An Open Letter From A Frustrated Estimator
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”
—Howard Beale, Network (1976)
I didn’t come to disrupt anything.
I just wanted to do the job right.
Estimate a roof.
Get the quantities.
Apply the specs.
Help the crew win the day.
Help the owner get what they paid for.
Simple, right?
But nothing about it is simple anymore.
We’re surrounded by tools—
software that promises integration, automation, perfection.
Yet I’m still staring at PDFs, hunting for scope gaps, redrawing details someone else already modeled.
I’m clicking the same line three different ways just to get three different outputs—
because estimating has become a translation exercise, not a reflection of reality.
Meanwhile, hats off to BIM.
Their vision pushes the industry forward—linking cost, time, and scope to something greater than lines on a page.
They’ve proven that when models live beyond the drawing, we unlock coordination, lifecycle thinking, and long-term value.
That’s the future.
But construction isn’t perfect.
It’s messy.
It shifts, it adapts, it deals with what’s uncovered and what’s unspoken.
And estimating lives in that mess—in the gaps between drawing and delivery.
BIM is brilliant at structure, but the field runs on nuance.
And too often, we’re asked to remodel our logic to fit the tool,
instead of using tools that reflect the real logic—the layered, conditional, experience-driven logic—that built this industry in the first place.
We know better.
Because we live it.
Every day.
From the field to the file to the final bid.
We know that logic lives in the space between the shapes.
In the attributes.
In the conditions.
In the “it depends.”
And so we rebuild it—again and again—in Excel, in SQL, in Bluebeam layers.
We become magicians, not estimators.
And every one of us is building the same logic tree—alone.
And then one day, I ask myself:
Why can an AI model show me the path in a few minutes…
…when our entire industry, with all our brilliance, has been circling the drain for decades?
And the answer hits harder than any pricing call I’ve ever taken:
Because AI doesn’t care who owns the logic. It just needs the logic to exist.
That’s the part we’ve been missing.
Not better software.
Not smarter models.
Shared logic.
So here I am.
Frustrated. Exhausted. But not giving up.
This isn’t a pitch.
It’s a plea.
Let’s stop pretending we can solve this in silos.
Let’s stop letting complexity serve the few.
Let’s stop racing to win bids no one can deliver with integrity.
Let’s come together—not in code, not in capital—but in compromise.
You can drive whatever car you want. You can have a preferred way of driving. You can sell us whatever car you want.
But we have to agree on the engine.
Until we do, we will keep breaking down.
And someone else will decide how we run.
And while we’re at it—can we agree to stop capitalizing on the very thing that keeps us behind?
The chaos. The 90-hour weeks. The missed dinners.
The late-night panic of missing something should’ve never needed retracing in the first place.
I thought we got rid of paint-by-numbers.
But here we are—still coloring between the lines someone else drew,
just trying to make it add up.
And maybe, just maybe…
- The estimator can let go of the spreadsheet—but not the wisdom inside it.
- The manufacturer can help maintain the truth—not just the brochure.
- The contractor can talk scope before price.
- The architect can share the model, not guard it.
- The owner can trust the people they hired to do the job—if the system finally lets them.
We all want to do it right.
We just have to stop doing it alone.
—A Frustrated Estimator
who still believes we can do this
