Measured.
Verified.
Fast.
Detailed Bills of Quantities for builders. We measure your drawings with calibrated digital take-off, a construction professional checks every line, and your BOQ is back within 72 hours, guaranteed. You put your rates in. We make sure the quantities are right.
The most expensive estimate is the one that's wrong.
Underprice a job and you spend the build clawing it back through variations. Overprice it and you lose the tender. Skip the take-off because you're flat out and you're guessing with your margin. Red Dot is here so that never has to happen. A proper measured Bill of Quantities, at a price that makes it a no brainer on every job you price.
From drawing set to priced BOQ in four steps.
Send your drawings
Email us the set. Architectural, structural, stormwater, whatever you have. A quick scope checklist tells us what's in the contract, so we price your job and not our assumptions.
Calibrated digital take-off
We check every page against its own written dimensions before we measure a thing. Printed scales can't be trusted, so we don't. Quantities come from the drawing geometry itself, not an eyeball.
Professional review
An estimator with real Australian construction experience goes through every line before it gets anywhere near your inbox. The tools are fast. The sign off is human.
Your BOQ lands — built for you to price
A trade by trade Excel BOQ with a Your Rate column: type your own rates in and every total updates on the spot. Plus a clean summary PDF you can forward straight to your client, full assumptions and exclusions, and one round of revisions included. Back to you within 72 hours, guaranteed.
Accuracy you can audit.
Builders know pricing better than anyone. What no one has at tender time is spare hours to measure every drawing properly. That's the part we take care of, and the part we invite you to check.
✓Calibrated before measured
There's a reason every drawing says do not scale. We calibrate each page against its own written dimensions, and several dimensions have to agree before we take a single quantity off that page.
✓Every quantity traceable
Every BOQ line names the drawing it came from and carries a confidence tag: verified, measured, or flagged allowance. You can trace any number back to the plans in seconds.
✓We audit the drawings too
Areas and volumes printed on drawings are claims, not facts, so we re-measure them. On one recent job our checks caught a stated volume overstated by nearly 20%. On another, a roof area was confirmed three independent ways, two drawing sheets and the energy certificate, before it went in the BOQ.
✓Verified against professionals
Our take-offs are checked line by line against independent Bluebeam take-offs by an experienced construction PM, and the results go in our accuracy register. Three blind rounds so far, across four different architects' drawing styles: floor plates within 0.02%, wall runs matching to the millimetre, and zero unexplained differences.*
"We priced a renovation, won it, then spent the whole build writing variations because our number was too low. Red Dot measured the same drawings without seeing our tender and came in 5% higher. That's about where the job actually finished."
— Anonymous builder, Northern Beaches NSW
Documents that go straight into your tender file.
Editable Excel BOQ
Trade by trade quantities with indicative market rates and a Your Rate column. Type your numbers in and every subtotal, margin and total updates on the spot. Your pricing stays yours.
Estimate Summary PDF
A clean, branded summary with trade totals, margin and GST. Ready to hand to your client or drop straight into a tender submission.
Assumptions & flags
Every assumption written down, every exclusion listed, every allowance clearly flagged. If something needs confirming we ask. We don't guess.
A site read on the cover
Every estimate states how hard your site is to build on, with the evidence: access, slope, rock, traffic control, crane needs. Preliminaries get sized for the site you've actually got, not a flat block, and you can see why.
Below: a generic sample job, not a real client's drawings. See what happens to your drawings in the FAQ.
Founding-client prices. Deliberately low, for now.
We're new, and we know nobody pays big money for something they haven't seen. So we're earning trust the only way that counts: by being right, and by being cheap enough to try on your next job. These are launch prices and they'll rise as the track record grows.
Small
- Granny flats, secondary dwellings, small extensions & renos
- Up to ~100m² GFA
- Full BOQ + summary + 1 revision
Medium
- Single dwelling houses, standard renovations & additions
- ~100–350m² GFA — tested up to 325m² on a real luxury build
- Full BOQ + summary + 1 revision
Large
required
- All commercial, and dual occupancies/duplexes — quote by quote at any size. Also townhouses, multi-res, or a single home over 350m² GFA
- Priced on GFA and complexity. Confirmed the same day you send the set
- Full BOQ + summary + 1 revision
Standard turnaround: 72 hours from acceptance (business days), guaranteed • 48 hour priority: +$50 • Same day: possible on request, priced per job • First BOQ free, so you can judge the quality before you pay a cent.
Fair questions. Straight answers.
How accurate are the quantities, really?
Where drawings carry written dimensions and schedules, our quantities are exact. We also re-measure the figures printed on the drawings rather than trusting them. Our measured quantities are checked against independent professional take-offs and logged in an accuracy register. Three blind rounds are on the register so far, across four different architects' drawing styles. The latest matched a senior construction PM's independent Bluebeam take-off within 0.02% on floor plates and to the millimetre on wall runs, and every difference was traced and explained. Allowances are always flagged as allowances, never dressed up as measurements.
What happens to our drawings?
They're used for your take-off and nothing else. We don't share drawings, tender information or pricing with anyone. We work for builders who compete with each other, so keeping each client's information sealed off is a condition of the whole business working.
How fast is it really?
Standard turnaround is 72 hours, counted in business days, from the moment we accept your job, guaranteed. If a tender is closing we offer 48 hour priority for an extra $50, and same day turnaround is possible on request, priced per job.
We have our own estimator. Why use you?
Overflow. When your estimator is flat out and a tender closes Friday, we're the extra set of hands that gets the take-off done without hiring anyone. Plenty of builders also use us as a second check on jobs they can't afford to get wrong.
These prices seem too cheap. What's the catch?
No catch. It's deliberate. We're new, and no one pays big money for a service they haven't seen. Founding client pricing is how we earn our first hundred jobs on the record. The documents are the same quality we'll charge properly for later. Early clients just get them at launch prices, and your first BOQ is free.
Do you price the job or just measure it?
Both. The quantities are the product: measured, verified and traceable. Rates are included as clearly labelled indicative market rates so the BOQ is useful on day one, but the Excel is built for you to drop your own rates in. Your pricing knowledge stays yours and every total updates live.
What do you need from us?
The drawing PDF set, ideally exported from CAD rather than scanned, your timeframe, and a minute on our scope checklist. Kitchen in the contract or owner supplied, landscaping extent, provisional sums you want carried. And if you have your own rates, send them through. We'll build the BOQ around your numbers from day one, which makes it faster for you to finalise. The better the inputs, the fewer the assumptions.
Is this a formal quotation?
No. Every document is an estimate for budgeting and tendering, clearly marked non binding, with assumptions and exclusions in writing. You stay in control of what you actually tender.
Send your plans. Judge us on the first one.
Upload your drawing set and send us the project details. You'll have a confirmed price the same day, your BOQ inside 72 hours, and the first one is free.
Send your plans
Prefer email? Send drawings to reddotestimating@gmail.com instead.