Utility takeoff that
reads the profile.
A wet-utility bid isn't a plan view — it's the plan and the profile read together. Pilars traces storm, sanitary and water off the civil sheets, pulls the inverts off the profiles to band the trench by depth, counts the structures, and returns pipe by size and material with bedding volumes.
The cost is in the profile, not the plan
Plan view tells you where the pipe goes. The profile tells you what it costs. A 400-foot storm run that's 4 feet deep at the upstream inlet and 16 feet deep at the outfall is two completely different jobs along its length — different excavation, different shoring, different dewatering, maybe different machine — and you only see that by reading the inverts and rims off the profile against the run on the plan. Utility takeoff is fundamentally a plan-profile cross-reading exercise, and a takeoff that measures run length off plan view alone is missing the variable that actually drives the number. Anyone who has bid underground knows the feeling of flipping back and forth between the plan sheet and the profile sheet, scaling a run on one and chasing its inverts on the other, structure by structure, until your eyes cross. That back-and-forth is the job, and it's the part that eats a day on a real site. Pilars traces the runs on the plan, reads the inverts and rims off the profile, and gives each segment a real length and a real depth.
Where utility bids actually leak
Trench depth, every time. A run priced at average depth is wrong where it matters, because excavation, shoring and dewatering rates step up with depth, not linearly. The structures get undercounted or mispriced when a manhole's depth — driven by its rim and invert — isn't carried through, so a 6-foot manhole and an 18-foot manhole go in at the same line. Pipe gets lumped by system instead of split by size and material, when storm RCP, sanitary PVC, HDPE and ductile water main are different items at different prices. Bedding and backfill volumes get estimated flat instead of computed from trench width, depth and the pipe-zone bedding detail. And the plan and profile quietly disagree on a length or an invert, and nobody catches it until the field crew does.
Pilars reads it the way the work gets built. Pipe comes back by size and material for storm, sanitary and water. Trench comes back as linear footage banded by depth zone from the profile inverts, so the shoring and dewatering quantities follow the depth. Structures — manholes, catch basins, inlets, cleanouts, junction boxes — are counted from the plan and the structure schedule and tied to their rim and invert. Bedding and pipe-zone backfill volumes are computed from the trench section. And where the plan and profile disagree, you get a flag instead of a field surprise.
- Pipe LF by size and material — RCP, PVC, HDPE, DIP — for storm, sanitary and water
- Trench LF banded by depth zone from the profile inverts
- Structures counted from plan and schedule, tied to rim and invert
- Bedding and pipe-zone backfill volumes from the trench section detail
- Plan-vs-profile length and invert disagreements flagged
What the AI actually reads off a civil set
The reading is a cross-reference between two sheets, which is exactly the part that's slow and error-prone by hand. On the plan, Pilars traces each run, reads the size-and-material callouts and the structure labels, and accumulates length and structure counts. On the profile, it reads the rim and invert elevations at each structure and the slopes between them, and uses those to compute the depth along every segment. Putting the two together gives each pipe segment a true length, a true depth profile, and the structures their true depths — the inputs that drive excavation, shoring, dewatering and structure pricing.
From there it bands the trench into depth zones, computes bedding and backfill from the trench section and the pipe size, and organizes everything the way a utility proposal is organized: pipe by system, size and material; trench by depth band; structures by type and depth; bedding and backfill by volume. Every quantity is traceable to the plan run or profile elevation it came from, so when a depth or a length looks wrong you can see whether it's the plan, the profile, or a real disagreement between them.
Honest about what it is
Pilars reads 2D civil plans and profiles — the same sheets you bid wet and dry utilities from today. It is not a hydraulic model and it does not generate runs or inverts that aren't drawn; where the plan and profile disagree, or a profile is missing for a run, it surfaces that rather than papering over it. You stay the estimator. What changes is that the plan-profile cross-reading that drives the whole bid — depth-banded trench, structure depths, pipe by size and material, bedding volumes — happens in minutes, with every number traceable to the sheet it was read from.
Pricing is simple: $100 per trade, per plan. No per-seat licenses, no annual contract, unlimited projects. Run it on your own civil set in the demo and check the depth-banded trench against your last bid before you decide anything.
Questions estimators actually ask
Does it read the plan and the profile together?
Yes — that's the whole point of utility takeoff. It traces the run length off the plan and reads the invert and rim elevations off the profile, so each pipe segment carries its real length and depth instead of a flat-plan guess.
Can it compute trench length by depth zone?
It uses the inverts from the profile to break each run into depth bands, so you get trench linear footage by depth zone — which drives shoring, dewatering and excavation rates far more than the total length does.
Does it count structures — manholes, inlets, cleanouts?
It counts manholes, catch basins, inlets, cleanouts and junction structures from the plan and the structure schedule, and ties each to its rim and invert from the profile so depth-driven structure pricing is correct.
Does it separate pipe by size and material?
It returns pipe linear footage by size and material — RCP, PVC, HDPE, DIP — read from the plan callouts and pipe schedule, so storm, sanitary and water each break down by exactly what's specified.
Pricing?
$100 per trade, per plan — no per-seat licenses, unlimited projects.