Complain to me haha

Hello Everyone, I will be taking on the role as a construction estimator for a small General Contractor. Most projects are commercial renovations or new build businesses along with some residential new builds/ additions. I have done very basic takeoffs and entry level project manager tasks for about 3 months now. My goal is to be able to estimate a job from start to finish. I am excited to learn more about estimating and some techniques that will help make the process quicker.

Curious what everyone’s running. Here’s mine: • JobTread — PM, estimating, budgets, and the file system: plans, drawings, receipts, job docs all live here • QuickBooks — accounting • Notion — business brain / SOPs + cost history • Airtable — Contractor OS data layer • Claude / ChatGPT — the glue. Skills + MCP connectors so I’m not re-entering the same data three times Google Drive is still in there, but honestly it’s redundant — it only exists as a staging spot until I get receipt capture running properly through the agents. Once that’s clean it comes out. What are you running — and what’s sitting in your stack that you know you don’t actually need?

Hey everybody, thought I would kick off a new post for August. What are your goals for this month and what are you trying to get out of the community? Mine are pretty simple and straightforward 1. Keep experimenting with AI and sharing what I'm learning 2. Keep making a ton of youtube videos 3. Keep learning about construction project management and working out the best way to deliver projects and run a construction business Keen to hear what you're goals are and what you want to get out of the community

There are five categories of tools we need to think about for estimating: - Take-off software - Estimating software - Document management - CRM and bid tracking - AI tools Some platforms do all of them, some only do one small, specific thing. Do I think you need five expensive construction-specific platforms? No. A smaller contractor could cover most of this with a purpose-built take-off tool, Excel, SharePoint or Google Drive, a simple CRM, and Claude or ChatGPT. As your team grows, dedicated estimating software or an all-in-one platform might make more sense. The important thing is choosing tools that suit your process and let you export your data. I broke down the different options in this video: https://youtu.be/AyL3tXCtz18 What does your current estimating stack look like? Which tools would you recommend?