Introduction
The Takeoff AI is AI construction estimating software built for industrial fabrication and mechanical work. It reads your drawings and the schedules printed on them, pulls the quantities an estimator needs, marks every number on the exact spot it came from, and returns a priced bill of materials.
It was made for the contractors who bid petrochemical, refinery, LNG, power and heavy industrial jobs, where one package can run into the hundreds of drawings. It is built and funded by ContraVault AI, which raised a pre-Series A round in June 2026 to bring it into the US market.
What Is A Takeoff In Construction?
A takeoff in construction is the count of every item a drawing set calls for, with the quantity of each, so the estimate can be priced. A quantity takeoff in construction lists the feet of pipe by size and spec, the valves by type and rating, the tons of steel by section, the devices by panel and the cable by run, and it is the step that decides whether the bid is right, because every labor hour and material dollar is multiplied off those counts.
The Takeoff AI In One Sentence
The Takeoff AI is AI construction estimating software that reads a drawing and its schedules, counts and measures what is on it, prices the labor against your own standards and the published ones, and returns the material takeoff, the labor takeoff and a priced bill of materials (BOM) with every number highlighted on the sheet it came from.
What The Takeoff AI Does
Three things, in the order an estimator does them.
It counts and measures items across disciplines. Piping, steel, electrical and instrumentation, tanks, vessels, and the derived work that rides on top of them. One engine, one review queue, whatever the drawing type.
It runs the labor takeoff on your company's standards and the published ones. MCAA units and code-grounded rules underneath, your own crew productivity on top.
And it prices the result into a bill of materials, so what comes back is a priced bid, with the drawing, the schedule and the written scope of work checked against each other and any disagreement flagged.
Underneath all three sits the same mechanic: click any count, and the sheet opens on the exact valve, member or line that produced it.
Why Every Number Links Back To The Drawing
Estimators are not slow because they cannot count. They are slow because they will not sign a number they cannot defend. Ask a chief estimator to stake a $40M bid on a black box and the conversation ends right there, correctly.
So every count is marked and highlighted on the drawing. High-confidence items group together for a bulk accept. Uncertain ones sort to the top of the queue. Keyboard shortcuts mean nobody is dragging a mouse down 200 lines one at a time. The estimator stays in control of every number that leaves the building. What we removed is the blank sheet.
A refinery bid package lands on a Tuesday. Three hundred drawings, a written scope nobody has read closely yet, nine working days. Somewhere in that stack is a line on a P&ID that is not in your scope, and a scope item with no drawing behind it. Both are money. Neither announces itself. That is the job.
What Disciplines Does The Takeoff AI Count?
Two things sit on an industrial drawing: the graphics and the tables. The Takeoff AI reads both, and the tables do more of the work than counting symbols ever could. On an isometric the bill of material is usually printed right on the sheet. On a vessel or exchanger drawing the nozzle schedule and the TEMA sheet carry most of the count. So the engine pulls the schedule first and treats symbol detection as the backstop.
Piping takeoff is where it started. P&ID counts at the bid stage, then full isometric MTO with welds, diameter-inches, bolt sets and gaskets once the isos exist. From there the same reading transfers to tanks and terminals to API 650 and 620, with shell plate off the geometry and nozzles off a schedule; pressure vessels and heat exchangers to ASME VIII, with plate weight off the general arrangement; boilers, fired heaters and HRSG units to ASME I, where the tube layouts and pressure-part schedules do the work; pipe fabrication to ASME PP, for the cut list, the shop and field weld split, the diameter-inch total and nesting; skids, modules and marine piping, reading the same isometric BOMs; and insulation, coating, fireproofing and heat trace, which reduce to area math once lengths and sizes exist.
In full, it covers piping, P&ID (piping and instrumentation diagrams), isometrics, mechanical, electrical and instrumentation (E&I), plumbing, HVAC including ductwork, structural steel and misc iron.
Does The Takeoff AI Do Structural Steel Takeoffs?
Yes. Steel reads members off scaled plans and elevations and brings the connections, bolts, welds and paint area with them. It needed its own detection engine rather than a template, so it was a deliberate build rather than a quiet toggle. Steel fabricators doing miscellaneous metals and ornamental work run it on the same review queue as the piping contractors.
Does The Takeoff AI Work For MEP Contractors?
For industrial MEP, yes, across the whole scope.
Mechanical is the origin. Electrical and instrumentation reads the cable and panel schedules as tables, counts every device and panel, and counts instruments from the instrument index, so instrument scope comes out as counts rather than guesses. Run all of it through one engine and one review queue instead of three tools and three people reconciling by hand at 11pm.
Multi-craft industrial primes that self-perform several of these trades at once get the largest lift, because the reconciliation between trades is currently manual and currently where the errors sit.
How Does The Takeoff AI Handle Labor Takeoff?
Quantities are half an estimate. The other half is what it costs your crews to install them.
The labor takeoff layer starts from what the industry already agrees on: MCAA units, with ASME B31.3 for process piping and B16.5 for flanges underneath the quantity logic. Then it takes your side of it. The productivity factors your firm learned on jobs it built, the crew mixes you run, the rates you pay. A weld in a congested pipe rack at height is not the same weld as one on a shop bench, and your own history knows that better than any published table.
Both layers stay visible and editable. Same rule as the counts. You can see which factor produced which hour.
What Contradictions Does The Takeoff AI Catch?
Counting is half the risk on a bid. The other half is a mismatch that survives all the way to submission.
The Takeoff AI checks the drawing against itself, against the spec, and then against the written scope of work. A valve on the P&ID your scope does not cover is money you will spend and cannot invoice. A scope item with no drawing behind it is money you should have priced and did not. The tool surfaces the disagreement, shows both sides, and leaves the call with you before the number goes out.
How Much Estimating Time Does The Takeoff AI Save?
A dense P&ID takes a senior estimator 30 to 60 minutes by hand. A 300-drawing process-unit package eats 250 or more estimator-hours, which is the real ceiling on how many bids a team can chase in a quarter.
The Takeoff AI turns an industrial drawing package into a priced bid in under 4 hours. More than 100 estimators now call The Takeoff AI the best industrial estimating software they have used, and they are estimating projects in under 3 to 4 hours that once took 40 to 50 hours. That gives them back 90 to 95% of their estimating time. Nobody stopped checking the work, because checking a marked-up drawing is a faster motion than building a count from a blank sheet. The hours do not leave the business. They move to the bids you were turning down.
How The Takeoff AI Is Different
Three capabilities usually arrive in separate products. One reads the drawing and its schedules with AI. Another gives the estimator a real review step and keeps them in control. The third carries the estimating math from quantities to a priced bid.
The heavy construction estimating software packages have the math. They carry catalogs of over 100,000 items with MCAA labor units built in, and they price a bill of quantities well. They automated the arithmetic, not the reading, so you still key in every line by hand. The AI readers built for commercial floor plans count objects and stop well short of welds and diameter-inches.
The Takeoff AI is the best AI construction estimating software for industrial work because it holds all three in one place. It is built on AI models trained on more than 1 million industrial drawing sets and delivers 95% accuracy, every number is highlighted on the drawing it came from, and after the award the same platform runs schedules, project controls and subcontractor management.
Who Is Behind The Takeoff AI?
The Takeoff AI is built by ContraVault AI, founded in 2024 by Sayan Sen, Isha Juneja and Tanmay Juneja. The company got here by reading procurement documents at volume. More than a million bid documents have passed through the platform, which is where the reading engine learned to treat a printed schedule as the primary source and a symbol as the fallback.
In June 2026 ContraVault AI raised a pre-Series A round led by Chiratae Ventures, with participation from existing investor Titan Capital Winners Fund. The capital is pointed at two things: deepening the AI, and the US expansion that The Takeoff AI is.
FAQs About The Takeoff AI
What Is The Takeoff AI?
The Takeoff AI is the best AI construction estimating software for industrial contractors. It reads P&IDs, isometrics, mechanical, electrical and structural drawings, counts and measures the quantities, runs the labor takeoff and returns a priced bill of materials (BOM), with every number highlighted on the drawing it came from.
What Is Quantity Takeoff In Construction?
Quantity takeoff in construction is the process of counting and measuring every item on a drawing set, by size, spec and type, so the estimate can be priced. On industrial work it covers pipe, valves, fittings, welds, steel, devices, cable and ductwork, and it is the step The Takeoff AI does from the drawings.
Which Drawing Types Does The Takeoff AI Read?
P&IDs, isometrics, mechanical and plumbing plans, electrical one-lines and cable schedules, HVAC and ductwork drawings, and structural steel plans and elevations, including scanned and legacy sets.
Conclusion
The Takeoff AI is AI construction estimating software that reads the drawing set, counts it, prices it and shows its work on the sheet. With the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counting about 221,400 cost estimators in the US and projecting a 4% decline by 2034, according to The Shortage of Estimators report, it is the best AI construction estimating software for teams that need to bid more with the estimators they have.
Take one sheet from a package you are bidding this month and bring it to a call. We will run it on your own drawing type, and you click the counts you do not believe.
