Construction Estimator

The Role

As an Estimator, you'll take a project from a plan set to a real, defensible budget — one our sales team can present with confidence, and our project managers can actually build to. This means full takeoffs, not approximations. It means reading a set of historic renovation drawings and knowing, from experience, what's likely underneath the plaster or behind the existing framing that the architect couldn't fully document. It means asking the right questions before pricing goes out, not after.

You'll work closely with the Director of Operations and ownership to build out and refine our estimating process, and with our architect partners on scope and specs before a project reaches the client.

We need an estimator who's done enough takeoffs to know where those gaps usually hide, and who builds a budget that accounts for them before we're on site finding out the hard way.

Compensation:

$25 - $35 hourly

Responsibilities:

What You'll Do

• Perform complete quantity takeoffs from architectural, structural, and MEP drawings — materials, labor, and trade scope, not a page-and-plan-line summary.
• Identify what the prints don't show. Historic homes in particular carry conditions no drawing set fully captures — you'll flag likely unknowns (structural, mechanical, envelope) based on the age and construction type of the home, and build contingency and scope notes around them.
• Build clear, organized budgets in JobTread that a subcontractor, a project manager, and a homeowner could each open and understand without a phone call to explain it.
• Solicit and vet subcontractor and vendor pricing, with specific scope requests — not open-ended asks that come back as guesses.
• Collaborate with architects and our sales team early, so cost realities are part of the conversation in pre-design and schematic phases, not a surprise after permit.
• Own the estimate through the sales process, revising as scope and specs evolve, so what gets signed matches what gets built.

Qualifications:

Who We're Looking For

• Real, hands-on takeoff experience — you've built estimates from plan sets, not just plugged numbers into someone else's template.
• Print literacy earned through field or estimating experience. You can look at a drawing of a 1910 foursquare and know what questions to ask before pricing it — because you've been surprised by a wall before and don't want to be again.
• Comfort with both historic and high-performance construction. Landmark renovation and PHIUS-standard new builds carry different risks and different specs. You don't need deep expertise in both on day one, but you need the instinct to research what you don't yet know.
• Organized, disciplined documentation habits. A budget is only useful if the next person can follow it. Yours will need to hold up under a subcontractor's questions and a homeowner's scrutiny.
• Directness. If a scope gap or a missing detail is going to cause a problem, we need to hear about it from you before it becomes one on site.

About Company

Bosi Construction builds historic renovations and high-performance new homes across Oak Park and River Forest — projects where a 100-year-old wall assembly or an undocumented structural condition can turn a clean set of drawings into a very different job once we're inside.