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 Vermont bid different
Vermont runs one building code for the whole state. That part is easy. The rest isn’t.
The Vermont Fire and Building Safety Code is written and enforced by the Division of Fire Safety, not by a couple of hundred towns. So you don’t get the problem where two cities forty minutes apart are on different code years. You get the opposite problem: one set of editions statewide, and those editions are old. Vermont adopted the 2015 NFPA 1, the 2015 NFPA 101 Life Safety Code and the 2015 IBC in October 2016, and they’re still what’s enforced. Electrical is the 2020 NEC, plumbing the 2021 IPC.
That matters if you’re coming in from out of state. Most of the country has moved to 2021 or 2024 books. A Vermont job gets detailed against a 2015 IBC — rated assemblies, egress, sprinkler thresholds. If your estimator is pricing from the code they used last month in New York, some of it doesn’t apply here.
The permit is the other thing people get wrong, and the easiest to fix, because Vermont publishes a formula instead of a schedule. The state construction permit fee is $8.00 for every $1,000.00 of total valuation of the work. Minimum $50.00. Capped at $185,000.00. The Shelburne Road structure on this page is $771K of work, so it carries $6,168 of permit. A $4M job carries $32,000. You can put an exact number in General Conditions on day one instead of an allowance you’ll defend later.
Tax runs backwards from what a lot of contractors expect. Vermont doesn’t tax construction labor. It taxes you. You’re the consumer of the materials you install into real property, so you pay 6% sales tax when you buy them — or 6% use tax if the supplier didn’t collect — plus 1% local option in some towns. There’s no tax line on the owner’s invoice. It’s buried in your material cost, and if it isn’t in the estimate your margin is wrong by six points before you start.
Four things that get missed on a Vermont construction estimate
Every one has cost somebody real money.
1. Residential contractor registration. Vermont has no general contractor license. What it has, since 1 July 2022, is a registration requirement: anyone contracting with a homeowner for more than $10,000 of residential work, labor and materials combined, has to be registered with the Office of Professional Regulation. $75 for an individual, $250 for a business, renewed every two years. And you need a written contract signed before you take a deposit or start work — price terms, dates, scope, and how change orders get handled. It isn’t a license or a competency test. It’s the filing that keeps your contract enforceable.
2. Both energy codes moved. Vermont has two mandatory statewide energy standards — RBES for residential, CBES for commercial — and both went to their 2024 editions on 1 July 2024. CBES 2024 is built on the 2021 IECC. Envelope, air sealing, ventilation, lighting: all of it shifted. Price off a spec copied from an older job and you’re going to underbuy insulation and air-sealing labor and find out at the blower door.
3. Act 250 is a schedule item, not a line item. Vermont’s land use permit sits on top of your local zoning permit and your state construction permit. Act 181, signed in 2024, is rewriting where Act 250 applies by sorting the state into tiers, and that rulemaking was still running as of September 2026. On a lot of Vermont sites the honest answer at bid time is that nobody knows yet. That belongs in the estimate as review duration and a general conditions allowance. Zero is the wrong number and so is a guess dressed up as a fee.
4. Snow and frost come off the site, not the region. Ground snow load and frost depth in Vermont depend on where the building sits and how high it is. Two jobs an hour apart can carry different roof framing and different footings because one is in the Champlain Valley and the other is on a mountain road at 2,000 feet. If you price a Vermont roof off a regional average, you’re going to find the difference when the engineer stamps the drawings.
Vermont projects we’ve actually priced
We’ll be straight with you here, because you can read the labels yourself.
Sixteen real estimates are on this page — four in each of the four categories we work in, $111.3M of construction value across 120 pages of takeoff and pricing. Three are Vermont jobs: Burlington, Essex Junction and Hartland. The other thirteen are from Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York, and each is labelled with its state so you know what you’re looking at.
Vermont is a small state and we’ve priced fewer jobs here than in Boston or the Hudson Valley. We’d rather show you thirteen real New England and New York estimates and tell you where they are than pad this page with Vermont projects that don’t exist. The takeoff is the same in Burlington as it is in Roslindale. The code editions, the permit math and the tax treatment are what change.
Commercial Buildings — ground-up retail, hospitality and institutional.
- Cochecho Bldg D, Dover NH – $26.8M (03820)
- Admirals Cove Building 1, Haverstraw NY – $12.2M (10927)
- Midland Elementary, Rye NY – $9.5M (10580)
- HOLO Theater Project, Natick MA – $125K (01760)
Multi Family and Apartments — apartments, condos and multi-unit housing.
- Walk Hill Residences project, Roslindale MA – $33M (02131)
- Benchmark Senior Living at Rye, NH – $16.4M (03870)
- Shelburne Road, Burlington – $771K (05401)
- Apartment Renovation and Addition, Floral Park NY – $292K (11001)
Residential — custom homes, ADUs and whole-house remodels.
- 77 High Street Remodel, Clinton MA – $3.5M (01510)
- 32 Framingham Road Residence, Southborough MA – $1.1M (01772)
- Rose Project, Essex Junction – $478K (05452)
- Interior Work Project, Hartland – $81K (05048)
Tenant Buildouts — interior fit-outs in existing buildings.
- Marina Restaurant – Admiral’s Cove, Haverstraw NY – $3.4M (10927)
- Louboutin Office, New York NY – $2.2M (10001)
- WTC 4 Taco Bell, New York NY – $1.4M (10007)
- Dollar Tree New Bedford #34421, MA – $72K (02745)
Four building types, from an $81K interior remodel in Hartland to a $33M apartment development outside Boston. That range is the point. Most shops price one lane and call it a service.
Look at the three Vermont files. Shelburne Road in Burlington is a structural package — steel beams and columns carrying wood floor trusses, eight balconies, parapets, shear walls. The Rose Project in Essex Junction is the opposite: demolition, masonry, carpentry, doors, finishes, mechanical and electrical, a full set of divisions on a $478K job. The Hartland interior is three pages and $81K.
Where we work in Vermont
We estimate statewide. Here’s where the work actually is.
Chittenden County. Burlington, South Burlington, Essex Junction, Winooski, Colchester, Williston and Shelburne. Most of Vermont’s multi-family and commercial volume sits here, and so do two of the three Vermont estimates above.
The Upper Valley. White River Junction, Hartford, Hartland, Norwich, Woodstock and Springfield. The Hartland interior remodel above is an Upper Valley job. Work here crosses into New Hampshire, which means a different code set across the river.
Central Vermont. Montpelier, Barre, Waterbury and Berlin. State and institutional work, and a lot of older stock where the 2015 IEBC structural chapter drives the number.
Southern Vermont. Brattleboro, Bennington, Manchester and Wilmington. Close enough to Massachusetts and New York that owners compare your bid to out-of-state pricing, so the tax and permit math has to be right.
Rutland and the mountain towns. Rutland, Killington, Stowe, Waitsfield and Warren. Elevation drives snow load and framing; resort work drives schedule.
The Northeast Kingdom. St. Johnsbury, Newport, Lyndonville and Derby. Long hauls, thin sub markets, durations that reflect both.
Who our Vermont 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 committing capital. Architects who’d rather price a design now than explain a surprise on bid day.
If you’re a GC in Vermont 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 Vermont 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 knows the state is on 2015 editions, knows the permit is $8 per thousand, and knows the 6% lands on your material invoice and not the owner’s.
Send us your plans. We’ll tell you what it costs.
