§ Why foundations pros in Miami use Estimate.Pro
THE BID ENGINE.
## Foundation Estimating in Miami Is Not Like Anywhere Else
Miami sits on limestone bedrock and a high water table that bottoms out inches below grade in much of Miami-Dade County. You're not doing standard spread footings and walking away. Every job involves soil borings, augercast piles, or deep foundation systems designed around ASCE 7-22 wind and flood load requirements. The Florida Building Code 2023 adds another layer: Chapter 18 foundation requirements are enforced strictly here, and Miami-Dade's own Amendments to the FBC tighten tolerances further than state minimums.
Your bids reflect that complexity. A competitor using a generic spreadsheet misses line items for dewatering, aggregate piers, or helical pile mobilization. You lose jobs when your number looks high with no explanation, or you lose money when you underbid because your template didn't account for a High-Velocity Hurricane Zone soil treatment requirement.
Estimate.Pro is built around 25 trades, with foundations scoped to match the actual workflow: walk the site, capture dimensions, and produce a priced estimate in 8 minutes.
## What the AR Measurement Tool Does on a Foundation Job
On supported devices, Estimate.Pro uses ONNX-assisted live AR measurement to capture footing runs, pad locations, and stem wall lengths directly from your phone camera. You walk the perimeter, mark your points, and the app builds the linear footage and area totals into the scope automatically.
Camera and photo measurements are marked as estimates in the output, so your client sees exactly what was field-verified versus what was scaled. That transparency matters when you're presenting to a project manager at a Miami condo developer who will read every line.
## Building the Scope of Work
After the walkthrough, the AI scope builder generates a draft that covers:
- Mobilization and site prep
- Soil investigation line items if borings were logged
- Forming, rebar, and pour quantities tied to your measured dimensions
- Dewatering allowance for high-water-table conditions common in Miami-Dade
- Augercast, helical, or driven pile counts if the system calls for deep foundations
- Concrete pump and placement access notes
- Waterproofing and damp-proofing per FBC 2023 Section 1805
You review, adjust quantities, and pull from your saved material cost workspace. Your labor rates, concrete pricing from your local supplier, and pile subcontractor markups live in the app. The first bid uses your numbers, not national averages that don't reflect Miami's market.
## Permit and Inspection Workflow
Miami-Dade Building Department requires a geotechnical report for most new foundation work, and the permit application pulls from that report for footing depth and bearing capacity design values. Your estimate needs to account for the geotechnical fee as a reimbursable or a markup, and for the special inspector fees that Miami-Dade mandates under the Threshold Building rules.
Estimate.Pro's scope template includes a dedicated Other Costs section where you line-item the soil engineer, the special inspector contract, and the permit fee itself. These rarely appear in generic construction estimating tools and they're often the difference between a profitable job and one that bleeds at closeout.
## Sending the Bid
On the Pro plan at $39 per seat per month, you produce a professional PDF estimate with your branding, itemized scope, and totals. On Elite at $79 per seat per month, you get Stripe Connect invoicing built in and invoice exports that connect to your accounting workflow. The Crew plan at $399 per month flat covers your whole field team.
Stripe Connect carries a 3% platform fee on the Free tier and 0% on Pro and above. You're not paying a percentage of every job you collect.
The Free tier requires no credit card. You can build your first Miami foundation estimate today and see whether the 8-minute target holds for your job type before you spend anything.
## Why Miami Foundation Contractors Use Estimate.Pro
You're competing against GCs who in-house their own estimating and against specialty subs who've been in the market for decades. Your bid has to be fast enough to respond to short turnaround RFPs from developers, accurate enough to survive owner's rep review, and detailed enough to justify your number against a cheaper competitor who isn't accounting for HVHZ uplift tie requirements or dewatering.
Estimate.Pro gives you a repeatable process: walkthrough, AR capture, AI scope, your cost data, sendable bid. Eight minutes is the median. Foundation jobs with complex pile schedules take longer. But you're starting from a complete scope, not a blank spreadsheet.