Montana Construction Estimating Services

Montana has one code. What it doesn’t have is one building department.

The state adopts the code family — 2021 IBC, 2021 IRC, 2021 IECC — and cities, counties and towns with certified programs enforce it inside their own limits. Everywhere else, the state Building Codes Bureau is the building department. Some jobs need a permit from the local program and the state both. So the first question on a Montana estimate isn’t what does it cost. It’s who has jurisdiction here.

Then there’s the exemption list, and it’s long. Farm and ranch buildings don’t need a state permit. Neither do private homes and apartment buildings of four units or fewer, private garages and storage buildings, or mine buildings on site. That means a four-plex on a county road outside a certified jurisdiction gets built to the drawings and the engineer, while the same building one town over gets plan review, inspections and a fee schedule. Same crew, same month, two different General Conditions.

The tax picture is the opposite of most states. Montana has no general statewide sales tax — the Department of Revenue’s list of business taxes doesn’t include one — so there’s no sales tax buried in your material buy. Public work is where the money moves instead, and we get to that below.

And then there’s the ground and the weather. Ground snow load, frost depth, wind speed and seismic category in Montana are set locally, and they swing hard between the Rockies and the plains. There’s no statewide table you can price off. Call the building department, get the design criteria in writing, and price the roof structure and the footing depth against those numbers — not against what the same building cost you in Idaho.

Every one of these has cost somebody real money.

1. The public contractor’s 1% gross receipts tax. Any public construction contract over $80,000 carries it — $80,000 or less doesn’t. It’s 1% of the gross contract price, and it hits the prime and the subs. The awarding public entity withholds it and remits it; if the entity doesn’t withhold, the prime is on the hook for it. The contract has to be registered within 10 days on Form CGR-1 through the state’s TransAction Portal. You can get it back — as a refund against business personal property taxes and vehicle registration fees paid the same calendar year, or as an income tax credit that carries forward five years. But a refund next spring isn’t the same as money this quarter. It belongs in the estimate as cash flow, not as a rounding error.

2. Prevailing wage starts at $25,000. Montana’s public contracts law applies once the total cost of the contract hits $25,000. That’s a low bar — a sidewalk replacement clears it. On top of the rate, at least 50% of each contractor’s employees on the job have to be bona fide Montana residents. DLI publishes the building construction rates every year. If you price a small public job at your open-shop rate, you’re going to hand back the margin an hour at a time.

3. Plan review is another 35%. On a state-permitted job, the building permit fee comes off the IBC Section 109.2 valuation schedule, and the valuation is total construction value — finish work, painting, roofing, electrical, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, elevators, fire-extinguishing systems, all of it. Then plan review is an additional 35% of that permit fee, due before the permit issues. Estimators carry the permit and forget the review, and it shows up as a General Conditions overrun on day one.

4. The plumbing code isn’t the one you think, and the edition is moving. Montana runs the Uniform Plumbing Code, not the IPC, and the 2020 NEC for electrical. That changes fixture, venting and material assumptions on every commercial job. And the state has signalled a move to the 2024 ICC family — Bozeman’s own code page says mid-2026. If you price envelope, fire alarm or sprinkler work off the edition you used last year, you’re going to be arguing about scope at the plan-review desk instead of building.

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. $32M of construction value across 123 pages of takeoff and pricing. Eleven are Montana jobs. Five are from just over the line in North Dakota, Wyoming and South Dakota, and they’re labeled that way. Open them. Read the line items. See exactly what you get before you send us a single sheet.

Commercial Buildings — ground-up hospitality, retail and institutional.

• Belgrade Atwell Suites – $4M (Belgrade 59714)
• The Yellowstone Building, Livingston – $1.7M (59047)
• CHS Project, Glendive – $1.4M (59330)
• Park County Transit, Livingston – $1.1M (59047)

Multi Family and Apartments — apartments, condos and multi-unit housing.

• Belle Apartments, Belcourt ND – $14.1M (58316)
• Trinity Apartments MULLAN project, Missoula – $3M (59808)
• Trinity Apartments COOLEY, Missoula – $2M (59808)
• Hidden Village, Gallatin Gateway – $92K (59730)

Residential — custom homes, cabins and whole-house work.

• Crazy Mountain Ranch Golf Course – Cabin 1, Great Falls – $1.4M (59404)
• Pine Ridge home Project, West Yellowstone – $736K (59758)
• Guest House Project, Livingston – $676K (59047)
• 226 Henrichon Hill, Gallatin Gateway – $59K (59730)

Tenant Buildouts — interior fit-outs and remodels in existing buildings.

• Wheatland Wendy’s, WY – $648K (Wheatland 82201)
• Cheyenne Safeway, WY – $479K (Cheyenne 82007)
• Plutos Smoke Shop, Casper WY – $432K (82609)
• Pacsun, Sioux Falls SD – $191K (57106)

Four building types, from a $59K drywall package in Gallatin Gateway to a $14.1M apartment build. That range is the point — most shops price one lane and call it a service.

Some of these are single-trade scopes, because that’s what the contractor asked for. The two Trinity Apartments packages in Missoula are general conditions and drywall, priced for a drywall sub bidding two Missoula buildings in the same month — twenty pages on one, ten on the other. Same on Hidden Village and 226 Henrichon Hill: drywall takeoffs, wall by wall, with the mold-resistant board and the cement board split out because that’s how the sub buys it.

The full-project files read differently. The Yellowstone Building in Livingston runs concrete through electrical across nine pages. Belgrade Atwell Suites is a ground-up hotel — eleven pages, footings and slab on grade forward. Crazy Mountain Ranch Cabin 1 is a resort cabin priced with the finishes a Montana ranch build actually carries.

We estimate statewide. Here’s where the work on this page is.

The Gallatin Valley. Bozeman, Belgrade, Gallatin Gateway, Big Sky, Three Forks and Manhattan. The fastest-moving market in the state, and five of the sixteen estimates above are valley jobs.

Park County and the Paradise Valley. Livingston, Emigrant, Gardiner and West Yellowstone. Three of these estimates are Livingston jobs, plus the Pine Ridge house in West Yellowstone.

Missoula and western Montana. Missoula, Hamilton, Polson and Kalispell. The Trinity Apartments work is here.

Billings and the Yellowstone corridor. Billings, Laurel, Red Lodge and Columbus.

Great Falls and Helena. State work, institutional work and the prevailing wage rules that come with it.

Eastern Montana. Glendive, Glasgow, Miles City, Sidney and Wolf Point. Long hauls, thin sub coverage, and mobilization that has to be priced honestly instead of assumed.

We also price across the state line — into Wyoming, Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota — and five of the estimates on this page are exactly that.

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.

If you’re a Montana GC 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 Montana 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 code edition your AHJ enforces, at your permit schedule, with the 1% gross receipts tax and the resident-labor rule already in the sheet. Not a national square-foot average with the word Montana written on top.

Send us your plans. We’ll tell you what it costs.