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 Minnesota bid different
Minnesota gives you one code. That is genuinely unusual, and it changes how you bid here.
The Minnesota State Building Code is adopted at the state level and it runs on the 2018 IBC. You are not chasing a different code edition every time you cross a city line. What you are chasing instead is the energy code, because it moved and the building code didn’t. The 2024 Minnesota Commercial Energy Code took effect 5 January 2024 and it’s built on ASHRAE 90.1-2019. It covers commercial buildings and any residential building four stories or taller. So a mid-rise apartment job in Minneapolis gets priced against a 2019 standard sitting on top of a 2018 building code. If your envelope, glazing and mechanical numbers came off a job you bid in 2023, they’re stale.
Then there’s the tax, and Minnesota does it backwards from a lot of states. Labor to improve real property is not taxable here. You don’t charge sales tax on the construction contract at all. What you do is pay sales or use tax on every material, supply and piece of equipment when you buy it — and the rate depends on where the stuff gets delivered, because local option taxes stack on the state rate. That means the tax never shows up as a line on your proposal. It’s buried inside your material costs, and if you bought your numbers from a supplier in a different taxing jurisdiction than the one you’re building in, you already have an error you can’t see.
Underneath all of it is frost. Minnesota splits into two frost zones by rule. Thirty-three northern counties are Zone I, where the minimum footing depth for frost is five feet. The forty-eight southern and central counties are Zone II at three and a half feet. That’s an eighteen-inch difference in excavation, in wall, in backfill and in concrete on every footing on the job. A Duluth foundation and a Worthington foundation are not the same foundation.
Four things that get missed on a Minnesota construction estimate
Every one of these has cost somebody money on a real job.
1. SAC. The Metropolitan Council charges a Sewer Availability Charge when a property first connects to the regional wastewater system in the Twin Cities metro. The 2026 base rate is $2,485 per SAC unit. It is billed to the city and it lands on you through the building permit. It is not only a new-construction fee either — a change of use or a business that grows into more demand triggers a recalculation. A restaurant going into a former retail bay is the classic one. Estimators from out of state have never heard of it and leave it out entirely.
2. The state permit surcharge. Minnesota adds a surcharge on top of the local permit fee, set by statute. On valuation-based permits it’s .0005 of valuation up to a million dollars, then it steps down: $500 plus .0004 over $1M, $900 plus .0003 over $2M, $1,200 plus .0002 over $3M, $1,400 plus .0001 over $4M, and $1,500 plus .00005 above $5M. It’s small on a house and it is not small on a fifty-million-dollar building. It belongs in General Conditions.
3. Prevailing wage on state work. Minnesota’s threshold is low. State projects carry the certified prevailing rate once the estimated total cost hits $2,500 on single-trade work or $25,000 on anything with more than one trade. A small library remodel or a county building project clears that on the first page. If you price public work in Minnesota at your open-shop rate, you’re going to find the gap after the bid, not before it.
4. The license line. The state licenses residential building contractors and remodelers through DLI — required for anyone contracting directly with a homeowner in more than one of eight special skill areas, with a Certificate of Exemption available under $15,000 of gross annual residential receipts. Roofers always need one. Commercial contractors don’t hold a state license; they go through the Contractor Registration Program instead. Know which side of that line your job sits on before you write the bid.
Minnesota 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. $84M of construction value across 162 pages of takeoff and pricing. Open them. Read the line items. See exactly what you get before you send us a single sheet.
Commercial Buildings — institutional, retail and ground-up commercial.
- BAPS MN, Hamel – $2.2M (55340)
- MN SOYBEAN, Brewster – $292K (56119)
- Sandstone Library – $206K (Sandstone 55072)
- Prairie Justice Center, Worthington – $77K (56187)
Multi Family and Apartments — apartments, condos and multi-unit housing.
- 1400 Park Avenue, Minneapolis – $52.6M (55404)
- Olympic Village Apartments, Sioux City IA – $16.2M (51106)
- Lake Elmo Apartments – $3.9M (Lake Elmo 55042)
- Eustis Senior Housing, Saint Paul – $1.4M (55113)
Residential — custom homes, additions and whole-house remodels.
- Victory Home, Saint Paul – $1.6M (55109)
- Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis – $1.1M (55405)
- 17705 Remodel & Addition, Plymouth – $697K (55447)
- Addition 12765 Foliage Ave, Apple Valley – $278K (55124)
Tenant Buildouts — interior fit-outs in existing buildings.
- Lifetome Fitness Plymouth Remodel – $1.5M (Plymouth 55446)
- Marshalls MTKA, Minnetonka – $836K (55305)
- GSA Social Security Administration, Minneapolis – $739K (55430)
- Nordhaus Good Clinic, Minneapolis – $422K (55413)
Four building types. From a $77K county justice-center package in Worthington to a $52.6M residential building on Park Avenue in Minneapolis. Fifteen of the sixteen are Minnesota jobs. One is just over the border in Sioux City, Iowa, and it’s on the page because our multi-family volume runs across the whole Upper Midwest.
Look at 1400 Park Avenue. Twenty-two pages, general conditions through electrical, with elevators, a parking structure, balconies and unit doors all taken off separately. That is what a real multi-family estimate looks like — it is not a per-door number with a Minnesota flag on it.
Then look at the Marshalls fit-out in Minnetonka. $836K, five pages, and most of it is ceilings, mouldings and finishes, because that’s what a retail buildout actually is. Same estimator, same format, completely different scope.
Where we work in Minnesota
We estimate statewide. Here’s where the volume is.
Minneapolis and Saint Paul. The core of the work. Park Avenue, Lake of the Isles, the Nordhaus clinic in northeast, the GSA office on the north side. Zone II frost, metro SAC, and the tightest sub market in the state.
The western and southern metro. Plymouth, Minnetonka, Hopkins, Eden Prairie, Bloomington, Apple Valley, Burnsville, Eagan. Five of the sixteen estimates on this page are suburban metro jobs.
The east metro and the St. Croix valley. Woodbury, Stillwater, Lake Elmo, Oakdale, Maplewood. The Lake Elmo apartment package is exactly this market.
Rochester and southern Minnesota. Rochester, Mankato, Owatonna, Worthington, Brewster. Ag, institutional and public work, and prevailing wage on a lot of it.
St. Cloud and central Minnesota. St. Cloud, Sartell, Hutchinson, Sandstone, Brainerd. The dividing line between the two frost zones runs through here — check the county before you set a footing depth.
Duluth and the Iron Range. Duluth, Hibbing, Virginia, Grand Rapids, Bemidji. Zone I. Five-foot footings, short season, long hauls for material.
Across the border. Western Wisconsin, eastern North and South Dakota, and northern Iowa. One of the estimates above is a border job.
Who our Minnesota 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.
Minnesota had 141,500 construction workers in July 2025 across 18,400 construction firms, and construction is 5% of a $512 billion state economy. That’s a lot of bidders and not a lot of estimators. If you’re a GC turning down invitations because you can’t get numbers out fast enough, you’re going to keep handing work to the shop down the road. That’s what our Minnesota 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 Minnesota State Building Code, in your frost zone, with SAC and the state surcharge where they belong. Not a national square-foot average with the word Minnesota written on top.
Send us your plans. We’ll tell you what it costs.
