Construction estimating has a time problem. A general contractor receives a set of plans on Monday and, if everything goes perfectly, might have leveled bids from subcontractors sometime the following week. More often it takes two weeks, sometimes longer. That window costs real money: jobs get missed, margins get squeezed, and estimators spend their days chasing email threads instead of reviewing numbers.
Struvia is an AI estimating and bid management platform built for general contractors who are tired of losing job opportunities to how long preconstruction takes. Upload your plans, and the system handles takeoff, estimate generation, subcontractor outreach, bid collection, and bid leveling in one place, with a goal of getting from plan upload to bids in hand in about two days, not two weeks.
What separates it from most of what’s already out there is scope. Estimating software tends to split into two camps: manual tools built for accuracy — PlanSwift, Bluebeam, Procore, ProEst, or a salaried estimator working the sheets by hand — and automated tools built for speed that only cover a trade or two, like siding or doors, leaving a GC to piece together everything else by hand anyway.
One contractor had already spent around $25,000 across several “automated takeoff” tools before finding Struvia, and every one of them hit the same wall: they’d measure one trade well and leave the rest of the plan for someone to do manually. Struvia’s takeoff runs across every trade on the sheet: concrete, structural, exterior, finishes, and more, not just the parts that are easy to automate.
Key Features of Struvia
AI-Automated Takeoff and Estimating
Once you upload a set of plans, Struvia reads every sheet and generates a full itemized estimate across all trades. It identifies rooms, counts doors and windows, measures square footage, and flags structural and permitting details automatically. In Struvia’s own product demo (a 2,748-square-foot custom home), that added up to 236 line items across concrete, structural, exterior, and finishes work, for a total estimated cost of just over $1.45 million. For teams whose construction bidding software still requires clicking through every sheet manually, this is a meaningful shift in how much time gets spent before a bid even goes out.
Subcontractor Network and Automated Outreach
Struvia connects general contractors to a network of over 10,000 vetted subcontractors nationwide. When you upload a project, the platform identifies relevant subs in your area and sends bid invitations automatically, then handles follow-up so your team isn’t spending afternoons on the phone checking whether a sub got the package. One contractor said the subs Struvia surfaced for his very first project came in more than $100,000 under what he’d budgeted, simply because he got real competition instead of defaulting to the two or three subs he always calls. According to Struvia, that kind of bid-coverage improvement averages $20,000 in savings per project.
Scope Gap Detection
Before bid leveling, Struvia checks whether incoming sub bids actually cover the required divisions. If mechanical bids are missing HVAC scope, for example, the platform flags it, and can be configured to automatically follow up with that sub to request the missing inclusions. It’s a small thing on paper, but it removes a category of manual coordination that normally falls entirely on the estimator: catching what’s missing, then chasing it down.
Leveled Bid Comparison
Once bids come in, Struvia organizes them into an apples-to-apples comparison. Rather than opening five different PDFs and building a comparison spreadsheet by hand, you get a structured view of what each sub included, what they missed, and where the pricing lands. This is where the platform actually earns its keep: not just pulling quantities, but making the review process faster and less error-prone.
Why Contractors Actually Switch
The reasons contractors give for adopting Struvia are rarely about the technology itself. They’re about what the technology lets them stop doing.
One GC had already spent close to $50,000 on Procore before switching. Procore wasn’t the problem; the manual estimating process behind it was. Takeoffs still took weeks, and by the time bids were ready, some job opportunities had already gone to a competitor who moved faster.
Another contractor’s business had just lost its two biggest jobs back to back, and he’d had to let his entire crew go except himself. For him, this isn’t about saving a few hours here and there. It’s about being able to bid on enough work, fast enough, to rebuild.
And for at least one owner running her business essentially solo, with no spare hours for anything beyond the actual building work, the appeal is simpler: it’s the only way estimating gets done at all right now.
How Struvia Moves a Job From Upload to Leveled Bids
Step 1: Upload Your Plans
Drag in your PDF plan set. Struvia reads every sheet, identifies rooms and structural elements, counts fixtures, and measures areas. The plan chat feature lets you ask questions about specific pages or details directly.
Step 2: Review the AI Takeoff and Estimate
The platform generates a full estimate with line items across all trades. You can review, edit, or add notes before anything goes out. This is not a locked black box; you stay in control of the numbers.
Step 3: Outreach Goes Out Automatically
Struvia matches the project to relevant subs from its national network, plus any subs you already work with. Bid packages go out, and the system handles follow-up until responses come back.
Step 4: Leveled Bids Land in Your Dashboard
Incoming bids are organized and compared automatically. Scope gaps are flagged before you sit down to review. You spend your time making decisions, not sorting spreadsheets.
Struvia Pricing
Unlike other platforms, Struvia doesn’t charge a subscription. There’s no monthly fee to sign up and no seat licenses to manage.
You pay per plan, based on the complexity of what you upload. A small custom home costs less to run through the system than a large commercial set with a hundred-plus sheets, and that’s the whole model: you only pay for the plans you actually send through, when you send them. Plans range from $50-$1000 depending on size and complexity. Current rates are listed on Struvia’s pricing page.
Worth a Look If Preconstruction Is Slowing You Down
Struvia is not trying to replace your estimator. It is trying to remove the hours of repetitive coordination work that keeps estimators from doing what they are actually good at: judgment, relationships, and pricing strategy. If your team is still managing bids through email threads and manual takeoff workflows, it’s worth the fifteen minutes it takes to see how it handles your own plans. Request a demo to see the full AI construction takeoff software in action.
