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EARTHVOQ

[ Earthwork takeoff ]

Earthwork takeoff from the plan you were sent

Load the PDF, set the scale off a dimension printed on the sheet, and measure. Cubic yards, square yards and linear feet, each one linked back to the shape it came from.
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14 days. No card.

TakeoffSheet C-3 · 1" = 40'

Area

42,300 SF

Average depth

3.8 ft

Volume

0 CY

Calibrate once, measure everything

The scale is set from something you can read on the drawing — a bar scale, a building dimension, a property line. A takeoff calibrated on a guess is not slightly wrong; it is wrong on every quantity by the same factor.

  • Any PDF plan set

    Multi-page, rotated, scanned or vector. Each page keeps its own calibration.

  • Check it against a second dimension

    Measure something else you know the length of. If it disagrees, the calibration is wrong and you find out now.

  • Layers you named

    Cut, fill, strip, pavement, whatever the sheet has. Quantities total per layer.

Cut, fill and the balance between them

The number that decides whether you are hauling off, hauling in, or neither — and it is the number a spreadsheet gets wrong most often.
Site balanceRiverside Commons

Cut

18,400 CY

Bank

Fill required

11,200 CY

Compacted

Shrink applied

12%

Yours, per material

Export

5,856 CY

Swell and shrink are applied where they belong and stated on the line, because a yard in the ground, a yard in the truck and a yard compacted in place are three different yards.

Excavation takeoff on the same sheet

Trench by section

Length along the run, width and depth by section. Bedding and backfill come out as their own quantities.

Footings and structures

Over-excavation and working room priced as what they are rather than folded into a round number.

Strip and topsoil

Area by depth, kept separate from the mass cut because it stockpiles rather than leaves.

Every quantity keeps its source

Six weeks later somebody asks where 5,952 came from. The line still knows: this sheet, this shape, this depth, this calibration.

That link is what makes a takeoff defensible rather than merely fast. It survives into the estimate, into the job budget, and into the change order argument.

Into the estimate

A quantity is only worth measuring if something prices it.

Measured quantities carry into an estimate line, where they meet a production rate and your own crew and machine costs. Nothing is retyped, so nothing can disagree — see how the estimate is built, or how the same quantities read for an excavation job.

Related EARTHVOQ capabilities

Take off one plan set and see whether the yards land where you expect.

Fourteen days, no card. Bring a job you have already measured by hand — that is the comparison worth making.
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14 days, no card. Plans from $79 a month.