How Skoper reads a plan set
Five steps from upload to a reviewed estimate, how long it takes, one comparison that went against us, and the one thing Skoper is not.
1. Upload. You drop in the drawings as PDF and, if you want, type a scope note: what is in, what is out, anything the plans don't say.
2. Every sheet is read. Skoper renders each sheet as a high-resolution image and extracts its text layer, then sends both together. That means it sees the plan the way you do and can also read the wall type schedule, the door schedule, the general notes, and the dimension strings on that sheet.
3. Quantities are taken off with sources. Partitions are taken by wall type: length from the plans, height from the schedule and building sections, board layers and insulation per the type. Areas come from the sheets that state them. Every quantity records where it came from, or is marked estimated.
4. The estimate is priced. Your Price Book rates are applied wherever they match, and marked as yours. Everything else gets a current market rate, marked as such. Overhead, profit, insurance, bond, and contingency are added as separate formula rows.
5. You review. Open the workbook, check the takeoffs against your own read of the plans, and adjust in the browser editor or in Excel.
How long it takes
About three minutes for a typical plan set. Sets of a few hundred sheets take longer, sometimes 15 to 20 minutes, because every sheet is read. The limit is 600 pages per estimate.
A comparison that went against us, and what changed
On a roughly 200-sheet municipal building set in Florida, we ran Skoper's partition takeoff against a drywall subcontractor's takeoff of the same drawings. Skoper's number was low. It had assumed an average partition height of about 9 feet from the room layouts. The subcontractor took heights per wall type from the building sections, 13'8" to 19'6" floor to deck, and came out with about 1.9 times the gypsum board area.
The subcontractor was right. We changed how Skoper reads partitions the same day: heights come from the wall type schedule and sections, interior partitions run floor to deck unless the type says otherwise, board layers follow the type, and the height used for each type is stated in the assumptions.
We tell this story for two reasons. It shows why every estimate should be read by a person before it goes in a bid. And it shows how Skoper improves: by comparison against people who do this for a living.
What Skoper is not
Skoper is not a replacement for an estimator's review. It does the reading, measuring, and pricing that take the hours. Deciding what the number should be is still your job. Read every estimate the way you would read one from a new hire: check the quantities that drive the cost, confirm the assumptions match what you know about the job, and adjust before you bid.