Start with how the work is built
A person who has never seen the work installed cannot count it well. Send the new estimator to job sites with a foreman. Let them watch a delivery, a layout and an installation. A week in the field explains details that a month of drawings will not.
A sequence that works
- Learn to read a drawing set. Cover the sheet index, the legends, the schedules, the details and the general notes.
- Learn the Project Manual. Cover the front end, Division 01 and your trade's sections.
- Redo the takeoff on a finished job. Compare the result to the original.
- Do live takeoffs on small jobs. A senior estimator checks every line.
- Write the questions and the exclusions for those jobs.
- Learn pricing: supplier quotes, labor units and the company's markups.
- Write full proposals, with a review before each one goes out.
- Sit in on bid day and on the scope calls that follow.
Use past jobs as the textbook
Your finished jobs are the best training set. You have the documents, the takeoff, the bid and the final cost. Pick jobs that went well and jobs that went badly. Walk through what the estimate missed on the bad ones.
Write the house rules down
Every company has rules that live in one person's head. Examples are which items you always exclude and which accessories you always add. Put them in a written checklist. A new estimator cannot follow a rule no one has stated.
Review without taking over
- Check the trainee's work line by line at first.
- Show the source of each correction on the sheet or in the spec.
- Have the trainee make the fix, not you.
- Widen the size of the jobs as the error count falls.
- Keep a second review on every bid, even for senior people.
In Takeoff Tool, a correction can become a house rule that runs on that company's later jobs.
Bidding and estimating · Updated 11 Nov 2026