Task · takeoff
A wrong takeoff costs more than a slow one.
This is the step where the work requested turns into quantities: metres, square feet, units. The whole quote descends from it, and a mistake here gets paid on the job site, not on the page.
Book a 20 minute call46.1%
of workers want AI to take over part of their workload, yet those tasks account for only 1.3% of how AI actually gets used today. Takeoff is exactly that kind of task: repetitive, measurable, and left alone.
What Le Métreur measures, and what it does not.
Yes, if
- The work gets described in words in the request: surfaces, lengths, counts of fixtures.
- Your quantities always get worked out the same way, even if nobody wrote the rule down.
- You redo the same takeoff several times a week, on neighbouring jobs.
No, if
- Your quantities get read off a scaled drawing. That is not what Le Métreur does today, and you hear it before the call.
- The work gets measured on site, tape in hand. A visit stays a visit.
- Your quantities are right but writing the quote eats your evening: that is the other half of the problem.
From the written request to priced quantities
The work gets pulled out
What the client describes in three lines becomes a list of named items. Redo the driveway, about 600 square feet, curbs included becomes a surface, a linear measure and an inclusion.
The quantities get set
Each item gets its unit and its quantity, with the waste and the overlaps your trade applies. Those are your rules, read off your past quotes, not ratios from a manual.
Each number carries its reason
Every quantity stays attached to the client sentence that produced it. When a number surprises you, you see where it came from instead of redoing the math.
What the takeoff hands back
05 deliverables
- The list of itemsNamed in your trade's vocabulary, not in generic categories.
- Quantities and their unitsSurface, linear, count, hours, whatever the item calls for.
- The reason behind each quantityThe sentence from the request that produced it, kept beside the number.
- The gaps flaggedWhat the request does not say and has to be asked before pricing.
- Your waste rulesOverlaps, offcuts, minimums: written once, applied everywhere.
A price that follows the volume, not the seat count
The question is not what a piece of software costs. It is what the person you would have to hire to do the estimating costs. In Quebec, a junior estimator runs close to $5,000 CAD a month once payroll costs are in.
In Canadian dollars. Reading your price grid, connecting your inbox and your CRM, calibrating on the quotes you have already sent.
- Tier 1
$697CAD per month
Up to 40 priced quotes a month.
- Detailed quote, draft reply and PDF
- CRM record
- Grid kept current
- Tier 2recommended
$1,197CAD per month
Up to 120 priced quotes a month.
- Everything in tier 1
- Monthly variance report on the pricing
- Several grids, one per type of work
- Tier 3
$1,897CAD per month
Past 120 priced quotes a month.
- Everything in tier 2
- Several inboxes
- Split across several estimators
Prices in Canadian dollars, taxes extra. We bill the volume handled, never a number of seats. The subscription can be cancelled at any time.
What people ask us about takeoff
- Does it read drawings?
- Not today. Le Métreur works from what is WRITTEN in the request, not from what is drawn on a scaled plan. Saying so now costs less than finding out during setup.
- How do we know the quantities are right?
- By comparing them to yours. Setup runs on quotes you have already sent: we put what Le Métreur would have measured beside what you actually invoiced. The gap is measured before the first real request.
- What about waste, offcuts and minimum orders?
- Those are your rules, and they are part of the grid. They do not get invented: we read them off your past quotes and you validate them before they get used.
- Does it replace my estimator?
- No. They keep deciding, they stop recounting. What we sell is the next hire, the one the volume would otherwise force, which is the same math as for any repetitive task.
Show us a request you received. We hand back the takeoff beside yours.
Twenty minutes, no commitment. You leave with the measured gap between your quantities and its own.