Estimating Studio
A Kanban bid board where every bid moves from draft to in-progress to submitted, with an AI inspector that reviews the estimate and shows risk flags resolving in real time.
Commercial mechanical contracting
Bid it, build it, service it, in one system
Estimating, project delivery, procurement, and service in one system, with AI reviewing the estimate before the bid goes out.
Anonymized client build . Meridian Mechanical OS
The challenge
The contractor’s business ran across four disconnected systems: estimators bidding jobs in spreadsheets, project managers tracking delivery somewhere else, a procurement team chasing equipment orders by email, and a service crew fielding warranty and maintenance calls with no link back to the job that created them. Accounting lived in one system; documents in another; the real picture lived in people’s heads.
The result was predictable: margin leaks nobody caught until closeout, bids that went out with scope gaps, and an owner with no single place to see what was actually happening. Every office and role saw a different slice of the truth.
How we solved it
We built one operations system that follows a job through its entire life, from first estimate to final warranty handoff, so estimating, project management, materials, and service all read and write to the same record. The system runs across four connected screens.
Project Command
A single screen for live jobs: budget burn vs. billing, profitability, milestone schedule, materials, and a clear owner assigned to every project.
Procurement Control Tower
Every open order, incoming delivery, and stock level on one screen: a deliveries calendar by ETA plus inventory health and low-stock alerts across offices.
Service & Renewals Hub
A dispatch board for inbound tickets alongside recurring-revenue tracking, maintenance contracts, and warranty handoffs tied back to the job that created them, so recurring revenue stops getting missed.
How AI is integrated
The most expensive mistakes in this business happen at the estimate. So that’s where the AI lives. When a bid pack lands (spec, drawings, addenda), the AI reads the documents and reviews the estimate against them, then flags risk before the bid goes out:
- Scope gaps work specified in the documents but missing from the takeoff
- Pricing variance line items running above master-pricing thresholds
- Missed addenda revisions that haven’t made it into the takeoff
- Missing equipment and long-lead items gaps that would blow the schedule later
Each flag carries a confidence level and a one-click confirm or dismiss, so the estimator stays in control while the AI does the line-by-line catching a human would miss under deadline. The same review feeds the owner’s approvals and per-project margin tracking, so risk caught at the bid follows the job all the way through delivery.
Why it matters
The contractor runs on one system where a job’s margin, schedule, materials, and service history live together, instead of four tools and a lot of knowledge stuck in people’s heads, with AI catching the estimate mistakes that used to surface only at closeout.
Outcome metrics available on request, once the client’s numbers are cleared for publication.
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