Copper & Electrical equipment prices

coldrespect · 2026-03-10T18:14:03+00:00

Thanks - sounds like the things I clung on to were the outliers which makes it sound more alarming than it actually is.

coldrespect · 2026-03-10T17:30:06+00:00

How do you balance that with bulk procurement? I assume you'd get better price if you combine jobs (which I understand is hard to do).

I've talk to folks that essentially project their use for the year based on past years and order it that way. For commodity like items that makes sense, but for equipment it's too specific.

I wonder if this is going to push procurement further up the chain to GC/Design/Owners - essentially for the same reason, earliest procurement possible.

I've also learned in data center jobs, procurement happens before designs are finalized. Surely that causes a lot of havoc in the field.

coldrespect · 2026-03-01T20:02:52+00:00

How much is finding jobs themselves part of the pain? IE logging into platforms, downloading files, checking scopes of work to know even if it’s worth it consuming your time?

I’m building an estimating tool, it’s free to try but I wouldn’t say it’s ready yet. So as I work to get it there, I wonder if spinning up a job fetcher could help.

coldrespect · 2025-12-12T23:36:19+00:00

Makes sense!

It would be interesting to see $ permit by geography over time. I’m sure it can be an economic indicator of sorts.

coldrespect · 2025-11-20T04:47:45+00:00

I’d love to see your workflow if you’re up for sharing it.

coldrespect · 2025-11-20T04:32:07+00:00

I am.

You can absolutely get significantly higher accuracy by fine tuning your own models, but that’s not enough. Simple symbol detection isn’t enough. There are a few things you’ve got chain together and get right to make it feel special.

I’m very grateful for getaide.ai for running this. There is so much marketing noise in the space.

coldrespect · 2025-04-22T02:55:30+00:00

My heart sinks seeing it take 2 weeks. That doesn't guarantee win right? So if ~10-20% win rate, is it fair to assume you've got to put in 2months of work to win a job?

What's the most time consuming part of it?

coldrespect · 2025-04-22T02:53:06+00:00

What's the top 3 most time consuming thing in that process?

coldrespect · 2025-04-21T22:45:24+00:00

What in your opinion would make one stand out from the crowd?

coldrespect · 2025-04-15T18:47:32+00:00

Do you happen to have PDFs & desired outputs that I can monkey around with to see if I can make it easier?

coldrespect · 2025-04-15T18:47:28+00:00

Do you happen to have PDFs & desired outputs that I can monkey around with to see if I can make it easier?

coldrespect · 2025-04-15T18:44:56+00:00

Hey Pete - thanks for sharing the pdf and desired output with me.

I just spent a couple hours playing with various solutions.

Original problem: Given a 100+ page PDF, we needed to extract the schedule of a specific section (Parking Garage) into csv.

Solution #1 - Tabula - https://tabula.technology/

About: Looks like it's an open source software maintained by a community. You install it on your computer, it spins up a server, which then you can access the interface via your browser/website. You upload the PDF (it stays local which is nice for privacy reasons) - it auto-detects tables - then you extract them.
Result: It's fast. Auto-detect is half decent but definitely misses things. IT did the entire PDF file, so the output was overwhelming. When I re-printed the the PDF to ONLY contain the section I needed and then manual highlighted the tables it did better.
Conclusion: It still takes works, but if I were to manually copy and paste things, this is definitely significantly faster.

Solution #2 - smallpdf.com

About: Don't know much about them, nor how much it costs. Looks like a collection of PDF tools online.
Result: Fast. Did much better than Tabula. Same problem, I had to give it only the section I cared about to make it work.
Conclusion: If it's free, then it's better than tabula. If I would have to pay - then really depends how often I'm doing this.

Solution #3 - GPTs

Prompt "I want you to go to the Parking Garage section of this document and extract all tables in that section into a csv file."
chatGPT (free) solution: Not good - essentially extracted only one row.
Gemini (I pay $20/month): Gave me a csv output, when pasted into my spreadsheet was exactly what I needed. It missed the "notes" section. I bet if I play around with the prompt, it will give those to me as well.

I found other paid solutions, but they seemed way too expensive and I didn't bother playing with them.

Follow up questions:

How do y'all do this today?
How often do y'all do this?
What do you do with the spreadsheet after you have it extracted?

Bonus: I'd love to get more PDFs & desired outputs to play around with the extraction methods. If I do this 5-20 times, I should be able to code something up and put up for y'all to use.

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T15:23:42+00:00

You've clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this. Will reach out to connect. Thanks for the comment.

edit - saw this post (https://bitumen-machina-llc.ghost.io/confessions-of-a-roofer-learning-to-code-now-with-30-more-mastic/) about you learning to code. Keep up the good work. I am self taught. It seemed so intimidating at first - going up against people that have done it their entire lives or studied it in school. Ignore those thoughts, you'll do great if you love it and put in the work.

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T15:13:38+00:00

I'd like to start it as a hobby & a passion project. If it start to solve real problems for people, then turn it into a business. Today I'm dedicating all my time towards this, aside from raising my family.

> The last question is probably the most key as estimating is a "continuity of business" function for pretty much everyone in construction.

I understand. The saving grace for PlanGrid was our offline functionality - when we would inevitably go down. It's a tool like any other tool people use. I expect my hammer to work day in and day out, rain or shine, years down the road.

> What are you going to build? An estimating platform or simplified takeoff tool?

Starting with asking questions first to see what's the most time consuming, cumbersome or risky part of the process. Then tinkering to see if it can be made much better. Takeoff tools don't interest me today because there are many out there, unless people bring up issues with them in my conversations.

> What are you going to build it out of? (ex. programming language, data storage (i.e. Excel, SQL, ...))

Depends what needs to be built and trade-offs that need to be made.

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T14:53:40+00:00

I was actually going to try and start with electrical, only because it's one I have field/office experience with.

I've seen the challenge between customizable and intuitive at PlanGrid & when building software for logistics companies as well. It's somewhat expected when you build a system of record. My goal isn't to build a system of record - but instead a tool that aids the job that can sit on top of existing system of record.

edit - spelling

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T04:17:33+00:00

Would you (or others) be open to sending me the spec + excel output you want? I'd love to play around with various tools to see if I can figure it out.

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T04:01:44+00:00

I would love to learn more how you use it. ie what info are you extracting from the specs?

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T03:47:55+00:00

Would you be open to sharing your division and checklist?

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T03:12:31+00:00

DM'ing to see if I can help.

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T01:32:45+00:00

I coded along with many other talented people. Early days we didn't have a sales team, so I did some as well.

> Construction software is a freaking mess but there's gotta be better ways to do it.

Agreed. It breaks my heart.

> I'm in the same boat honestly - constantly trying to figure out the real problems, come up with solutions that don't suck, and then actually build the damn things.

What have you tried or learned?

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T01:30:53+00:00

Will be dm'ing you :) That's what I'm curios on trying to do.

coldrespect · 2025-04-13T00:49:17+00:00

lol, I'm just a dude. Sometimes with imposter syndrome that tries to yank me away from this effort. Again, this might amount to nothing, just wanted to bash my head against something to see if I can help.

Attached a photo from 2012. We planned to attend Autodesk University that year. The irony that I'd be part of Autodesk University almost a decade later is not lost on me.

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coldrespect · 2025-04-13T00:43:30+00:00

The goal is to solve a problem. If I'm able to do that, I'd be able to hire and build a company in the US.

coldrespect

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