We price our own jobs with it.
PreBLD comes out of LCM, a design-build firm with 15 years of commercial projects behind it. Our team got tired of the two-week wait, so we built the tool ourselves.
Every estimate is calibrated against real bids from jobs we built: warehouses, clinics, tenant fit-outs. Not a scraped national database. It's the number we hand our own clients, and when it's off, we feel it first.
Win the deal. Defend the number. Get your time back.
PreBLD is built for the feasibility moment: a developer, owner, or design-build firm needs a construction number they can stand behind, not a guess. Here is what changes.
A budget while the decision is still live.
Describe the project in plain English, or hand over drawings if you have them, and get a division-level, feasibility-grade budget in about 30 minutes instead of the two weeks you would wait on a formal estimate. Fast enough to make the call before the decision moves on without you.
A construction number you can defend.
Your construction cost isn't a $/sqft guess anymore. PreBLD prices every division against real contractor bid data and hands your lender, client, or investment committee a division-level breakdown, at an honest ±15–20% Class C range you can stand behind.
And the work that used to take a day is done before lunch.
A feasibility estimate runs 16 to 40 hours of manual takeoff, lookup, and trade-by-trade build-up. PreBLD absorbs it. You review, edit, finalize, and put that time back into the work that wins business.
Built for the room, not the office.
Three surfaces, one workflow: describe the project, tune the lines, and defend the number live.
Describe the project. Watch the number build.
Tell PreBLD what you’re building in plain English, or drop in drawings. A vision model detects scope, and division-level pricing materializes on the sheet as it works.
Every line is yours to tune.
Slide any line item’s price, or flip a division between Value, Standard, and Premium finish tiers. Your judgment stays in the number. PreBLD just does the takeoff.
Open it in the meeting. Walk out with a budget.
Tweak scope, finish level, and square footage while your client talks. One-click toggle between VE, Baseline, and Premium shows the cost and quality tradeoff while it’s still a conversation.
Your projects stay private. The calibration gets shared. Project details never leave your workspace. Only anonymized cost anchors feed the shared calibration, and that's what makes every firm's estimates sharper.
It learns your numbers. It never exposes them.
Estimates calibrated on real outcomes only work if firms trust where their data goes. So the deal is stated plainly, and the anonymity is built into the database itself.
Your projects stay yours.
Project names, clients, addresses, notes, and your full bid history live in your firm’s private account. No other firm can see them, reference them, or search them. Ever.
The pool learns the pattern, not your bid.
When you finalize an estimate, an anonymized record joins the shared calibration pool, and only the pricing engine reads it. The most another firm ever sees is a label like “Commercial Addition, 18,000 SF, MB”: rounded size, region only, no dollars, no breakdown, no fees. The pool’s database has no columns for your name, your firm, or your client, so identifying you is impossible by construction, not by policy.
You get the pool before you feed it.
Your first estimate is already anchored against real bids from completed commercial projects across the whole user base. It works like a benchmarking group: everyone’s outcomes sharpen the baseline, and nobody’s numbers are visible to anyone else.
Plans that grow with your firm.
Start free, then pick the tier that matches your volume. Cancel anytime.
- 3 seats · unlimited estimates
- Everything in Team
- Rate locked — for life
- First 50 firms only
- Calibration data cooperative
- 1 seat
- 5 estimates / month
- Division-level Class C estimates
- Client-ready PDF export
- 1 seat
- 15 estimates / month
- Kickoff Mode (live client presentation)
- Scenario comparison — VE / Baseline / Premium
- 1 onboarding session
- 3 seats
- Unlimited estimates
- Shared team workspace & collaboration
- Calibration benchmark view
- Branding PDF Export
- API access
- 2 onboarding sessions
- Custom seat count
- Unlimited estimates
- Quarterly calibration briefing
- Priority support
- Dedicated onboarding
What builders ask before they trust it.
Straight answers. The same ones we'd want before putting our own name on a number.
“Will the number hold up in front of a real client?”
PreBLD gives you an honest Class C range of ±15–20%, priced division by division against real contractor bids from completed commercial projects, not a national $/SF average. You walk in with a defensible range and the breakdown behind it, not a guess.
“Can I put my name on an AI-generated number?”
You see exactly what was assumed. Every input is tracked as something you said or something PreBLD inferred, and every line item is editable before anything leaves your hands. Your judgment stays in the number. PreBLD just does the takeoff.
“Does it get more accurate over time?”
Yes, but from the right data. PreBLD sharpens when you tell it what your projects actually cost, not just from being used. Out of the box it’s calibrated on real completed projects, so you start with a grounded range, not a blank slate. It tightens to your firm as you log real outcomes.
“Am I just handing my bid data to a database my competitors can see?”
No. Your projects, clients, and bid history stay in your firm’s private account, visible to nobody else. Finalizing feeds an anonymized record to a calibration pool that only the pricing engine reads. There is no screen anywhere in PreBLD where one firm sees another firm’s numbers: the most a competitor ever sees is an anonymous label like “Commercial Addition, 18,000 SF, MB”, with no dollars attached. The pool’s database has no columns for your name, firm, or client, so it can’t identify you even by accident.
“I don’t have time to learn another tool.”
If you can describe the project, you can run PreBLD. No drawings required, no setup, no training session. Try it right now without signing up. The demo is the tutorial.
Run your first budget today.
3 finalized budgets free. No credit card, no time clock.
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