisfies nobody. So we ran a race. Same drawings, same estimator, two methods, a clock on each, recorded end to end and then compressed into a one minute video.
This is the first of two. The set is a proposed Canco convenience store with a Wendy's inside it, drawn by GAMA Engineering in British Columbia. It is a small job on a large set: more than forty sheets across every discipline, with the mechanical equipment living on four of them (plumbing, sanitary and storm, HVAC, and the roof plan) plus a sheet of schedules and specifications.
Both desks were run by Aaquib Khan, our estimator in residence, who ran takeoffs and quotes on a distributor bid desk before he joined us. Once the way most bid desks still do it, Bluebeam for the count and Excel for the tally. Once through Monaro. Both runs started from a closed PDF and both finished with a quantity against every piece of equipment.
The result
- Monaro: 14 minutes 12 seconds of estimator time. Takeoff reviewed, eight flagged items resolved, quote generated.
- Manual: 33 minutes 12 seconds. Takeoff tagged in Bluebeam, counts compiled in Excel.
- Difference: 19 minutes. The Monaro run finished in 43 percent of the time.
- Both runs arrived at the same total: 39 pieces of equipment.
One thing the Monaro clock does not include: the processing run. After the PDF is uploaded, Monaro reads the set and runs the detection on its own, which on a set this size is typically fifteen to twenty minutes. We did not time it, because nobody sits and watches it. An email says the takeoff is ready and the estimator opens it then. The clock measures the time a person actually spent at the desk, which is the time a bid desk is short of.
What was on the set
Monaro's takeoff summary read 28 detections and 39 units across 20 line items, with a further ten tags that appear in the schedules but never on a plan. The 39 breaks down like this:
- Three rooftop units, RTU-1 to RTU-3.
- Two scheduled exhaust fans, EF-1 and EF-2, plus EF-3 and two kitchen exhaust fans, KEF-1 and KEF-2, which are tagged on the plan but missing from the schedule.
- Twenty air devices: R-1 return grilles in two sizes (two of each), S-1 supply diffusers (one and two), S-2 supply diffusers (two and seven), and four S-3 supply grilles.
- Four E-1 exhaust grilles, again on the plan but not in the schedule.
- Three condensing units, CU-1 to CU-3, and two transformers, T-1 and T-2, serving the restaurant's walk-in cooler and freezer.
- One electric water heater, TK-1, and one grease interceptor, GI-1.
The manual spreadsheet ended on the same 39, column by column: one grease interceptor on the sanitary plan, one water heater on the plumbing plan, five units on the roof plan, twenty air devices on the HVAC plan, and twelve items across nine tags marked "Not found in schedule". Monaro had parked the same nine tags in an unscheduled group with a warning on each one.
Where the 33 minutes went
The clock on the manual run explains why counting is slow, and the reason is not the counting.
- 0:00 to 1:40. Opening the set and finding the mechanical sheets.
- 1:40 to 8:00. Setting up tags in Bluebeam: one custom markup per equipment type, colour coded, before a single item is counted. Six minutes of overhead that produces no quantity yet.
- 8:00 to 10:00. Reading the schedules to learn what to expect on the plans.
- 10:00 to 29:00. The takeoff itself. Sweeping the HVAC plan, the roof plan and the plumbing sheets, placing a marker on every device. Nineteen minutes.
- 29:00 to 33:12. Excel. Transferring Bluebeam's markup counts into a tally sheet by plan, totalling each row, and noting which items had no schedule entry.
A third of the manual time was setup and transcription rather than counting.
Where the 14 minutes went
- 0:00 to 1:00. Creating the project and uploading the PDF. The processing run sits between this step and the next, off the clock.
- 1:00 to 2:30. First pass over the HVAC sheet, adding one tag Monaro had missed.
- 2:30 to 5:30. Removing duplicates. The restaurant's equipment is called out in notes as well as tagged, and some of those were picked up twice.
- 5:30 to 11:00. Reviewing each detection on the plan, tag by tag, checking quantity and size on the air devices.
- 11:00 to 13:30. Resolving the eight items Monaro had flagged for attention, including schedule entries such as CU-1&2 that never appear on any sheet.
- 13:30 to 14:12. Generating the quote: 40 line items grouped by schedule, with manufacturer, model and performance data carried from the schedule onto each line.
What the comparison actually shows
The nineteen minutes came from three places. Monaro skipped the six minutes of tag setup, because it builds the tag list from the schedule. It skipped the four minutes of Excel, because the verified counts were already a quote. And it turned nineteen minutes of placing markers into about ten minutes of checking markers that were already placed. Review is faster than counting, and it is also a different kind of attention: the estimator is confirming rather than scanning.
The flags are the part worth noticing. The restaurant's condensing units, transformers and kitchen exhaust fans are tagged on the plan, noted as supplied by the landlord or the tenant, and absent from the mechanical schedule. On the manual run Aaquib wrote "Not found in schedule" against all nine tags. Monaro put the same nine in an unscheduled group and marked each for attention. Neither method decided whether to quote them. That is the estimator's call, and it was the same call both times.
One honest caveat. This is a small set. On a bigger one the counting hours stretch while the setup stays roughly fixed, so the gap widens. Part two is a 31 unit apartment building, and it shows exactly that.
