Landscape maintenance bids, taken off from the request and checked against bids you already priced.

Today an estimator reads the request and its addenda, works out what each site needs, measures or checks the areas, sets a frequency for every task, sorts the work the contract includes from the work it bills separately, gathers the licenses and forms the bid asks for, and writes down the questions for the site walk. Only then does pricing start, usually against a due date.

For the test, AI reads copies of past bid packages and drafts the takeoff for each one: site by site, every task with its unit, quantity, frequency and cycle count, the hours your own production rates give if you send them, the work billed outside the monthly fee, the attachments, and a list of questions. A quantity with no source says so. No price, margin or total appears anywhere in the draft.

A site list is not a measurement. Gastonia, North Carolina's 2024 mowing and grounds request lists each parcel by its county parcel ID with GIS acres to two decimals, some under a tenth of an acre, then tells the contractor to inspect the areas and points bidders to the county's GIS map. It sets sixteen mowings for the season, month by month, and warns that lots can be added or removed at any point. Powder Springs, Georgia's 2025 request names its sites and street segments and gives no areas at all, so your estimator's own measurement is the only number. The draft takes each area from the request, its maps or your estimator's measurement, says which, and flags any site that has none of the three.

The bid form sets the shape of the takeoff. Rockwall, Texas's 2025 grounds maintenance bid gives every location a frequency code and a cycle count, 36 for weekly mowing, 18 for bi-weekly and 8 for monthly, with shrub trims and mulch on lines of their own, and asks for a unit cost per cycle. An addendum issued on March 3, ten days before bids were due, replaced the whole form. Gastonia's form asks something else: an annual fee, a monthly fee that is the annual fee spread over ten payments, an hourly rate per employee for extra services, and how many days your prices hold, no fewer than 60. The draft follows the latest form line for line, so its cycle counts and units match the blanks your estimator will fill.

Included work and billed work share one scope. Powder Springs folds pine straw into the contract at least three times a year and says it is not billed separately. Turf fertilizer goes down at least four times a year, pre-emergent at least three, shrub fertilizer at least three, and shrubs are pruned at least twice. Fungicides are billed per application once approved, insecticides on a material plus labor basis, and seasonal color only on request. A takeoff that misses one of those minimums prices a short year; one that tucks a billed-separately item into the monthly fee gives it away. The draft keeps the two lists apart and cites the clause behind each line.

Some requirements are about people and paper, not turf. The same request wants a copy of a Georgia herbicide and pesticide license in the name of the employee who will do the work, a safety data sheet for every chemical proposed (the request still calls them MSDS sheets), five references from similar metro Atlanta accounts, and a supervisor with a two-year degree, the Georgia Certified Landscape Professional title or three years of commercial or government experience. Under the federal rule, 40 CFR 171.101, ornamental and turf pest control is a certification category of its own, and each state licenses applicators for it on its own terms. The draft lists every license, sheet, reference and form the bid demands, and which ones your files already hold.

What your estimator checks. Your reviewer, usually the estimator or account manager who prices maintenance renewals, checks each area against its source, each frequency and cycle count against the scope, the included work against the billed work, the attachments, and the questions the draft raised for the site walk. Pricing, margins and the choice to bid at all stay with them.

If your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, new bid packages get a draft takeoff as they come in, for about 30 days.

Your estimator prices every bid, signs it and submits it. Site walks, questions to an agency or property manager, and the decision to bid at all stay with your team.

Anything after that is a separate job with a separate price.