We are a Canadian construction estimating firm. Contractors send us drawings; we send back quantities and pricing they can defend in front of an owner. That has been the whole business since 2015, and we have never added a second one.
Company record
Most bids are not lost on price. They are lost because nobody could explain where a number came from. Saeed Ahmed, CET, founder
SMA Estimating started in a Calgary basement in 2015, after sixteen years of field and office work on Alberta projects. The pattern that led to it was ordinary: small and mid-sized contractors were turning down work they could have won, because nobody had the days to measure the drawings and no in-house estimator to hand them to.
The gap was never a shortage of software. It was that a takeoff done badly is worse than no takeoff at all. It is a number with no traceable measurements behind it, and it falls apart the moment an owner asks a question. So the firm was built around the document rather than the sale. Every estimate ships with the drawing set marked up, so any quantity can be checked in about a minute by someone who was not involved in producing it.
We work only on Canadian projects, and that narrowness is deliberate. Provincial labour rates diverge sharply between open shop and union. Winter hoarding and temporary heat belong in an Alberta or Manitoba schedule and not in a Vancouver one. Material taxes differ by province. An estimating firm pricing a Winnipeg warehouse against a national average is guessing, and the guess lands in someone else’s margin.
Growth has been slow on purpose. We add estimators when the review workload requires it, not when the sales pipeline does, because the second-reviewer check is the part of the process that would break first under volume. Eight estimators, one deliverable, no upsell.
Eleven years, most of it spent widening what we can price rather than how fast we can sell it.
One estimator, working residential and light commercial takeoffs for Alberta general contractors.
A retail build priced across all divisions rather than a single trade. Structural and mechanical capability was hired in to support it.
Regional cost data and provincial labour schedules brought in-house so pricing could follow the project rather than the office.
No file leaves without a second estimator verifying quantities against the drawing set. It slowed turnaround by hours and cut revision requests sharply.
Equipment installations, process piping and heavy foundations, supported by estimators with plant construction backgrounds.
Eight estimators, 2,400 estimates issued, and the same single deliverable the firm started with.
Every file is measured by a named person with field experience, and checked by a second one. These are the people whose judgement sits behind your number.
Sixteen years across Alberta civil and structural projects before founding the firm, split between site supervision and the estimating office. Reviews every industrial file personally and signs the scope letters.
Twelve years pricing MEP scopes on commercial and institutional builds. Handles ductwork, process piping and distribution takeoffs, and maintains our FastDUCT and FastPIPE assemblies.
Nine years estimating custom homes, multi-family and renovation work, with a carpentry background before that. Works in both English and French on Quebec projects.
Runs the second-reviewer check. Every quantity is verified against the drawing set, and every assumption made where the documents were silent gets written into the scope letter before release.
Eleven years on cast-in-place, post-tension and structural steel packages. Handles the high-rise tonnage work and the rebar detailing that most takeoffs skip.
Earthwork, utilities and exterior improvements, including cut-and-fill modelling from survey data. Eight years with a civil contractor before moving to the estimating side.
Four commitments that shape how every file is produced. They cost us turnaround time and occasionally revenue, which is rather the point.
No file skips a station. The estimator who measures is never the one who signs off.
The person who measures is never the person who signs off. Quantities are checked against the drawing set by a second estimator before anything is released.
Provincial labour schedules, regional material supply, local taxes and climate costs are applied per location. We do not run a national average and call it a Canadian estimate.
Wherever the drawings were silent, the scope letter records what we assumed and what we excluded. Nothing gets decided quietly and discovered later.
We quote on drawing count and scope complexity. Charging a percentage of construction value prices identical work differently depending on how large the job around it happens to be.
Memberships we hold and the sources our pricing is built from. Anything we cannot substantiate is not on this page.
Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors membership, the national body for construction economics in Canada.
Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering, whose estimate classification system we follow for conceptual through definitive estimates.
Our estimate structure and documentation follow American Society of Professional Estimators standards.
Baseline unit costs, with Canadian city cost indices applied to each project location rather than a national figure.
Our chief estimator holds CET certification, and senior staff carry P.Eng. or equivalent trade credentials.
A Canadian corporation, registered and taxed in Alberta, working exclusively on Canadian projects.
Written and reviewed by Saeed Ahmed, CET, Chief Estimator Last updated Pricing sources in detail
The fastest way to judge an estimating firm is to give it a drawing set and read what comes back. We’ll confirm the fee and the turnaround before you commit to anything.
No contracts · No retainers · Serving every Canadian province and territory