TRUSTED BY 3,500+ CONTRACTORS & DEVELOPERS
We work with:
General Contractors
- Subcontractors
- Remodeling Contractors
Homebuilders
- Developers
Architects
“Most contractors are missing out on over $200,000 per month in project contracts and they don’t even know it. They are busy, have no time for takeoffs, and they are leaving money on the table. A lot of money.
We designed our construction takeoff service with the goal of helping our clients win projects and ultimately be successful.”
-Daniel Quindemil
Founder, I AM Builders
WHO IS I AM BUILDERS?
I AM Builders is a National Construction Estimating Firm in the business of helping contractors win projects.
With our construction estimating and takeoff services, we’ll help you prepare a budget for your new project.
Most contractors are so busy running their job sites that they NEGLECT their bidding. You’re supervising jobs, making deliveries, going to jobsite meetings, and the only time to work on bidding is NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS.
It doesn’t have to be that way!
HOW CAN WE HELP YOU WIN MORE PROJECTS?
“I have NO TIME to estimate projects”
– Every Contractor in America
The enemy of every contractor is the lack of time. Most contractors are busy working IN the business rather than working ON the business. If that’s the case, you’re not alone. We’ve worked with over 1,400 contractors nationwide estimating and consulting, and that’s normal.
But you’ve probably tried doing it yourself, working at night after work…. probably even on the weekends on the kitchen table. We’ll find your leads for you and can even takeoff your complete construction project after so you can focus on running your business and getting your nights and weekends back.
Stop missing out on bids because of time.
You’re probably MISSING OUT on $200,000 per month because you’re busy
We did an analysis and more contractors are missing out on several projects per month that they can actually win because they are so busy they just pass them up.
Depending on what your average contract value is, most contractors are missing between $200-500K per month in sales because of being busy.
We’ll prepare your entire estimate for you so can keep bidding those jobs.
We can estimate your entire project for you based on your LOCAL PRICING so the numbers will be accurate
I AM Builders is US Based and a licensed General Contractor, so we have actual building experience.
We use a combination of a cost database and our experience to price your projects based on the zip code of your project (Note: Everyone at I AM Builders has actual field experience in construction, not just theory or “paper estimating”).
Pricing for labor and material varies by area and zip code, so we make adjustments for local labor rates, material pricing, and even look at the area’s property value to determine accurate pricing. That’s what makes our construction estimating service a great option for busy contractors.
We even back our estimates with a $1 MILLION ACCURACY GUARANTEE which covers all of our clients by our Errors and Omissions Insurance.
We can help you NEGOTIATE AND CLOSE based on proven strategies
Estimating is only a small part of what it takes to win a job. We like to see this as a TEAM EFFORT.
What do you do after the estimate to give yourself the best chance of winning? We can help you work the numbers when you’re negotiating, and even jump on a conference call with your client (as your estimating team) to help you close.
We can even advise you on EXACTLY WHAT TO DO to have them wanting to USE YOU instead of your competitor.
Over the last 10 years, and after speaking and working with THOUSANDS of Contractors, we get to see what WORKS and what DOESN’T. We have some clients landing 50% of their bids by implementing some of the strategies we can easily show you.
These aren’t strategies we made up – we listened to our clients and created our blueprint based on what they are doing right, and avoiding what they were doing wrong. Best of all….. it works for ANY CONSTRUCTION BUSINESS.
HOW DO I GET STARTED?
You Send in Your Plans
You can upload your plans here or email us at info@iambuilders.com. Whichever is more convenient for you.
Be sure to let us know your scope of work and any details regarding your project.
We Send you a Quote for Our Services
Before starting, we’ll send you a detailed quote for our services. Every client is unique so we take the time to review each situation individually. We’ll factor in things like project range, difficulty, trades, and more.
We Estimate and Deliver Your Cost Estimate
Our team will takeoff and estimate your project. When we deliver you’ll receive a PDF and an Excel file of your estimate. We can also offer construction lead generation services for the jobs you’d like to pursue further.
What makes a Delaware bid different
Delaware is one of the few states where the code doesn’t change when you cross a line.
The state adopted the 2018 I-Codes statewide, effective 1 April 2021 — 2018 IBC, IRC, IFC, IMC and IPC, with the 2017 NEC on the electrical side. Enforcement is local, but the edition isn’t. A shell in Wilmington and a shell in Millsboro are being reviewed against the same book. The whole state is Climate Zone 4A too, so the envelope assumptions that pencil at the beach also pencil ninety miles north.
That is the good news, and it is worth money. In Texas or Pennsylvania a big part of the estimating work is figuring out which city adopted what. Here you skip that and go straight to the numbers.
Where Delaware gets you instead is the tax. There is no sales tax — everybody knows that part. What a lot of out-of-state contractors don’t know is that Delaware charges the contractor a gross receipts tax instead: 0.6537% of your taxable construction receipts, with the first $100,000 a month (or $300,000 a quarter) excluded. You can deduct what you paid subs for construction labor, or for materials plus the labor to install them, but only if you file Form 1280 and list them. Skip the form and you pay tax on money that went straight out the door to somebody else.
Then there’s the energy code, which is on a clock. Delaware’s Energy Conservation Code Act makes DNREC adopt the newest available IECC and ASHRAE 90.1 on a three-year review. DNREC’s page describes revisions adopting the latest editions, with zero-net-energy-capable amendments, promulgated in April 2026. We couldn’t pin the enforced compliance date off that page, so we don’t guess at it — on a Delaware envelope or mechanical package we confirm the edition with DNREC before we price it. You should too.
Four things that get missed on a Delaware construction estimate
Every one of these has cost somebody money. We see them all the time.
1. The gross receipts tax line. 0.6537% doesn’t sound like much until it’s on a $10M job and nobody carried it. It’s a cost of doing business in Delaware, it hits your receipts, not the owner’s, and it belongs in General Conditions on every estimate in the state. The monthly exclusion is real but small, and the subcontractor deduction only exists if somebody files Form 1280.
2. The $45,000 prevailing wage line. Delaware’s public-work thresholds are $500,000 for new construction and $45,000 for alteration, repair, renovation, rehabilitation, demolition or reconstruction (29 Del. C. § 6960). Everybody remembers the half-million. Almost nobody remembers that a $60K renovation of a public building is a prevailing wage job. If you bid a school corridor refresh at open-shop rates, you’re going to eat the difference on every hour.
3. The New Castle County fee stack. The county’s own form is specific: permit review at $12.00 per $1,000 of valuation up to $1 million, then $5.25 per $1,000 above it, $60 minimum. Zoning review at 10% of that, $21 minimum and $145 maximum. A Volunteer Fire Assistance Fund fee of 0.50% of valuation on the first $1 million. Certificate of Occupancy $60. Minimum overall permit fee $142. That fire fund line alone is $5,000 on a $1M job, and sewer, impact and lines-and-grades fees sit outside all of it.
4. Sussex County’s fee isn’t in the code. Look up Chapter 52, Article III and it tells you the fee is based on standard construction values from Marshall & Swift, or as modified by the Building Official, with the actual schedule adopted in the annual county budget. So there’s no number to look up in the ordinance. On a Rehoboth or Lewes job you pull the current budget schedule, or you carry an allowance and say so. The beach corridor is also where coastal flood and wind exposure start to drive detailing that a Wilmington job never sees.
Delaware projects we’ve actually priced
We don’t ask you to take our word for it. Sixteen real estimates are on this page — four in each of the four categories we work in. $99M of construction value across 116 pages of takeoff and pricing. Nine are Delaware jobs. Seven are across the line in Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and those are labelled with the state so you know which is which. Open them. Read the line items. See exactly what you get before you send us a single sheet.
Commercial Buildings — ground-up retail, hospitality and institutional.
- Coastal Mixed Use, Rehoboth Beach – $33.7M (19971)
- Yeshiva School of Greater Washington, Silver Spring MD – $16.8M (20902)
- ALOFT Hotel by Marriot, Rehoboth Beach – $10.3M (19971)
- NDBF Middletown – $2M (Middletown 19709)
Multi Family and Apartments — apartments, condos and multi-unit housing.
- Burlington Manner Apartments, Burlington NJ – $15.2M (08016)
- Franklin Apartments, Wilkes-Barre PA – $10.5M (18701)
- Veterans Village Of Camden County, Stratford NJ – $3.5M (08084)
- Edge Tree Apartments, Claymont – $1M (19703)
Residential — custom homes, ADUs and whole-house remodels.
- Hopewell Group Home, Titusville NJ – $2.4M (08560)
- Proposed Duplex Unit A / Unit B, Palisades Park NJ – $1.3M (07650)
- 1421 North Broadway, Baltimore MD – $192K (21213)
- Gable Renovation, Rehoboth Beach – $131K (19971)
Tenant Buildouts — interior fit-outs in existing buildings.
- Paris Baguette Project, Middletown – $945K (19709)
- Qdoba Project, Middletown – $376K (19709)
- Currito Project, Newark – $364K (19711)
- Smoothie King Store #1955, Newark – $309K (19711)
Four building types, from a $131K beach-house renovation to a $33.7M mixed-use building. That range is the whole point — most shops price one lane and call it a service.
Look at the four tenant buildouts. Paris Baguette in Middletown is thirteen pages at $945K; Currito in Newark is four pages at $364K. Same category, same state, three times the paper, because a bakery cafe carries equipment, hoods and finishes that a fast-casual counter doesn’t. That’s what a real takeoff looks like — the page count follows the scope, not a template.
The Coastal Mixed Use job is the other end of it. $33.7M, ten pages, sitework through elevators, priced in Rehoboth Beach where the permit fee comes out of a county budget schedule instead of an ordinance.
Where we work in Delaware
We estimate statewide, all three counties.
New Castle County. Wilmington, Newark, Middletown, Bear, Glasgow, Claymont and the Route 1 corridor. This is where the fee schedule is published and where most of the commercial and multi-family volume sits. Four of the estimates above are New Castle County jobs.
Kent County. Dover, Smyrna, Camden, Milford and Harrington. State work, institutional work, and a lot of the public projects where that $45,000 prevailing wage threshold decides your labor rate before you price a single hour.
Sussex County. Rehoboth Beach, Lewes, Bethany, Millsboro, Georgetown, Seaford and Dagsboro. The fastest-growing part of the state and the hardest to price from a desk, because the fee comes from the budget schedule and the coastal detailing is real. Three of the estimates above are Sussex jobs.
Across the line. Plenty of Delaware contractors work the whole tri-state — Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania, Cecil and Baltimore counties in Maryland, and South Jersey. Seven of the estimates on this page are exactly that kind of job.
Who our Delaware estimating service is for
General contractors bidding hard-bid and negotiated work. Subs who need a takeoff that survives a scope review. Developers who want a real number before they commit capital. Architects who’d rather price a design now than explain a surprise at bid day.
Delaware is a small state with a big construction economy — AGC’s fact sheet put construction employment at 24,300 in July 2023, about 3,500 firms, and construction at 3.5% of state GDP. That’s a 2023 number and we’re not going to pretend it’s this morning’s, but the shape is right: a lot of work, not a lot of estimators. If you’re a GC in Delaware turning down invitations because you can’t get numbers out fast enough, you’re going to keep leaving work on the table until somebody else does the takeoff for you. That’s what our Delaware construction estimating services are built to fix. You send the plans. We send back a priced estimate with the quantities shown, in a format you can hand straight to a client or an owner.
We’re not a lead service and we’re not a software subscription. A person does the takeoff. Another person checks it. You can call and ask why a number is what it is, and get an answer.
What you’re hiring is a cost estimator who has already priced work under the 2018 codes Delaware actually enforces, with the gross receipts tax in General Conditions and the right county’s permit math on the sheet. Not a national square-foot average with the word Delaware written on top.
Send us your plans. We’ll tell you what it costs.
