More and more tools are coming to market to speed up quantity takeoffs and estimates for contractors. None of that speed reaches the architect, however. They still need to complete the design in order to get an estimate from a contractor.
Vendors including Togal.AI, STACK, and Drawer.AI advertise real speed gains on the contractor side. None of it moves the architect's timeline.
However fast it takes to do a quantity takeoff, it still requires a complete design. Footprint. Square footage. Foundation type. Framing approach. Massing. Room count. All those choices set the project's cost, and they have already been decided by the time a contractor gets involved.
This is described by the MacLeamy curve: decisions get made early and estimated late. If you have to change things later in a redesign, the more it will cost. The industry spent its energy speeding up the estimation stage for contractors. It hasn't brought the data to the architects and clients making the decisions in the first place.
That's the real reason cost visibility needs to live with architects first, not contractors. The architect is making the decisions. The contractor is the one pricing what's already been decided. Speeding up the contractor's work is great for them, but still means a redesign for the architect when the bid is over budget. Getting the architect a number earlier, while the design is still fluid, has the highest impact.
Architects deserve cost visibility from pre-design onward. They are the ones making decisions with their clients. They shouldn't have to wait weeks or months to find out if those decisions will work in the allowed budget.
Learn more about how we're empowering the decision makers at https://constructus.io.