Construction

Sage Estimating: A proven partner for every generation of technology

Reflecting on four generations of innovation and introducing our latest advancement.

November 4, 20255 min read Share

While walking the trade show floor at the 2025 Advancing Preconstruction Conference, I took a few minutes to reflect on Sage and our unique position in reshaping the industry with market-leading estimating software.

During my 40 years of supporting, marketing, and developing estimating solutions, I have seen many companies come and go. Most could not reinvent their products when the time came to migrate to a new technology platform. That has never been the case with Sage (and Timberline, which Sage acquired in the 2000s). Since I started at Sage in 1985, we have consistently taken our customers forward through multiple technology shifts, protecting their investment every step of the way.

Four generations of innovation at Sage and Timberline

• First Generation: Accubid (Early 1980s)
  Industry firsts: The “Workpackage” introduced logic and formulas into assemblies, meaning estimators no longer had to manually build every possible combination.
• Second Generation: Precision Estimating for DOS (Late 1980s)
  Industry firsts: The first database-driven spreadsheet, real-time estimate spreadsheets that updated automatically, bid-day analysis, and integrations with Primavera, Microsoft Project, and RS Means.
• Third Generation: Precision Estimating for Windows (Early 1990s)
  Industry firsts: The first estimating models (conceptual to detail in one estimate), 2D lookup tables, formula tables, nested assemblies, bond tables, prorate/distribute functions, and more.
• Fourth Generation: Sage Estimating Cloud (Today)
  The future of estimating is cloud and AI. Our new cloud-native platform is in its early stages, but customers are already reaping the benefits of connected workflows and advanced analytics. The introduction of Bid Insights shows how Sage is pairing decades of estimating expertise with modern AI to deliver practical, trusted innovation.

Sage is the only estimating company to have survived three major technology shifts—mini-computers, DOS, and Windows—and now we are entering the cloud and AI era. With nearly 50 years of estimating expertise, no other vendor can claim this kind of track record.

Innovation continues: Introducing Bid Insights

Our latest advancement is Bid Insights, an AI-powered capability in Sage Estimating’s BidMatrix. Bid Insights is designed to help estimators analyze subcontractor bids faster, reduce risk, and award work with confidence.

Here’s how it works:

• Predictive subcontractor list: Bid Insights automatically generates a list of contractors most likely to submit bids for a project, based on similar jobs they’ve bid in the past. No more digging through old folders or spreadsheets to remember who to invite. Bid Insights displays them instantly.
• Smarter history: It identifies similar past projects and adjusts that bid history for today’s costs and locations, so the data you see is current and relevant.
• Visual analysis: Subcontractor bids are plotted against predictive ranges, making it clear which bids are outliers and which fall within expectations.
• Estimator in control: Bid Insights doesn’t award work or overwrite your judgment. It provides guidance, but you make the final decision.

A day in the life with Bid Insights

Imagine it’s bid day. Instead of manually reviewing dozens of subcontractor spreadsheets, your project opens in BidMatrix with suggested subcontractors already listed because they’ve bid on similar jobs in the past. Their bids appear visually against an expected range, adjusted for today’s market and location.

One bid is dramatically lower than the rest. Bid Insights flags it as an outlier, so you pause and dig deeper. You pick up the phone, call the subcontractor, and confirm whether they missed the scope. Without Bid Insights, that bid might have slipped through, only to create problems once work started.

This is the kind of practical support estimators have been asking for. Not a black-box AI making decisions, but a tool that highlights the right data and helps you apply your judgment more effectively.

Proof from the field

One early customer saw the potential immediately. Art Bonsall, Director of Preconstruction with Doran Contractors Limited, said one missed scope cost his company tens of thousands. His reaction: “If I had Bid Insights, I would have caught the outlier bid before I closed the tender.”

That single quote sums up the value. Every estimator has a story like Art’s—a missed outlier, a scope that slipped through, a subcontractor who underbid and later walked away. Bid Insights is designed to prevent those scenarios by making your history usable and surfacing anomalies before it’s too late.

Why history matters

Most contractors already have years of estimating history sitting in their systems, but it’s difficult to use. Older bids are locked in outdated formats, based on outdated cost data, or tied to projects that no longer exactly match today’s scope.

Bid Insights changes that. By adjusting historical data for time (bringing old bids forward to current dollars) and location (factoring regional cost differences), it converts that archive into actionable intelligence. Instead of a collection of outdated numbers, your bid history becomes a real guide to what’s realistic on bid day.

Setting the stage for the future

Bid Insights isn’t just a one-off feature; it’s part of a foundation for the future of Sage Estimating. The same project-similarity engine and anomaly detection that power Bid Insights will also fuel upcoming cloud-native features, like real-time analytics and benchmarking across estimates.

By introducing it now within BidMatrix, we’re providing customers with immediate value while also laying the groundwork for what’s next.

Looking ahead

Our history proves that when technology advances, Sage customers move forward with confidence. History, innovation, and trust have always defined Sage Estimating. While competitors may talk about the future, Sage Estimating has delivered it, generation after generation. With Bid Insights, we are once again redefining what’s possible in preconstruction.