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 Rhode Island bid different
Rhode Island is the one state where the code is not the hard part.
There’s one State Building Code. The Building Code Commission writes it, all thirty-nine cities and towns enforce the same edition, and nobody gets to adopt their own. Since 1 December 2025 that’s the 2021 ICC family with Rhode Island amendments, plus the 2023 National Electrical Code. Cross a town line in Rhode Island and the code doesn’t move. That is not true in Massachusetts, and it is definitely not true in Texas.
What does move is the energy code — and it moves the wrong way for anybody pricing off habit. Rhode Island took the 2024 IECC in full, with Appendices RK and CH, effective 14 November 2024. So the energy code is a full cycle newer than the building code sitting next to it. If you’re carrying envelope, air sealing and mechanical numbers you built under a 2021 IECC job, you’re going to be short on this one.
Then the tax, which is simpler than most people expect and catches people anyway. Rhode Island charges 7% sales tax, flat, with no local add-on. You are the consumer of your own materials — you pay the 7% at the supply house on materials, supplies, tools, equipment and rentals. Separately stated installation labor is not taxed. That means the tax lives inside your material line, not on top of your contract, and if you bid a Rhode Island job with the tax stacked on the bottom you have just added 7% of your labor to your own price.
Two exceptions. Work for the federal government, the State, a municipality or a certificate-holding nonprofit lets you buy materials exempt on a completed exemption certificate — but fencing and barricades don’t qualify. And if you sell materials at an agreed price with installation, you’re a retailer-contractor: retail permit, tax collected from the customer, resale certificate to the supplier.
Four things that get missed on a Rhode Island construction estimate
Every one of these has cost somebody real money.
1. The CRMC Assent. The Coastal Resources Management Council has jurisdiction over all tidal waters out to three nautical miles, plus a 200-foot buffer around every coastal feature — beaches, barriers, dunes, coastal wetlands, rocky shoreline. Any new work inside that buffer needs an Assent, and that includes residential additions and structural modifications, not just docks. Under a 50% increase in structural lot coverage can go administrative review; over 50%, or anything needing a variance, goes in front of the Council. The fee is computed off an Estimated Project Cost. In a state this small, a very large share of buildable land sits inside that line. It belongs in General Conditions and in your schedule, not in a footnote.
2. The permit line is thirty-nine different answers. The state sets the formula every municipality has to use — 510-RICR-00-00-21, effective July 2018 and amended December 2023 — and the inputs are the size of the town, its permitting department’s budget and headcount, and how many permit actions it processes. Same code statewide, thirty-nine schedules. The lowest tier runs roughly $8 to $23 per $1,000 of valuation, with minimum fees of roughly $40 to $125. Same building, three-times spread, depending on which line on the map you’re on.
3. Prevailing wage starts at $1,000. If state or municipal funds on the job exceed one thousand dollars, prevailing wage applies. Practically, that’s every public job in the state. Certified weekly payroll goes to the awarding authority monthly, on Rhode Island’s own forms — your company forms don’t count and neither do most other states’. On a general contract of $1,000,000 or more you also keep a Certified Prevailing Wage Daily log of everybody on site. Miss the payroll or the log and it’s a minimum of $100 per calendar day; general noncompliance runs up to $500 per calendar day, payments get withheld, and you can be debarred from bidding public work.
4. You’re bidding into a shrinking labor pool. AGC’s read of the federal numbers has Rhode Island construction employment down 1.8% from June 2025 to June 2026, while it rose in thirty-three states. That shows up in durations and in what your subs will hold a number for, not in unit prices.
Rhode Island 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. $68.7M of construction value across 100 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 — ground-up and full-gut retail, institutional and service buildings.
- Salem Gospel Church, Providence – $1.7M (02907)
- Showcase Cinemas Project, Warwick – $989K (02886)
- Canal St, Providence – $496K (02903)
- Cranston Oil, Cranston – $381K (02910)
Multi Family and Apartments — apartments, senior housing and multi-unit development.
- Walk Hill Residences project, Roslindale MA – $33M (02131)
- Wading River Estates, Norton MA – $23M (02766)
- Holbrook Senior Housing project, Holbrook MA – $1.4M (02343)
- Winslow Gardens, East Providence – $69K (02914)
Residential — custom homes, additions and whole-house remodels.
- 77 High Street Remodel, Clinton MA – $3.5M (01510)
- 17 Fremont Street, Somerville MA – $1.5M (02145)
- East Street v1, Pawtucket – $726K (02860)
- 25-27 Sessions St, Providence – $315K (02906)
Tenant Buildouts — interior fit-outs in existing buildings.
- Planet Fitness Jamaica Plain, MA – $688K (02130)
- Daves Hot Chicken, Wales MA – $508K (01081)
- CVS Project, Pawtucket – $273K (02861)
- Golf Galaxy Store, Milford CT – $81K (06460)
Four building types, from an $81K store fit-out to a $33M residential development. That range is the whole point — most shops price one lane and call it a service.
Eight of the sixteen are Rhode Island jobs. The rest are in the Massachusetts and Connecticut markets our Rhode Island clients bid into anyway, and they’re labelled with their state so you know exactly what you’re looking at. Rhode Island is a renovation state — dense, old, mostly built — and the samples show it. Look at the Providence and Pawtucket work: Canal St runs seventeen divisions from sitework through specialties on a $496K job, and East Street carries fifteen divisions on a house. That’s what an existing-building takeoff looks like when it’s done properly. The CVS in Pawtucket is eight pages for $273K, because a retail fit-out is demolition, storefront, millwork and finishes, and every one of those is its own takeoff.
Where we work in Rhode Island
We estimate statewide. Here’s where the volume is.
Providence and the metro core. Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls, East Providence, Cranston and Woonsocket. Old, dense, mixed-use building stock — this is where the renovation and adaptive-reuse work lives. Six of the sixteen estimates above are in this corridor.
Warwick and Kent County. Warwick, West Warwick, Coventry, East Greenwich. Retail, service and commercial along the Route 2 and airport corridors. The Showcase Cinemas job is here.
Newport County and Aquidneck Island. Newport, Middletown, Portsmouth, Jamestown, Tiverton. Bridge access, coastal exposure and CRMC jurisdiction over most of what’s worth building on.
South County. North and South Kingstown, Narragansett, Westerly, Charlestown. Shoreline residential and resort work, and the part of the state where the 200-foot coastal buffer changes the job most often.
Northern Rhode Island. Smithfield, Lincoln, Cumberland, Johnston, Greene and the western towns. Interior conditions, no coastal permitting, different number for the same drawings.
Who our Rhode Island 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.
Rhode Island is small enough that everybody bids against the same eight shops, and the margin is thin enough that one bad allowance is the job. If you’re a GC here 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 Rhode Island 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 2024 IECC, inside a CRMC buffer, and against a permit schedule that changes at the town line. Not a national square-foot average with the word Rhode Island written on top.
Send us your plans. We’ll tell you what it costs.
