◆ Case study · Documents · Estimating · AI
Turning construction plans into structured estimating workflows.
Cass & York built an AI assisted construction application that combines project plans, measurement tools, material workflows, document processing, and billing in one platform.
- Client
- AutoTakeoff
- Sector
- Construction
- Services
- Custom Operations Software, AI Automation, Document Intelligence, Data Platforms
- Stack
- Strategy · Design · Engineering
[01] The operation
Construction estimating begins with information embedded in plans.
Turning those plans into usable quantities requires people to inspect documents, understand scale, identify materials, measure drawings, and organize the resulting data around a project.
AutoTakeoff was designed around that workflow.
[02] The existing systems
Construction plans were the source of the estimating information.
The workflow starts with construction PDFs. People need to inspect drawings, establish scale, measure quantities, and organize materials around a project.
[03] The gap
Document information needed to become project data.
Plans, measurements, material records, and estimating needed a connected workspace, with AI assistance integrated into that workflow.
[04] What we built
Plans, measurements, materials, and billing in one platform.
The application uses both JavaScript and Python document tooling alongside multiple AI providers.
- 01Project management
- 02PDF plan viewing
- 03Vector overlays
- 04Drawing tools
- 05Scale selection
- 06DPI calibration
- 07Measurements
- 08Material records
- 09Material locations
- 10Price history
- 11AI assisted document analysis
- 12OCR and PDF processing
- 13Billing and subscriptions
- 14Account workflows
[05] Systems involved
The tools and records connected by the work.
- 01Construction PDFs
- 02PDF viewing and measurement tools
- 03Python PDF processing and OCR
- 04PostgreSQL
- 05AI providers
- 06Stripe
[06] The resulting workflow
Document understanding connected to estimating.
Construction plans
PDF processing
Scale & measurement
AI assisted interpretation
Materials & quantities
Project estimate workflow
The value comes from connecting document understanding to the larger estimating process rather than treating AI extraction as an isolated feature.
[07] Working with construction documents
The plan and the project data share one workspace.
Dedicated tools for interacting with plans allow document information and project data to exist in the same application.
- 01PDF viewer
- 02Vector overlays
- 03Drawing toolbar
- 04Scale selector
- 05DPI calibration
- 06Measurement display
- 07Material tables
[08] Technical foundation
A mixed application and document processing stack.
- 01React
- 02TypeScript
- 03Node.js / Express
- 04PostgreSQL
- 05Drizzle
- 06Python PDF processing
- 07PyMuPDF
- 08OCR
- 09OpenAI
- 10Anthropic
- 11Google Generative AI
- 12Stripe
[09] Capabilities used