How it works · Specialty subcontractors · Draft-only

One invite in. One signed bid out.

Three steps on your side. Six stages on ours. A human estimator signs every number before it leaves the desk.

Reply < 1 hr · Takeoff < 2 business days · No card · No login · No software

Nursultan Temirbaev, estimator of record — Indian Trail, NC · (980) 348-1827

Your side of it

Three steps. Two of them are yours.

01

Forward the GC's invite to cs@mindatu.com.

The email itself, portal link and all. BuildingConnected, Procore, iSqFt, SmartBidNet or a direct email — the agent fetches the documents from wherever they live.

02

The agent reads, measures, prices and drafts.

Every sheet, every addendum, the scope letter and the project manual. Every quantity graded GOLD, SILVER or FLAGGED and linked to the sheet it came from.

03

Your estimator signs; you send.

Where the drawings don't prove a number, the line says FLAGGED. Nothing leaves without a human signature, and nothing is sent to a GC by us.

Six stages on our side — jump to one

Our side of it

Six stages, one desk. Every stage leaves paper.

Each stage hands the next a document you can open. The fragments below are from real runs — names redacted, numbers kept.

01
RD

Read

The invite inbox is scanned every five minutes, nights and weekends included. Each invitation is classified, relay-masked portal addresses are unmasked to the GC's real one, and the portal is live-fetched to verify the actual scope before anything is ranked. Then every sheet, every addendum and the project manual are read section by section, and the due date is pinned.

Portals · BuildingConnected · Procore · iSqFt · SmartBidNet · direct email

Doc read brief · 50 sheets · 723-page project manual
Read section by section. Ten open items named before bid day, among them:
Section 087100 Door Hardware — cross-referenced, never issuedRFI
Division 07 — absent from the manual; six sections cite itRFI
Finish-schedule tag BL-E on eight rooms — decoded nowhereRFI
Open items named10
NC eVP 132-WPCC-2026 · public recordMeasured 29 July 2026
02
MS

Measure

Every quantity is measured, then attacked a second time by a different mechanism — a ceiling room by room, then again off the drawn grid; a partition off its finish faces, then again off the stud cores. Two independent reads agreeing within 10% earn GOLD. One defensible read is SILVER, with its basis printed. Sheet, scale and method sit on the line, not in a footnote.

Scale 0.111111 ft/pt · anchored to the printed room table · 9/9 rooms closed

Takeoff sheet · 50 sheets · signed 10:02
Room · 12,494.19 SFGOLD
Room · 2612.50 SFGOLD
Room · 1C443.78 SFGOLD
Room · 4427.43 SFGOLD
Room · 5101.47 SFGOLD
Base · 1A412 LFSILVER
5 printed areas agree within ±10% · scale 0.111111 ft/ptSIGNED · N. TEMIRBAEV · 10:02
03
ES

Price

Priced at your rates and your markup, in your estimate workbook. Out of the box the desk carries 756 production-rate line items mined from completed commercial work, burdened labor, and markup tiers by GC relationship; hand it your rate card and your won/lost history and it prices your way instead. The workbook arrives live — every formula real. Change a rate and the whole estimate recalculates.

756 production-rate line items · live formulas · your template or ours

Estimate · your workbook
Labor · your production ratesformula
Material · your vendor pricingformula
Markup · by GC relationshipyour cells
Totalrecalculates
Every quantity carries its grade and its sheet into the price
04
PR

Propose

The proposal is written in your voice on your letterhead: numbered trade-package lump sums, one total bid price, inclusions and exclusions in plain sight. No unit prices, no cost math, nothing the GC can shop line by line. It is staged as a draft. A human always sends.

Draft-only · you send · never from our address

Proposal · your letterhead · draft
01 · Trade packagelump sum
02 · Trade packagelump sum
Total bid priceone number
Inclusions · exclusions · clarificationslisted
Released to you as a draft. You send.
05
CH

Chase

Every sent bid goes on the board with its due date and value. Every GC reply is actually read — attachments opened, thread order rebuilt — and the bid is classified WON, LOST, WE-OWE or BALL-IN-THEIR-COURT with the evidence cited. Silent GCs are chased 8:30–4:00 ET on business days, in human phrasing, spaced and capped, and the chase stops the moment a reply lands. "Keep you posted until March" is respected, then resumes on its own.

196 chases measured to a reply-rate baseline · 2026-08-27

Chase deskRecorded
CHASE196 chases measured · reply rate tracked per touch
HOLDreplied within 14 days — skipped
HOLD"keep you posted until March" — parked, resumes on its own
CLASSreply read · attachments opened · WON / LOST / WE-OWE / BALL-IN-THEIR-COURT
FOUNDone recovered week of unread replies — a ~$137,000 win surfaced
06
BL

Bill

After the win the desk keeps going. The subcontract is read before you sign it and the risks are flagged in writing. COIs and W-9s are matched to what this GC actually asked for. Submittal packages are assembled; pay apps and lien waivers move on the GC's portal. Extra work is papered the day it happens — what, where, who, quantities, photographs — so the change order is a record, not an argument.

One submittal package through federal approval · $9,630 change order recovered

After the win · job record
Subcontractread before signature
COI · W-9matched to the GC's requirements
Submittal package · federalapproved
Change order · papered same day · 39 photographs$9,630 recovered
No dispute, no lien, no lawyer.from the tenant #1 job file

A bid, end to end

One live bid, as it ran.

The event log is the recorded set from a live invitation worked on this desk, each line verified against the run. A click-to-play recording will sit here when one is published; until then the log stands in. Nothing is staged.

Recorded runRecorded 2026-09-01
READinvite read · 50 sheets · every addendum
SCALEsheet scale anchored · 0.111111 ft/pt
MEASURERoom 1 · 2,494.19 SF · GOLD
MEASURERoom 2 · 612.50 SF · GOLD
MEASURERoom 1C · 443.78 SF · GOLD
MEASURERoom 4 · 427.43 SF · GOLD
MEASURERoom 5 · 101.47 SF · GOLD
MEASUREBase 1A · 412 LF · SILVER
CHECK9/9 rooms closed · 5 printed areas agree within ±10%
10:02signed by the estimator · N. Temirbaev
HANDOFFdraft-only from here — you send
01 · Takeoff sheet · graded
Every line: sheet, scale, method, grade.
02 · Estimate · your workbook
Live formulas at your rates and markup.
03 · Proposal · your letterhead
Lump sums, one total, staged as a draft.

Reply < 1 hr · Takeoff < 2 business days · No card · No login

Nursultan Temirbaev, estimator of record · (980) 348-1827

Grading

The grade is not a score. It is what you can see.

Every line prints the sheet it came from, the scale, the method and a GOLD, SILVER or FLAGGED grade — and the attempts that failed are published next to the ones that worked. You can tell which numbers are carried by two methods and which by one.

GOLD

Two sources produced independently of each other agree within 10% — a schedule and a specification section, or two measurements by different mechanisms.Price it with confidence.

SILVER

One defensible read.Sound for pricing; the basis is printed under the line so you judge it yourself rather than take our word.

FLAGGED

The documents cannot support a number, or they contradict themselves.The gap is named, with what would close it. A gap is never closed with an assumption and reported as a quantity.

When methods disagree, nothing is certified. The quantity drops a tier and the failed attempt is reported — never quietly averaged, never a guess dressed as a measurement.

Published failure · acoustical ceiling · sample 132-WPCC-2026 10,340 SF · SILVER

Measured room by room, then a second way by rebuilding the drawn 2×2 grid off the reflected ceiling plan. Three attempts; the lattice passes disagreed by 51%, 26% and 56%, because the grid is drawn at full density in some rooms and omitted in others. Two mechanisms that disagree past 10% do not produce a number — so the ceiling carries one read, marked SILVER, with the reason printed beside it.

Read it on the sample
Drawn-signature rule · one renovation plan 366 LF, not 2,048 LF

A real partition is four lines — two finish faces with a stud core between them. Existing walls, dimension strings and casework sit at wall spacing but carry no such signature, and none get counted. On one renovation plan that rule alone was the difference between the real run and the phantom count.

from the tenant #1 job file
Published sample · NC eVP 132-WPCC-2026 37 lines graded
27 GOLD3 SILVER7 FLAGGED

A closed public bid, four trades, ten open items named. The seven we could not prove are published with the sheet each failed on. Check any line against the public record.

Open the sample takeoff

Your data, your shop

It runs on your numbers, not ours.

Your numbers

Production rates, pricing policy, won/lost history — the desk learns your data and prices the way your best estimator would, every time. Until you hand it yours, it prices from 756 line items mined from completed commercial work.

Your look

Estimate workbooks and proposals built to your locked templates, or to ours. Either way the GC sees your company, not ours — and never our address.

Your systems

It works your invite inbox and keeps your CRM current, or runs its own bid board and hands you a clean export whenever you want it.

Roughly forty scheduled tasks run on a heartbeat — send-verification against the Sent folder, CRM reconciliation, a weekly self-audit. A nightly learning loop turns the day's corrections into permanent operating rules. Your standards don't live in a head that can quit.

Your plans and your pricing stay in our shop in Indian Trail, NC. Never resold. Never used on another sub's bid.

Send us one bid.

Forward the invitation you are working on right now — portal link and all — to cs@mindatu.com. Nothing to fill out.

Free → 3 × $99 → $200 / takeoff → $300 estimate + proposal → department from $500/wk

Nursultan Temirbaev, estimator of record — Indian Trail, NC · reply < 1 hr · no card · no login · no software

Send my first bid — free