Pacific Construction Group is a $120M annual revenue general contractor headquartered in Portland, Oregon, specializing in commercial office, healthcare, and higher education projects. Their preconstruction team of six estimators handles 40 to 50 estimates per year across the Pacific Northwest. In early 2025, they adopted ElkConstruct to address growing pressure on their estimating capacity.
"We were turning down bid invitations because we didn't have enough bandwidth," says Marcus Rivera, VP of Preconstruction at Pacific Construction Group. "Our competitors were bidding 60 to 70 projects a year with similar-sized teams. We needed to find a way to produce more estimates without sacrificing quality or hiring more people."
Before ElkConstruct, Pacific's estimating workflow was typical for a mid-size GC. Plans were reviewed in Bluebeam, quantities were taken off manually or with on-screen takeoff tools, and estimates were built in Excel workbooks with custom templates. Subcontractor bids were managed through email with comparison spreadsheets built from scratch for each project.
The implementation began with a pilot project: a $15M medical office building. Pacific's senior estimator built the estimate using both their traditional process and ElkConstruct simultaneously. The traditional estimate took 72 hours of estimator time over three weeks. The ElkConstruct estimate, including learning time, took 38 hours. More importantly, the two estimates were within 2.1% of each other at the total project level.
"The AI-generated takeoffs were surprisingly accurate on the architectural scope," Rivera notes. "Door and window counts matched exactly. The drywall quantities were within 3% of our manual measurements. We spent our review time on the areas where judgment matters most, like productivity assumptions and site-specific conditions."
Over the next four months, Pacific rolled out ElkConstruct across their entire preconstruction team. They loaded historical data from 35 completed projects to calibrate the AI models for their market and project types. By the third month, their average estimating time had dropped from 68 hours per project to 27 hours, a 60% reduction.
The subcontractor bid management module delivered additional gains. Pacific's bid coordinator, who previously spent 60% of her time managing email threads and building comparison spreadsheets, now spends that time on subcontractor outreach and relationship building. Subcontractor response rates improved by 22% after the switch, which the team attributes to the cleaner, more professional bid invitation experience.
The financial impact has been significant. In the six months since full adoption, Pacific has increased their bidding volume from 22 projects to 34 projects, a 55% increase, with the same six-person team. Their win rate has held steady at 28%, meaning they're winning more work without adding headcount.
"The ROI was clear within the first quarter," says Rivera. "The platform pays for itself many times over when you factor in the additional projects we can now pursue. But beyond the numbers, our estimators are happier. They're spending more time on analysis and strategy and less time on data entry."