Los Angeles, CA
FOUNDATIONS ESTIMATING.

## Foundation Estimating in Los Angeles Is Not Simple Work You are bidding jobs in one of the most geologically active urban zones in the country. Expansive clay soils in the San Fernando Valley. Hillside lots in Silver Lake and Bel Air that demand caissons or grade beams. Liquefaction zones near the coast. And a building department that will send your permit back if your soils report reference is missing or your foundation design does not match the CBC seismic requirements. Every one of those variables costs money to price correctly. Most estimating tools ignore them. Estimate.Pro does not. --- ## What LA Foundation Jobs Actually Require in a Bid A sendable estimate for a Los Angeles foundation job needs to account for: - **Soils classification and bearing capacity** — the LADBS will require a geotechnical report on most hillside and new construction permits. Your bid should reflect whether you are pricing a standard spread footing on Class D soil or a caisson system on a slope. - **Seismic design category** — the 2022 California Building Code (CBC), which LA has adopted, classifies most of the city as Seismic Design Category D or E. That drives rebar spacing, anchor bolt requirements, and hold-down hardware. Your material line items need to match what the engineer-of-record will spec. - **Concrete and rebar pricing by current market** — ready-mix prices in the LA basin fluctuate with fuel surcharges and demand. You save your own material cost workspace in Estimate.Pro, so your numbers reflect your supplier relationships, not a national average from six months ago. - **Pier and beam vs. slab vs. caisson systems** — the app supports each foundation type as a distinct scope template. You walk the site, log the conditions, and get a structured scope-of-work built for that specific system. - **Export for subcontractor markup and invoice** — on Elite, you get Stripe Connect for payment collection and invoice exports for your GC relationships. On Pro at $39/seat/month, you get the full estimating workflow. --- ## The 8-Minute Bid Target in a High-Complexity Market Eight minutes sounds aggressive for foundation work. Here is how it works in practice. You walk the site. You log dimensions using AR measurement on supported devices — the ONNX-assisted live measurement layer reads footprint and depth conditions. Camera and photo measurements are flagged as estimates so your bid documents are honest about precision level. The app builds your scope-of-work from the site data. You review line items — excavation, forming, rebar, concrete, waterproofing membrane, drainage, backfill — and adjust quantities against your saved cost workspace. You send the bid. The 8-minute figure is a median across 25 supported trades. Foundation jobs with complex soils or hillside conditions will take longer. But even a 25-minute estimate built on a structured template beats a two-day spreadsheet process on most jobs. --- ## Permitting Reality in Los Angeles LADBS processes foundation permits under the residential and commercial building permit tracks. For new construction or full foundation replacement, you are typically looking at plan check, a soils report, and a structural engineering stamp. The permit fee is calculated on project valuation using the LADBS fee schedule — a $250,000 foundation job will typically carry a building permit fee in the range of $2,500–$3,500 before plan check and inspection fees. The city also requires a licensed contractor (C-8 Concrete or A-General Engineering license) to pull foundation permits. Your bid documentation needs to be tight enough to hand to a plan checker without revision. A structured scope-of-work from Estimate.Pro gives you that paper trail from day one. --- ## Pricing Tiers Estimate.Pro is free to start. No credit card required. - **Free** — full estimating workflow, 3% Stripe Connect fee on collected payments - **Pro** — $39/seat/month, 0% platform fee - **Elite** — $79/seat/month, Stripe Connect, invoice exports, advanced workflows - **Crew** — $399/month flat for teams If you are running multiple crews across the LA basin or working with a GC that requires formal invoice documentation, the Elite tier is built for that volume. --- ## Start With One Job Create a free account. Walk your next foundation site. Get a priced bid out of the door. See what 8 minutes actually looks like against your current process.