Mass grading & stripping
Cut, fill, and topsoil-removal volumes pulled from your grading plan at the design slopes you specified — not a lump-sum guess off the section view.
Excavation & EarthworkEarthwork estimates
Earthwork estimates
that hold up in the dirt.
Your Buildbid agent reads the grading plan, borings, and specs, then returns cut/fill volumes, haul, and equipment hours — priced at your rates, in minutes.
Cut/fill from your grading planHaul, swell, and disposalRock and unpriced conditions
What the agent takes off. Every earthwork line.
Quantities come off your drawings and specs. Costs come from your book. Nothing is filled in from a per-square-foot average.
Haul & disposal
Truck counts, cycle times, and dump-site fees for every spoil volume, with swell and shrink applied so the dirt leaving site matches the dirt you pay to place.
Rock excavation
Where the borings meet the design line, rock is priced at your ripping, breaking, or hammer rates — separated out so it never hides inside a soil number.
Trenching, bedding & backfill
Depth-by-width quantities for storm, sanitary, water, and conduit, with bedding classes, select fill, and pavement restoration itemized separately.
Import, export & balances
A cut/fill balance sheet that shows what you're borrowing, what you're wasting, and where the money moves when the finish grade shifts a foot.
Erosion control & shoring
Silt fence, wattles, inlet protection, seeding, trench boxes, and plate shoring quantified off the plan and the specs, so temporary work stops falling out of the bid.
Equipment & crew productivity
Dozer, excavator, scraper, and water truck output modeled at your production rates — not a textbook average that flatters the schedule and starves the margin.
Dewatering & unpriced conditions
Wellpoints, sump pumping, and soil-disposal or contamination allowances surfaced as line items you decide on, instead of surprises in a change order.
What you get back
Quantity takeoff
Every earthwork item with units, locations, and the drawing it came from.
Cut/fill balance sheet
Import and export quantities before you commit to a haul contract.
Equipment and crew hours
Hours per activity, so you can check the schedule against the number.
Your rates, your markup
Material, haul, fuel, and sub rates you set — applied the same way on every bid.
And the summary: a bid you can defend line by line, out the door before the walk-through ends.
Where excavation bids leak money.
Four assumptions that decide whether an earthwork bid makes margin. Your agent makes each one explicit, priced, and visible before you submit.
Haul distance
A route one mile shorter than the real one is a truck cycle you never charged for, repeated on every load.
Swell and shrink
Bank, loose, and compacted measure are three different quantities of dirt. Only one of them gets paid.
Rock you didn't know about
A rule-of-thumb allowance either gives away margin on easy ground or loses the bid on hard ground.
Temporary work
Shoring, dewatering, and erosion control are in the specs. They should be in the price.
How it works
1
We build your agent
Tell us how you price earthwork — your assemblies, soil factors, haul rates, and markups. We train a custom AI agent on your way of bidding.
2
Drop in your plans
Upload the grading plan, profiles, borings, and specs. Your agent reads them and builds a detailed earthwork takeoff.
3
Get the estimate fast
Review quantities, equipment hours, and a complete line-item estimate in a fraction of the usual time — then tweak, approve, and send the bid.
Ready to put an AI agent
on your earthwork estimates?
Send us a grading plan and how you price haul today. We'll show you the takeoff and the number a custom Buildbid agent comes back with.
Talk to us