Concrete takeoff:
yards, rebar, formwork.
Three numbers decide a concrete bid and all three are easy to get wrong by hand: cubic yards with the right waste, rebar tonnage with laps and accessories, and contact area for formwork. Pilars pulls them off the structural set and the schedule.
The three quantities, done right
Cubic yards is geometry plus a waste factor that should reflect the pour, not a flat 5% on everything. Rebar is tonnage by bar size from the schedule, with laps, hooks and accessories that hand takeoffs round away. Formwork is contact area, the quantity people forget is most of the labor. Pilars reads footings, slabs, walls, columns and grade beams off the structural drawings and the rebar schedule, and returns volume, reinforcing tonnage and form area separately, each sourced to the sheet.
Rebar is where the tonnage gap lives — miss the laps and accessories and you're light before you've priced a thing.— every concrete estimator who's eaten a bad bid
Built for the bid, reviewed by you
Pilars gives every quantity a confidence score and shows the sheet it came from, so your review lands on the items that matter — an odd footing, a wall with congested steel — instead of re-counting the whole set. It's a fast, defensible first pass. The judgment on placement, access and pour sequence stays yours.
- Concrete volume by element with realistic waste
- Rebar tonnage by bar size, with laps and accessories
- Formwork contact area broken out
- Every line sourced to the structural sheet
Questions estimators actually ask
Does it do rebar tonnage or just concrete volume?
Both, separately. Rebar comes off the schedule by bar size with laps and accessories included — which is exactly where manual takeoffs come up short.
Does it calculate formwork?
Yes — contact/form area broken out, since that's most of the labor and the quantity that gets skipped under deadline.
How does it handle waste factors?
With element-appropriate waste rather than one flat percentage across the whole job. You can adjust; the point is it's a starting number that reflects the pour.
Can it read a full structural set?
Yes — footings, slabs, walls, columns, grade beams across the set, with the rebar schedule reconciled against the plan.
Cost?
$100 per trade, per plan, unlimited projects, no per-seat fees.