Introduction
HVAC-5 is a districtwide heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) contract from the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) in Cleveland. It covers 26 buildings and areas across the Easterly, Southerly and Westerly wastewater treatment plants, the district's Environmental and Maintenance Services Center and a pump station.
We ran the full HVAC-5 bid set through The Takeoff AI as a product teardown. In 2.4 hours it produced the material takeoff (MTO), the labor takeoff, a priced bill of materials (BOM) and a 3D model, work that would have taken about 45 hours by hand.
An HVAC takeoff counts and measures everything an HVAC contractor has to buy and install, from the equipment on the schedules to the duct and pipe runs, controls, power connections and demolition. By hand, an estimator copies schedule rows into a spreadsheet, traces runs sheet by sheet and checks every addendum, and with fewer estimators carrying more bids that pace no longer holds.
This post goes through what The Takeoff AI did on HVAC-5, what came back, and how an estimator checks it before bidding.
The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District HVAC-5 Bid Set
The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's HVAC-5 bid set held 193 drawing sheets, a project manual and two addenda issued in February 2026. Bids opened on February 24, 2026, and four contractors bid the job.
The scope goes well past ductwork. Many of the buildings are process areas such as headworks, grease handling and solids handling, so the package mixes hot water boilers, variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems for electrical rooms and substations, exhaust fans, building automation system (BAS) integration and a large amount of demolition.
How The Takeoff AI Ran The HVAC-5 Takeoff
The Takeoff AI estimates from the HVAC drawings, counts every unit, fan, damper, thermostat and connection, and measures each duct, pipe and conduit run by size.
It read the equipment schedules first, then found each tagged unit on the floor plans by its tag and symbol. Duct and pipe were measured along the drawn runs at each sheet's scale, with sizes taken from the labels on the plan. Both addenda were read with the base set, so the February changes landed in the takeoff instead of a separate markup.
The full takeoff took 2.4 hours. Doing the same estimate by hand would have taken about 45 hours.
What The HVAC-5 Takeoff Produced
The takeoff came back as three outputs, the material takeoff (MTO), the labor takeoff and a priced bill of materials (BOM), along with a 3D model.
Material Takeoff
The MTO holds 1,350 line items across the five facilities. A few of the counts and lengths give a sense of its size:
- It counted 7 air handling units (AHUs), 3 boilers, 32 exhaust fans, 31 VRF indoor and outdoor units, and 16 split systems.
- It counted 44 thermostats, 20 dampers and 15 variable frequency drives (VFDs).
- It measured about 5,500 linear feet of pipe, mostly refrigerant line sets, plus about 2,900 feet of pipe insulation and 850 feet of duct.
- It measured about 17,500 linear feet of conduit and wire feeding the HVAC equipment, and it logged 143 lines of demolition.
Labor Takeoff
Labor came to 21,951 man-hours, priced at Ohio prevailing wage for Cuyahoga County using the wage determination in the bid package. Each line carries its crew, whether pipefitters, sheet metal workers, electricians, insulators, laborers or crane operators, at that trade's base rate and fringe.
Priced BOM
The priced BOM totals $6.82 million in bare direct cost, made up of $5.19 million in material and $1.63 million in labor. It leaves out overhead and profit, general conditions, bonds, sales tax, freight and the bid-form allowances, which the estimator adds on top.
For scale, the four public bids ran from $9.19 million to $10.98 million with all of those included, against an engineer's estimate of $11.4 million. Every material price and productivity rate is an editable assumption, so an estimator can drop in vendor quotes or the company's own labor units and the totals update.
3D Model
The 3D model places 362 items from the takeoff, covering equipment, duct and pipe, so the team can see how each building's scope fits together before bid day.
173 Items To Clarify Before Bid Day
Alongside the quantities, The Takeoff AI logged 173 items in the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's HVAC-5 bid set that need a question to the engineer or an assumption written into the bid. A few examples:
- An equipment tag read differently on the schedule, the tag chart and the plans, so each unit was carried once under its schedule tag.
- A schedule pointed to the wrong sheet number for a heat exchanger detail.
- A schedule cited a specification section that isn't in the project manual, and the takeoff followed the answer published during bidding.
- Several schedules listed no specification section at all.
Each one is a request for information (RFI) the estimator can send before the bid, or an exclusion to write into it.
How To Check An AI HVAC Takeoff Before You Bid
Every line in this takeoff points back to where it came from. Click a row and the drawing opens with the schedule row, the tag and the measured run marked on the sheet.
Each line also carries a label for how its quantity was reached. On this job, 523 lines were counted, 248 came from schedules, 125 were measured, 109 were derived from other quantities and 345 were assumptions.
The assumed lines are where a reviewer should start. Most of them are circuit runs, the conduit and wire feeding each unit, which the drawings don't route line by line, so the estimator confirms those lengths before the number goes out.
The HVAC Estimator Shortage
HVAC and sheet metal estimators come from a shrinking pool. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counts about 221,400 cost estimators in the US, projects a 4% decline by 2034, and expects roughly three in four seats to need refilling over the decade, as covered in The Shortage of Estimators report.
A 193-sheet package like the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's HVAC-5, with about 45 hours of takeoff work, is hard to staff when the same team carries several bids at once, and the work has stayed manual. Contractors moving into mission-critical work feel the same squeeze, which The Data Center Boom Has A Problem report covers, and The Takeoff AI suits HVAC firms expanding into data centers.
Why Estimators Use The Takeoff AI For HVAC Takeoffs
The Takeoff AI is the best HVAC takeoff software for contractors who need the takeoff done and priced in hours. It is built on AI models trained on more than 1.2 million industrial drawings, and it delivers 95% accuracy with every number marked and highlighted on the drawing it came from, so someone can check it before the bid goes out.
113 estimators say The Takeoff AI is the best HVAC takeoff software and helps estimate projects in 3 to 4 hours that once took 40 to 50 hours. It covers piping, P&ID (piping and instrumentation diagrams), isometrics, mechanical, electrical and instrumentation (E&I), plumbing, HVAC including ductwork takeoff, structural steel and misc iron.
For every job it returns the material takeoff, the labor takeoff, a priced BOM and a 3D model from 2D drawings. You can see how it handles HVAC on the AI mechanical and HVAC takeoff page, or compare it with other tools in the 10 Best HVAC Estimating Software In 2026.
FAQs
What Is The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District HVAC-5 Project?
HVAC-5 is a districtwide HVAC contract from the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) in Cleveland, covering 26 buildings and areas across its Easterly, Southerly and Westerly wastewater treatment plants, its Environmental and Maintenance Services Center and a pump station. Bids opened on February 24, 2026.
What Is Included In An HVAC Takeoff?
An HVAC takeoff includes the scheduled equipment, duct and pipe runs by size, dampers, controls and thermostats, the power connections to each unit, and any demolition. The Takeoff AI counts and measures all of these from the drawings and adds the labor takeoff and a priced BOM.
How Long Does An HVAC Takeoff Take?
By hand, a multi-building HVAC bid set can take 40 hours or more, and this 193-sheet set would have taken about 45. The Takeoff AI finished it in 2.4 hours, including the labor takeoff and the priced BOM.
How Do I Check An AI HVAC Takeoff Before I Bid?
Open each line and check the mark on the drawing it came from, then review the assumed lines first, since those are quantities the drawings don't show directly. The Takeoff AI labels every line as counted, measured, scheduled, derived or assumed, so the review starts in the right place.
Can The Takeoff AI Price An HVAC Takeoff At Prevailing Wage?
Yes, The Takeoff AI priced this job's labor at Ohio prevailing wage for Cuyahoga County, crew by crew, from the wage determination in the bid package, and every rate can be edited.
Conclusion
Public HVAC packages like the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's HVAC-5 keep getting bigger while the pool of estimators shrinks, and taking off 193 sheets by hand doesn't fit that math. The Takeoff AI is the best HVAC takeoff software for contractors who need the takeoff done and priced in hours.
