How Do You Do a Quantity Takeoff?

The price of most trade work is quantity times a unit cost. The takeoff is the quantity half, and it is where many bad bids start: a missed wall type, a floor counted twice, a door schedule nobody read. The Defense Department's cost estimating criteria, UFC 3-740-05, put it plainly: the takeoff "must be as accurate as possible, and be based on available engineering and design data", and "equal emphasis is placed on both accurate quantity calculation and accurate pricing" (§3-3).

Before you measure, read the set the way reading drawings before you bid describes, so you know which sheets carry your work. The takeoff then feeds the price in your subcontractor proposal, and on a GC's job it is what a bid is compared on.

1. List the scope. Your specification sections, the invitation's scope of work and any alternates. Each becomes a heading in the takeoff.
2. Pick a unit for each item and keep it: linear feet of wall or pipe, square feet of board or flooring, cubic yards of concrete, each for doors, fixtures and devices. UFC 3-740-05 asks for "standard units of measure and consistent with design units".
3. Work sheet by sheet and area by area: one floor or zone at a time, the same order every time, marking each item on the drawing as you count it.
4. Measure from the written dimensions, never by scaling a print. Where a dimension is missing, note an assumption and send a question.
5. Subtract openings, but only those over the size your estimate's rule sets, and say what the rule is.
6. Write the source on every line: sheet, detail and room. UFC 3-740-05 asks for takeoff computations kept as backup, each referencing the drawing and explaining the computation (§4-4).
7. Add waste as a separate line. UFC 3-740-05 accepts either pricing waste into the unit cost or "increasing the measured quantity by waste and loss quantity" (if the excess quantity will not be used for any other purpose), and either way asks for a note saying which (§8-3).
8. Convert to purchase units (boards, sticks, rolls, bags) and round up.
9. Check it. A second count on the big items, or a ratio check (board per square foot of floor) against your past jobs.

A fictional tenant fit-out, with drywall partition type P1 on sheet A-101: 3-5/8 inch metal studs at 16 inches on center, one layer of 5/8 inch gypsum board each side, 10 feet high. The takeoff below is simplified (no corners, headers or blocking) to show the method. It takes the 120-foot wall from what a takeoff is further: there the wall is one straight run with 91 studs; here it is four runs, each counted on its own and rounded up, so it needs 95 before the door jambs are added.

Read the trail. Every number points to a sheet: the runs to A-101, the wall build to detail 1 on A-501, the doors to A-601. Waste is a visible 10%, not buried in a rounded-up length. Anyone checking the bid can follow it, and if an addendum moves the conference room wall, you change one line.

• Taking off from the plans alone. Wall types, heights and fire ratings sit in the details, schedules and specs; the federal clause FAR 52.236-21 treats anything in either the drawings or the specifications "as if shown or mentioned in both".
• Mixing net and gross. Decide whether a line is installed quantity or purchased quantity, and label it.
• Counting a typical floor once. Multiply typical floors explicitly, and check the plans really are typical.
• No sheet references. A takeoff without them can't be checked, updated for an addendum or defended after award.
• Hiding assumptions. Write them down and send the questions; an assumption the GC never saw is not an exclusion.

On changed work later in the job, the same method prices the change: UFC 3-740-05 asks for "a separate quantity takeoff for each item directly affected" both before and after the change (§17-4.2), which is the backbone of pricing a change order. More for subs: the subcontractor's guide and the project lifecycle.

A takeoff is measured quantities in fixed units, by area and by item, each with its sheet reference, net first and waste added in the open.

Done that way, it can be checked, updated for an addendum in minutes and defended after award.

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1. UFC 3-740-05, Construction Cost Estimating (9 December 2022), §3-3 Quantities, §4-4, §8-3 Waste Allowance and §17-4.2 Changed Work — Department of Defense, Unified Facilities Criteria (Whole Building Design Guide). Read October 22, 2026.
2. FAR 52.236-21, Specifications and Drawings for Construction, paragraph (a) — Acquisition.gov (General Services Administration). Read October 22, 2026.