The benchmark, by project size
Across commercial hard-bid work, a useful rule of thumb for a single-trade takeoff performed by a competent estimator:
- Small project (under ~15,000 SF): 4-8 hours of takeoff for a single trade.
- Mid-size (15,000-75,000 SF): 10-20 hours.
- Large (75,000-300,000 SF): 20-40+ hours, often split across people.
NECA's labor studies have put the average commercial electrical takeoff around 22 hours of senior-estimator time. Mechanical and plumbing land in a similar range; drywall and finishes are faster per square foot but get complicated by partition types and finish levels. The headline: a serious commercial takeoff is most of a work-week of one expensive person's time, per trade.
Where the hours actually go
Break a 16-hour takeoff into its parts and the distribution surprises people:
- ~60-70% — counting and measuring. Devices, fixtures, equipment, linear runs, areas. The repetitive core.
- ~15-20% — reconciliation. Cross-checking the plan against schedules and the one-line, catching what the floor plan alone doesn't show.
- ~10% — specs. Reading the spec book for scope that changes quantities (and is routinely skipped under deadline).
- ~5-10% — assembly and cleanup. Getting quantities into the estimate.
The reconciliation and spec steps are where accuracy is won or lost — and they are the first things cut when the clock runs out. That is the real cost of a long manual takeoff: not just the hours, but the corners cut in the last two of them.
"The old way was a mess. I'd spend Monday counting and Wednesday wondering if I'd missed anything. The counting was never the valuable part — it just ate all the time the valuable part needed."
Elena Vasquez, VP Estimating, Meridian Electric — Dallas, TX
What AI changes about the number
The benchmark that matters in 2026 is not the takeoff time — it is the review time. When the counting, measuring and reconciliation are automated, the estimator's job becomes verifying confidence-scored output and applying judgment to the low-confidence items. In our benchmarking that 22-hour electrical takeoff became roughly 2-3 hours of review, and the reconciliation and spec steps that used to get cut now happen by default.
The point is not that the work disappears. It is that the time moves from low-value counting to high-value review — which is also what lets a shop bid far more jobs without adding people.
How to benchmark your own shop
For your next five bids, log three numbers: total takeoff hours, total pricing hours, and how many bids you turned down purely for lack of time. Most shops are shocked by the third number. That is your hidden pipeline — the work you would pursue if the takeoff hours weren't the ceiling. If takeoff is 60-70% of your per-bid time, it is also 60-70% of your growth constraint.