Why Faster Quantity Takeoff Won’t Materially Change Preconstruction

It’s inevitable: AI will dramatically improve quantity takeoff. 

Quantities will be extracted faster, more consistently, and with fewer human errors.

But faster quantity takeoff (QTO) won’t materially change preconstruction timelines.

Because QTO is not what governs the pace of preconstruction.

Why delays in preconstruction isn’t a takeoff problem

Preconstruction often spans months — and on complex projects, years. It is spent validating:

• The scope of the project
• The total project cost
• The schedule and phasing
• Constructability and risk
• Alignment with the owner’s objectives

When it takes 10 minutes to simply open your estimate, it points towards a larger problem in preconstruction (which isn’t validating quantities from the drawings…)

Quantities are an input, not the bottleneck. 

Even a 10x — hell, a 100x improvement — in QTO does not meaningfully accelerate preconstruction, because the work that’s consuming all this time happens before arriving at known quantities.

Quantities are objective. Costs are not.

Quantities are objectively derivable from the documents in most cases. Drawings may have a few discrepancies or ambiguities, but there is typically a defensible “best” interpretation.

Cost is fundamentally different. It relies on a lot of context and assumptions (labor availability, market conditions, means and methods, and scheduling, to name a few). Two contractors can price the same quantities and arrive at very different, but equally valid, results.

In the U.S., builders are not contracted to provide quantities. They are contracted to deliver scope for a price. Owners aren’t paying for takeoffs; they are paying for outcomes.

QTO is rarely on the critical path

When preconstruction slips, it is almost never because quantities were not produced fast enough. These real preconstruction schedules are delayed by:

• Scope clarification
• Design coordination
• Constructability concerns
• Cost reconciliation and validation
• Owner decisions driven by budget constraints

To quantify this a bit, industry research found that, on average there are 6+ budget revisions per project. Each of these revisions are reopening cost conversations, not quantity ones. 

So what is taking all of the time?

The most time-consuming work in preconstruction is validating that the project can be built for the proposed cost and within the proposed schedule (aka. reaching target value design).

Practically, this looks like:

• Evaluating alternates and system options
• Assessing risk and contingency
• Reconciling design intent with real-world constraints
• Aligning cost with owner priorities

Collaborative estimating tools coming up today are intentionally focused on the actual constraint.

What we’re building at Ediphi is a platform for collaborative cost understanding. We see the real opportunity as unifying owners, designers, and builders around:

• Understanding how scope decisions affect cost
• Seeing the cost alternatives in real time
• Setting and enforcing project priorities
• Validating cost and scope early on with more confidence

Improving how teams communicate about cost, make trade-offs, and preserve priorities is what has the potential to remove months from preconstruction schedules. Teams like Wright-Ryan Construction have seen the early results of addressing the bottlenecks in early stage precon, saving 7 hours on every single estimate they produce.

The path towards faster, more confident preconstruction

AI-driven QTO will continue to improve — and it should! But ultimately, it’s a supporting function, not a governing one.

Preconstruction is a decision-making process under uncertainty. 

Until cloud-based estimating technology helps teams align around cost, scope, and priorities faster, improvements in QTO alone will not materially change outcomes and preconstruction will continue to drag on.

If you’re interested in improving your cost decisions, let us know — we’d love to keep the conversation going!