TakeoffQS is a browser-based construction quantity surveying platform built in Christchurch, New Zealand. It started as a partnership between Base Property Group and Agentic Intelligence, and launched as the first product on the BuildFoundry platform. It’s since grown into a standalone company within the BuildFoundry group, with its own team and its own customers.
The process stays familiar. The grind goes away.
Where we’re at
TakeoffQS is live and in daily use.
ITM McVicar and Freedom Built are both signed customers, using the software for prenail and balance of house takeoffs. Freedom Built puts up 90-odd homes a year in Canterbury, so the product gets proven on real builds every week.
Graham Hill Roofing runs a custom-built digital price book solution on TakeoffQS.
And there’s a new way to work with us. TakeoffQS Services is our done-for-you estimating service. You send plans, we send back a measured material schedule. ProcureX, Hillside ITM, ITM McVicar, ITM Kaiapoi, ITM Ashburton, ITM Timaru and Akarana Timbers Christchurch are already using it.
More merchants, frame and truss manufacturers and group home builders are in pilots or getting ready to go live, from Canterbury to Auckland.
Two ways to use TakeoffQS
Use the software yourself. Your team uploads plans, checks the numbers and builds the quote in TakeoffQS. You stay in control of every figure.
Or send us the plans. TakeoffQS Services does the takeoff for you. Our QS team runs every plan set through the same software, checks the schedule before it leaves us, and sends it back in the format your system imports. Turnaround is five working days from a complete plan set. Every schedule comes with a numbered list of what we assumed, what we left out, and anything we couldn’t resolve.
Plenty of teams start with the service and move to the software. Some do both. ITM McVicar does. See TakeoffQS Services for scope and pricing.
Who it’s for
Building merchants and suppliers who want quantities mapped to their own products. QSs. Builders. Framers and other trades. Whether you do one residential build a week or 1,000 plans a month.
How the software works
- Upload your plans. Drop in a PDF plan set. TakeoffQS finds the relevant pages, or you pick them.
- Measure and verify. AI detects and measures what’s on the plan. You review it, adjust it and verify every number.
- Extract your materials. You set your framing logic from the plan’s framing notes: stud and nog centres, wall heights, truss and rafter spacings. Formulas then turn verified measurements into material quantities. Wall metres become studs, plates and dwangs. Floor and wall areas become linings, insulation and trim.
- Price, quote and send. Quantities land on your own price book items and rates. Build the quote, send packages to suppliers, and share the finished quote with your customer. Or export a CSV or priced materials schedule and work outside the platform.
In our own testing on prenail, TakeoffQS runs four to five times faster than a manual takeoff.
What it covers today
Prenail and balance of house are live. That’s where we’re putting all our focus right now, so both keep getting sharper every week.
Quoting, end to end
The takeoff is the hard part, but it isn’t the whole job.
Templates keep every quote consistent. The bill of quantities prices off the plan. The quote sheet stays editable, with material, labour, markup and sell in the footer as you work. Then share the finished quote to a client portal where your customer accepts or declines.
Plan to signed quote, in one place.
Why it’s different
Built here first. Our computer vision is trained on New Zealand plans, including all the inconsistent drafting styles you see in real plan sets.
And it’s draft-first. TakeoffQS does the first pass. A person checks it. No black box, no numbers you can’t trace back to the plan.
The team behind it
Cole Askew, Brad Fraser, Jason Simpson (CTO) and Nick Latty (GM), with a cross-functional team of engineers, product and customer people based in Christchurch.
We’ve recently hired Bernice Kilkelly as our first QS on TakeoffQS Services. Demand for the service is moving faster than we planned for, so we’re hiring more QSs now. If you’re a residential QS or estimator and want to work with software that does the measuring grunt work for you, get in touch.