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Workflow: Estimating a Job with the Design Assistant

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Anthony Conte
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Open the video in a new tab (Estimating with the FireCAD Design Assistant).

Overview

A bid set arrives with two hundred sheets, and the estimator needs a handful of them: the cover sheet, because the occupancy decides what the code requires, and the floor plans, to count the devices. Today that count is done by hand, one symbol at a time, and when the job is won the designer starts over.

With the Design Assistant, the estimator turns the bid plans into a code-based device layout on the system being bid: devices placed by the spacing and candela rules that apply to the building, counted by floor and by purpose, with the panel and power supplies added and the bill of materials exported to Excel for the company's own pricing sheet. FireCAD counts; the estimator prices. FireCAD does not price the job.

This guide is for estimators doing takeoffs from bid PDFs. Estimators can do the takeoff inside FireCAD themselves, or have their FireCAD designer prepare it for them, and use the preliminary submittal it produces to work the final price. The layout is not throwaway work: when the bid is won, the designer opens the same project and continues where the estimate stopped. Nothing is rebuilt.

The playbook below is the order of requests that works, what to ask for, and what to leave for the designer. For the full design, see A Project Start to Finish with the Design Assistant.

Before You Start

  • Create the project on the FireCAD Project Template (ARCH expand D or E, or your own template). The template has the plan sheets, the cover sheet, the legend and the schedule sheets, so the estimate drops straight into a finished set. The Ember training template already carries its own floor plan, so use it to practise, not to bid.
  • Add the system templates for the system you are bidding. The example below bids Fire-Lite with System Sensor devices, so it adds those two templates. If the system is not decided yet, add Generic and lay out on generic devices instead (Step 3); the Design Assistant can change the system parts later.
  • Bring the bid plan into the drawing. For a vector PDF, use AutoCAD's PDFIMPORT at scale 1: AutoCAD reads the scale from the PDF, so walls and room names arrive as drawing geometry at real size, which the Design Assistant can read. Leave PDFIMPORTFILTER at its default. AutoCAD 2027 imports the page as a block, so EXPLODE it before you go on. Use PDFATTACH for a scanned set; the Design Assistant can still look at the sheet, but it cannot read rooms from it.
  • Check the scale. Measure one known dimension (a door, a column bay) after importing. Coverage and spacing are worked out in drawing units, so a plan at the wrong scale gives the wrong counts.
  • One floor per plan area. Move each floor into its plan sheet's area (FA-101, FA-102 and so on).

Step 1: The Cover Sheet

Start where every estimator starts: the cover sheet. The occupancy, construction type and sprinkler status decide which devices are required, and the building code says what the system needs while NFPA 72 says how to place it.

Open the project's cover sheet tab (FA-000), attach the cover sheet page of the bid set to the request as an image, and ask:

Here's the cover sheet of the bid set. Pull the occupancy, construction type and sprinkler status, fill in the project properties, set the codes with the editions adopted in Chicago and drop any code you can't give an edition, then draft the Basis of Design for the estimate.

The Design Assistant reads the sheet, fills in the project properties, sets the codes with their editions and drops any code it cannot give an edition, records the occupancy, construction type and sprinkler status in the Scope of Work, and drafts the Basis of Design. The title block fills in as the properties are saved. The draft Basis of Design goes into the proposal package in Step 6, and the designer finishes it later.

Tips

  • Confirm the editions. The Design Assistant takes the adopted editions from general knowledge, and its answer lists the editions to confirm before the bid goes out. Check them against the jurisdiction in Edit Project Properties. A code without an edition prints "(edition not set)" in the submittal book (Step 6), which is why the request drops those.
  • No cover sheet to attach? Type the facts instead: "This is a bid for a new three-story skilled nursing facility, Group I-2 Condition 1, Type II-B construction, fully sprinklered, in Chicago IL. Fill in the project properties and the codes with the editions adopted there."

Step 2: The Rooms

The layout follows the rooms. On a vector plan the Design Assistant reads them as part of the layout request (Step 3), so this step is a check, not a requirement. To see what it will work from before it places anything, ask:

Read the rooms on the FA-101 plan and list them with their areas. Define the open areas as rooms too.

Tips

  • Check the list against the plan. A room it missed is a room with no devices in the estimate.
  • On a scanned plan, ask it to define the rooms from what it sees, and check the outlines it draws.

Step 3: The Device Layout, Without Wiring

Ask for the devices the code requires, and the counts. An estimate needs only the floor plan and the devices: no connections. Leave the circuits and wiring for the designer.

Name the manufacturer and the system from the start, so the parts placed are the parts priced. Say "for the estimate", include the allowance items every bid carries, ask for device-type labels so the plan reads as a takeoff, and ask for the assumptions:

Lay out the first floor for the estimate on Fire-Lite with System Sensor devices, white horn strobes, no wiring. Smoke detection where the code calls for it, strobes anywhere the public goes, pull stations at the exits, and the usual allowance items: elevator recall, waterflow and tamper monitoring, and the radio system monitors. 10 ft ceilings. Label devices with the device type only. List your assumptions with the counts.

The Design Assistant places the devices (corridor coverage at the ends of the corridors and every hundred feet, strobes in the lobbies, conference rooms and public toilets, pull stations at the exits), states the defaults it used, and answers with the counts and an Assumptions list: ceiling heights, room uses, the areas it excluded. Put the assumptions in the estimate, so the bid says what it covers.

The allowance items. The plan never shows them, and every bid carries them:

  • Elevator recall: a smoke detector in each elevator lobby, the heat detector in the elevator machine room for shunt trip, and the relays for recall. This is the one heat detector in the estimate; if the plan shows no machine room, the Design Assistant places it near the elevators and notes that the location is to be decided.
  • Sprinkler monitoring: a waterflow and a tamper monitor module for each sprinkler zone on each floor.
  • Responder radio (ERRCS): monitor modules for the radio system's supervision points.
  • Duct detectors: wherever the mechanical sheets show an air handler that needs them.

Tips

  • Watch model space while it works. The devices appear on the plan as they are placed.
  • System not decided yet? Lay out on generic devices instead: say "generic devices" in place of the manufacturer and system, and the Design Assistant can change the system parts to a manufacturer's later. The Generic system template may lack a device type the layout needs; when it does, the Design Assistant creates it, which uses credits.
  • Check the coverage. "Show the smoke detector coverage on the first floor" draws each detector's coverage, so gaps and overlaps are easy to see.

Step 4: The Other Floors

Do floors 2 and 3 the same way, then give me the counts by floor and by purpose.

"The same way" reuses the decisions you already approved on the first floor. The counts come back by floor and by purpose (elevator, sprinkler monitoring, notification, and so on), the way an estimator breaks a price out.

Step 5: The Panel, the Bill of Materials and the Pricing Sheet

One request adds the panel and the power supplies, sizes the batteries, draws the bill of materials on a sheet and sends it to Excel:

Add the panel and the power supplies for this layout, put the bill of materials on FA-603, and export it to Excel. Batteries can be any brand, sized from the calc.

The Design Assistant adds the panel and the power supplies the layout needs, sizes the batteries from the calculation, draws the bill of materials on FA-603 with part numbers and quantities that match the plan, and writes the .xlsx file into the project's Reports folder. Open it in whatever pricing sheet the company already uses. FireCAD counts; the estimator prices.

The counts come from the devices actually placed on the plans, so they match the layout. There are no circuits, no riser and no calculation sheets yet: those belong to the design.

Step 6: The Preliminary Submittal Book

First, review what goes in it. Open Edit Project Properties, read the Basis of Design the Design Assistant drafted in Step 1, tick Mark as reviewed, and Save.

Then build the proposal from Reports > Submittal Book and tick Mark as preliminary (for bid). The book is stamped PRELIMINARY – NOT FOR CONSTRUCTION on the cover, the Basis of Design, the contents page and the footer of every report page, so nobody mistakes the estimate for the design. Choose the pre-design items:

  • the Basis of Design: the system proposed and the codes and editions it follows;
  • the device legend and the bill of materials;
  • the product data sheets for every part in the estimate;
  • the floor plans with the device layout, if you want the owner to see coverage.

Leave the listing sheets out of a bid set; they belong in the final submittal. If a code has no edition, the page prints "(edition not set)" and the build summary warns you, so set the editions (Step 1) before you build.

The book shows the owner or the contractor exactly what was priced and why, with the data sheets behind it. The final submittal, with the riser, the calculations and the schedules, comes from the design.

Step 7: Hand Off to the Designer

When the job is won, nothing is thrown away. The designer opens the same project: the rooms, the devices, the parts, the project properties, the codes and the Basis of Design are already there. Tell the designer what the estimate assumed (the Assumptions list from Step 3), then the designer continues from Step 3 of A Project Start to Finish with the Design Assistant: connect the circuits, draw the wirepaths, check voltage drop and battery capacity, and build the sheets.

A request that works for the designer's first step:

This project was laid out for the estimate without wiring. Review the device layout against the codes, then connect everything: Level 1 is SLC loop 1, Levels 2 and 3 are SLC loop 2, each floor on its own notification circuits, and draw the wirepaths.

The design starts from the estimate, not from a blank sheet. Estimators can do the takeoff themselves, or their FireCAD designer can do it for them; either way, the estimate becomes the design.

Notes

  • The Design Assistant lists the code editions it took from general knowledge; confirm them with the jurisdiction before the bid goes out.
  • The cover sheet's codes block may need a manual fill after the properties are saved.
  • A battery appears in the bill of materials only when it is a catalog part; a battery with no catalog part is sized in the calculation but left out of the list.

Credits

A layout without wiring uses fewer credits than a full design, because there are no circuits to connect or check. Each project is different, and the credits a request uses depend on the size of the floor plan and the number of devices. Changing the system parts later and creating a device type the Generic template lacks are design requests and use credits too. Every answer shows the credits that request used. For ways to keep credit use down, see the tips in A Project Start to Finish with the Design Assistant.

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