Last Monday morning, our team received a message from a leading multi-generational infrastructure contractor based in South Carolina, C.R. Jackson.

"Good Morning. I just wanted to let you know that after my first login to Edgevanta, I uploaded 3 summary of estimated quantity sheets using your Bid Items Agent and the output saved me about an hour and a half of work... Pretty cool!"

Boy, talk about a great start to the week 😊

Here's what happened: She had a bid with 3 separate bid form sections - quantities that needed to get into her estimating software. The old way? Manual entry. Line by line. Row by row. Cell by cell.

Why? Because Bluebeam couldn't extract it cleanly. OCR would mangle the formatting. Copy-paste would lose the structure. So she'd just hand-enter everything into Excel.

90 minutes of pure data entry. Every single bid.

Guess what? That's over now.

The Bigger Picture

This week I met with 20+ civil estimators - from both coasts and everywhere in between.

The common theme?

We're buried in bid packages and drowning in manual review. One small error can cost millions, so we can't cut corners. But we're running out of time.

Sound familiar?

With 41% of the construction workforce retiring in the next decade, the remaining estimators aren't just doing more work. They're doing MORE manual work - the kind that AI should be handling.

Manual Entry Is Dead

Our Bid Items Agent does one thing exceptionally well: it extracts bid items, quantities, and units from messy PDFs and turns them into clean, exportable data.

No more squinting at bid forms. No more manual typing. No more formatting headaches.

Three clicks:

1. Upload the bid form

2. Let the agent extract everything

3. Export cleanly into your estimating software

That's it.

This isn't ChatGPT where you're wrestling with prompts and getting inconsistent results. Our agents are trained on hundreds of civil bid packages. They understand DOT bid forms, AASHTO formats, and the weird quirks of how different agencies structure their proposals.

This is true agentic workflow: The agent is designed to get what you want. Let it do the work. Verify the result.

You still check everything - that's your job. You just do it 50x faster.

The Shift: From Typist to Coach

Purpose-built AI doesn't replace estimators.

It empowers them.

Think about it: Every saved hour becomes time to focus on what actually matters:

• Analyzing competitor pricing

• Understanding project risk

• Developing better takeoff strategies

• Talking to subs and suppliers

If your competitor is strategizing while you're still typing, who wins more work over time?

Small Wins Compound

90 minutes doesn't sound life-changing until you multiply it:

• 2 bids per week = 3 hours saved

• 4 bids per week = 6 hours saved

• 100 bids per year = 150 hours saved

That's nearly a full month of work hours. Per estimator.

What could your team do with an extra month?

Why This Matters Now

The estimators using AI tools aren't working longer hours.

They're working smarter hours.

They're verifying bid requirements in seconds instead of hunting through addendums. They're extracting tables from PDFs instead of re-typing them. They're focusing on winning bids instead of drowning in paperwork.

These small wins compound into competitive advantages.

Building Something That Actually Helps

I grew up in this industry. I know how tough estimating can be - the late nights, the pressure, the tedious work that keeps you from the strategic thinking that actually wins bids.

That's why we're so fired up about building Edgevanta AI. Every time we get an email like the one that started this newsletter, it reminds us why we're doing this. We're not trying to replace estimators - we're trying to give you your time back so you can focus on what you do best.

Seeing teams save hours every week, win more work, and enjoy their jobs more? That's what gets us out of bed every morning.

See It Live

Want to see the Bid Items Agent in action with your actual bid packages?

Reply "DEMO" and I'll set up a quick 15-minute call. Bring a live bid package and I'll show you exactly how it works.

No pitch. No pressure. Just a real demo with your real work.

The teams using it aren't going back to the old way.

Neither should you. Thanks for reading this week!

P.S. - That estimator who saved 90 minutes? She's now looking at our other agents for spec review... Once you see how much time AI can save on one task, you start looking for what else you can automate.

In Case You Missed It:

40 lessons from construction (at 40)

Plan the Work, Work The Plan

11 Habits for Great Estimators

The Secret I’ve Been Keeping: Robotics Are Here

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About the Author

Tristan Wilson is the CEO and Founder of Edgevanta. We make AI agents for civil estimating. He is a 4th Generation Contractor, construction enthusiast, ultra runner, and bidding nerd. He worked his way up the ladder at Allan Myers in the Mid-Atlantic and his family’s former business Barriere Construction before starting Edgevanta in Nashville, where the company is based. Reach out to him at [email protected]