AI estimating for groundworks & civils contractors
In most groundworks firms there is exactly one person who can price a job, and that person is also running the sites, chasing the wagons and answering the phone. Nexley is how the estimating stops depending on the owner's evenings: earthworks quantities from the levels, drainage measured from the layouts, and plant and muck-away costs that track what suppliers are actually charging this week.
- Bulk quantities from the level drawings
- Plant and haulage rates kept current
- Estimates the owner reviews, not writes
When the owner is the estimating department
Civils work punishes this harder than any other trade, because the quantities are unforgiving. A brickwork package priced slightly thin loses a few points of margin; an earthworks package priced off a glance loses the cost of a hundred extra wagon movements. So the owner does every estimate personally, every estimate takes an evening, and the firm can only bid what the owner's evenings can absorb — the growth ceiling is not the order book, it is one person's spare hours. Handing the measurement to Nexley and keeping the judgement is how that ceiling lifts; the wider pattern is the whole subject of back office automation.
Quantities you can stand behind
From the existing and proposed levels, Nexley works the cut and fill: reduced level dig, what can be re-used as fill, what has to be carted away, with the balance shown as workings rather than a single take-it-or-leave-it number. Drainage runs are measured from the layouts — pipe by diameter and depth band, manholes and gullies counted, beds and surrounds allowed by specification — through the same measured take-off engine used for bills of quantities. Attendances, temporary works and the NRSWA notices a street works job drags with it are itemised too, because the items nobody priced are the ones that eat the margin.
The costs that move daily
Groundworks estimating has a problem drylining does not: the input costs will not sit still. Excavator hire moves with season and availability, tipping charges move with material classification and the tip's appetite, haulage moves with diesel. An estimate built on last quarter's rates is wrong before it is printed. Nexley keeps a living rate book — plant, haulage, tipping, imported fill — updated as your suppliers quote, so the price you tender on a Friday reflects what Monday's wagons will actually cost.
Price an earthworks package with itWhat changes in the first month
The three shifts groundworks firms report once the measuring moves off the kitchen table.
Evenings come back
The take-off happens during the day, at machine speed. The owner's evening job becomes a twenty-minute review with a red pen instead of a four-hour measure.
The back office story →More tenders go out
When measuring stops costing evenings, the marginal tender is suddenly worth bidding — and civils is a numbers game won by firms that can afford to keep bidding.
Tendering with Nexley →The reconciliation exists
Tipping tickets against allowed loads, plant hours against the estimate — the job-cost feedback loop most small civils firms never have time to close.
Cashflow & accounts →Try Nexley on your next groundworks package
Try free for 7 days, no credit card required.
“Nexley saves me so much time it's unbelievable. Was sceptical at first but when I saw what it can do for my business I couldn't sign up quick enough. Can't recommend highly enough.”
