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 West Virginia bid different
West Virginia is one of the easy states to read and one of the hard states to price.
Easy, because there’s one code. The State Fire Commission adopted the 2018 IBC, the 2018 IRC, the 2018 IMC and IPC, the 2015 IECC and the 2020 NEC, and they took effect statewide on 1 August 2022. You don’t cross a city line here and land on a different code year the way you do in Texas or Ohio. What does change is who’s looking. Adoption is statewide; enforcement is local. A job inside Morgantown or Charleston gets a building department. A job on a county road an hour out may not have one at all, and then the drawings and the engineer are the whole inspection.
Hard, because of the tax. West Virginia doesn’t ask whether the work was labor or material. It asks what the work produced. If the end result is a capital improvement to real property, your charge to the owner isn’t taxable — and you eat the 6% on every stick of material, every tool and every piece of equipment you buy for it. If the end result is a repair, an alteration or maintenance, the entire service is taxable, and now you buy the materials tax-free for resale instead. Same crew, same building, two different tax positions. Plenty of cities add another 1% on top.
Then there’s the ground. Limestone karst runs the length of the Eastern Panhandle through Berkeley and Jefferson counties, and again down the Greenbrier Valley through Greenbrier, Monroe and Pocahontas. Karst means sinkholes, means subsurface investigation, means over-excavation and grout you didn’t draw, and means stormwater you can’t just infiltrate. Three of the estimates on this page sit in Panhandle karst and one sits in Monroe County. That’s not a footnote on a West Virginia estimate. It’s a line item.
Four things that get missed on a West Virginia construction estimate
1. The licensing threshold is not what it used to be. The Contractor Licensing Act moved to Chapter 30, Article 42 of the Code. A “contractor” is now anyone doing work costing $5,000 or more residential, or $25,000 or more commercial — and you need the license to *submit the bid*, not just to do the job. There’s a separate multifamily classification alongside general building, residential, specialty, electrical, HVAC, piping, plumbing and general engineering. Your license number belongs in the ad and in the contract. If you’re bidding an apartment building on a general building license, you’re going to find that out from the board and not from us.
2. Capital improvement versus repair, decided before you price it. This is the single most expensive thing people get wrong here. A tenant fit-out that replaces finishes and stays a repair is a taxable service on the whole contract charge. The same building, gutted and rebuilt as a capital improvement, isn’t — but the 6% moves into your material buy. Decide which one the scope is, write the contract to match, and put the tax where it actually lands.
3. The permit is small and the plan review isn’t free. Morgantown charges $35 for a remodeling and repair permit up to $1,000 of work, plus $4.50 for each additional $1,000. Site development plan review is $75 up to a $200,000 valuation, plus $10 for each additional $100,000. Those are real numbers on a real schedule, and they’re small enough that people skip them and then can’t explain a General Conditions line to an owner who asks.
4. The energy code is a decade behind your neighbors. West Virginia is on the 2015 IECC. Maryland and Virginia are not. If you price a Martinsburg envelope off a spec somebody wrote for a job outside Hagerstown, you’re going to carry insulation, glazing and air-sealing scope that West Virginia never asked for — and lose the bid to somebody who read the code that actually applies.
West Virginia 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. $34M of construction value across 63 pages of takeoff and pricing. Ten of the sixteen are West Virginia jobs. The other six are just over the border, and they’re labelled that way. Open them. Read the line items.
Commercial Buildings — ground-up retail, institutional and medical.
- Kanawha County Elementary School, Charleston – $2.9M (25311)
- Crow & Co Clinic, Bluefield VA – $1.3M (24605)
- Dollar General Chester – $467K (Chester 26034)
- USDA Appalachian Fruit Research Station (AFRS), Kearneysville – $367K (25430)
Multi Family and Apartments — apartments, townhomes and multi-unit housing.
- 5 Story Apartments, Clayton OH – $11.1M (45315)
- Interwoven Buildings, Martinsburg – $4.8M (25401)
- Washington Landing, Charles Town – $1.4M (25414)
- 5th Ave Huntington – $103K (Huntington 25703)
Residential — custom homes, garages and whole-house work.
- 1008 Pine Hill Residence, Mc Lean VA – $6M (22101)
- 810 Crain Project, Gambrills MD – $2.7M (21054)
- Cool Meadow Farm, Lindside – $594K (24951)
- Two Car Garage with Workspace, Arlington VA – $164K (22205)
Tenant Buildouts — interior fit-outs in existing buildings.
- Planet Fitness, Indiana PA – $1.7M (15701)
- Bldg 309 Scope Add, Martinsburg – $152K (25401)
- Pilot Travel Center, Nitro – $105K (25143)
- Bath and Body Works, Triadelphia – $99K (26059)
Four building types, from a $99K retail refresh at The Highlands to an $11.1M five-story apartment building. That range is the point. Most shops price one lane and call it a service.
Look at the two Martinsburg jobs. Interwoven Buildings is $4.8M of carpentry, insulation, drywall and paint across six buildings, four floors each — 71,725 square feet of roof insulation alone, priced against the 2015 IECC. Bldg 309 Scope Add is $152K of drywall and paint in one existing building. Same city, same trades, two orders of magnitude apart, and both had to be quantified line by line before anybody could say a number.
The USDA Appalachian Fruit Research Station is federal work in Kearneysville — general conditions through electrical on three pages. West Virginia repealed its own state prevailing wage back in 2016, so state and local public work here isn’t carrying a state rate. Federally funded work still is, under Davis-Bacon. Knowing which of those two a job is decides your labor number before you price a single quantity.
Where we work in West Virginia
We estimate statewide. Here’s where the volume actually is.
The Kanawha Valley. Charleston, South Charleston, Nitro, Dunbar, St. Albans and Alum Creek. The state’s biggest building department and its biggest public clients. The Kanawha County school and the Nitro travel center are both on this page.
The Eastern Panhandle. Martinsburg, Charles Town, Ranson, Kearneysville, Inwood and Berkeley Springs. The fastest-growing corner of the state, feeding off the Washington and Baltimore markets — and sitting on limestone karst. Four of the sixteen estimates above are Panhandle jobs.
Morgantown and north central. Morgantown, Fairmont, Clarksburg, Bridgeport and Buckhannon. University and hospital work, and the one published fee schedule we quote above.
Huntington and the Tri-State. Huntington, Barboursville, Ceredo, Kenova and Point Pleasant. Older building stock, a lot of adaptive reuse, and the 5th Ave apartment job on this page.
The Northern Panhandle. Wheeling, Triadelphia, Weirton, Chester and New Martinsville. Retail and light industrial, tied to the Pittsburgh and eastern Ohio subcontractor base. Two of the estimates here are Northern Panhandle jobs.
The Greenbrier Valley and the southern coalfields. Lewisburg, Beckley, Princeton, Bluefield, Union and Lindside. Long hauls, thin sub markets and more karst.
Who our West Virginia 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.
The market here is tight. AGC’s July 2026 numbers had West Virginia with the largest percentage construction job loss of any state that month — down 2.8%, about 1,000 jobs. One month isn’t a trend, but it does mean the jobs that are out there get bid harder. A number that’s off by ten percent doesn’t lose you the margin. It loses you the job.
That’s what our West Virginia construction estimating services are built for. 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 state code, on Panhandle karst, at a West Virginia sales tax position. Not a national square-foot average with the state’s name written on top.
Send us your plans. We’ll tell you what it costs.
