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Question about that AI that writes roof estimates: I swore it was a gimmick until last Tuesday
About a year ago a guy I know in the roofing supply game kept pushing me to try one of those AI tools that drafts estimates from job photos, and I thought it was a joke. I've been writing bids by hand for 14 years, so the idea of some software doing it for me felt like a slap in the face. Then last Tuesday I had a storm damage job out in Parma with a steep pitch and three layers of old shingles, and I was already running behind. I snapped about 20 pictures on my phone, fed them in, and in under two minutes it spit out a full writeup with squares, ridge cap, drip edge, and even a line for permits I would have forgotten. The numbers lined up within about 4 percent of what I would have charged anyway. I still tweaked the wording and double checked every line before sending it, because no way am I trusting a machine blind on someone's $18,000 roof. But I've used it on four jobs since then and it has saved me maybe an hour per estimate. Has anyone else tried these photo to estimate tools, and did they hold up once the actual work started?
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luna_kim403d ago
Tried one last spring on a tear-off with two chimneys and some rotten decking. It nailed the decking allowance but lowballed the flashing by like 15 percent, so I caught it on review. Four percent is about my cutoff too, anything past that and you're losing money. The hour saved matters more than the number match honestly, at least for me. Just watch the steep pitch jobs, the tool can't feel how bad your legs are gonna hurt up there.
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