Rohan Mehta-Hutchins

Annotation lead

Backstory

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Christchurch, and have lived here my whole life. We’re now known for our new stadium in town!

What did your parents do, and what did you take from them?

My dad has always worked in IT, and that’s where I inherited my general interest in computers and software by observing his work.

What did you spend the most time on as a kid?

I built computers out of second-hand parts and sold them on Trade Me — it was a fun side hustle before I got my first part-time job!

What did you do before TakeoffQS?

I dropped out of university to pursue opportunities in software, and while my career so far may be short, it has been incredibly exciting. I started out with a summer internship doing data annotation, then I found myself building tools that I thought could help the process and help the team. My work was noticed and I got given more responsibilities and projects to work on. Leading the annotation team and building projects is what I live in now.

How did you end up at TakeoffQS?

I ended up at TakeoffQS by putting myself out there a bit, doing a summer internship data annotating because I wanted to try something new. After being a part of the process and seeing what the team was doing and building, I wanted to be more involved and building things myself — which is how I ended up here!

What I care about

What’s broken in estimating that you want to fix?

How long it takes to turn around a quote. A builder can lose a job because someone else gets their price in first, but when estimating no longer takes days you get the number back fast, win more work, and stop putting so much pressure on the small team that knows how to do it properly.

What do you look for in the companies we work with?

Teams that are open to change and happy to learn. Those are the teams that integrate best with TakeoffQS.

A mistake you see builders make repeatedly?

Not thinking about wastage. People reach for a default percentage and apply it to everything, but it should change with the material and the job. Get it wrong and it will quietly eat your margin.

What gets you fired up about this work?

It’s really exciting to see what the technology is capable of and how far it has come — thinking about what it looks like now and what it could look like in the future!

What values matter most in how we build TakeoffQS?

Velocity — speed is incredibly important in how we build today’s technology. Simplicity — the tool shouldn’t be difficult to use; it should be intuitive on a level where the user understands what they’re doing and why.