Project cost estimating

Build a number you can defend.

Modules: 10 modules
Total length: 2h 20m
Handouts: 4 handouts
Assessment: 5-question assessment

A desk at night under one clamp light: a calculator with a curling paper tape, a scale rule, and drawings marked up with yellow highlighter.

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10 modules · 2h 20m
4 handouts to keep
Certificate when you pass the assessment
Watch on a phone, on your schedule

What this course covers

An estimate is a promise about the future made with incomplete information. Do it well and you win work and make money. Do it badly and you either lose the bid or win it and lose your shirt. Most contractors who go under do not go under because they cannot build — they go under because they could not price.

This course walks a complete estimate end to end. Reading the scope before you price it. Taking off quantities from drawings. Pricing labor with real production rates and real burden, not a number somebody guessed. Materials, equipment, and the sub quotes that arrive at 4:55 on bid day with a scope gap buried in them. Then overhead, profit, and contingency — what each one is for and why lumping them together hides the truth from you.

The last module is the one people come back for: why estimates miss. Every recurring cause, and the habit that prevents each one.

10 modules · 2h 20m

1What an estimate actually is (and what it is not)Free previewConceptual, budget, and hard bid. Knowing which one you are being asked for changes everything about how you build it.15m
2Reading a scope of work before you price itThe exclusions, allowances, and alternates that decide whether your number is comparable to anyone else's.10m

Who takes this

Tradespeople who can already do the work and want to run it
Field leads stepping into a foreman or superintendent seat
People coming into construction from another industry, or starting over
Students and families looking at a career that does not need a four-year degree
Crews being trained by their employer on a team plan

Aaron Gaddy holding a rolled set of drawings under his arm on a jobsite in late afternoon light.

Taught by Aaron Gaddy

30+ years in commercial construction. Every module here comes out of jobs he actually ran — the drawings, the mistakes, and what they cost.

Project cost estimating

What this course covers

10 modules · 2h 20m

Who takes this

Before you start