Estimating workflow

The work between a loss and a priced file. These pieces cover where estimating time actually goes — hunting codes, rebuilding scope someone already documented, reconciling a file against job cost — and which of those steps a machine can take without taking the estimator's judgment with it.

8 posts

Estimating workflowJun 22, 20262 min read

A scope from photos is only as good as the claims behind it

Photos in, priced ESX out is the demo. The part that decides whether the file is usable is what the model learned from before it ever saw your loss.

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Estimating workflowFeb 3, 20262 min read

An agent, a CompanyCam link, and an 88 percent scope

No estimating software involved. The video points Claude Code at a project's photos and a file of Xactimate codes, then grades the result against the scope a human wrote on site.

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Estimating workflowJul 25, 20252 min read

Xactimate search fails you. Describe the loss instead.

Keyword search assumes you already know the code. An AI reranking search lets you type what you are looking at and get ranked line items back.

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Estimating workflowSep 2, 20242 min read

The line item knowledge was public all along. Now it trains models.

Years of Facebook group questions and thousands of written estimates became training data. The result: photos of a loss come back with the line items estimators used on similar losses.

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Estimating workflowJul 2, 20243 min read

Stop reading approved estimates as PDFs. Export to Excel.

One export, one auto-sum, and a couple of filters tell you what you owe each subcontractor and what each room costs. The PDF never will.

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Estimating workflowJun 21, 20242 min read

The TPA metric that actually controls your job volume is estimate turnaround

Programs grade you on how fast an assigned estimate gets submitted. Track that number yourself in a simple spreadsheet and you can move it before the TPA moves your assignments.

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Estimating workflowJun 11, 20241 min read

Stop hunting for the line item you can't remember the name of

Novice or expert, the search problem is the same: you know the work, not what Xactimate calls it. Describe the thing and let a model trained on real estimates find the code.

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