Why Our Concrete Takeoffs Hold Up

Concrete is one of the easiest trades to underprice through omission, because so much of the cost lives in details that don't show up as a clean line item on the drawings - embeds, dowels, construction joints, curing compound, and the waste factor that varies depending on whether a pour is a simple slab or a complex, highly-reinforced wall. We break formwork, reinforcing, and placement out as distinct line items rather than folding them into a blended concrete rate, because blended rates hide exactly the kind of error that shows up as a change order six weeks into the job.
We also coordinate quantities across elements. Grade beams and slabs share edges; columns and walls share corners. Counting that shared volume once, correctly, instead of twice or not at all, is one of the most common places concrete takeoffs go wrong, and it's one we check explicitly on every estimate.

Coordination With Rebar

Concrete and rebar are priced and bid separately on most commercial projects, but they have to be quantified in a coordinated way or the numbers won't reconcile. We estimate concrete volume and rebar tonnage from the same structural set so the two scopes match up cleanly when your rebar sub or in-house team prices their portion - no mismatched footing schedules, no reinforcing quantities that don't correspond to the concrete elements they're supposed to be embedded in.

Who This Is For

General contractors use our concrete estimates for competitive bidding and for setting a clean self-perform budget when concrete is done in-house. Concrete subcontractors use them to turn around bids fast without tying up their own estimating staff on every opportunity that comes in. Developers use early concrete estimates, alongside sitework numbers, to validate structural budget assumptions before a project moves past schematic design.

What Is Included in Your Concrete Estimate

  • Concrete takeoff & quantity takeoff - total cubic yardage by element and by pour, with waste factors applied per element type
  • Slab concrete - slab-on-grade, elevated slabs, and topping slabs, including thickness variations, control joints, and reinforcing mesh or rebar
  • Footing estimating - spread footings, strip footings, and mat foundations, quantified with formwork and rebar included
  • Column estimating - vertical concrete elements with formwork, rebar cages, and embedded items
  • Beam estimating - grade beams and elevated beams, coordinated with column and slab quantities to avoid double-counting shared volume
  • Wall estimating - foundation walls, retaining walls, and shear walls, broken out by height and thickness where it affects formwork cost
  • Shotcrete estimating - sprayed concrete applications for pools, retaining structures, and complex geometries where standard formwork doesn't apply
  • Concrete placement estimating - labor and equipment for placing, consolidating, and finishing concrete, priced separately from material and formwork