Drift Earthworks runs concrete and earthwork bids out of one tool

A 6-person sitework contractor in Austin moved off a patchwork of legacy tools and now bids dirt-to-slab in a single workflow.

Drift Earthworks is a 6-person earthwork and site concrete contractor in Austin, Texas. Sarah Pierce, the founder, runs estimating herself with one part-time assistant.

A legacy takeoff tool. A spreadsheet for cut/fill (their own grid-method workbook). A separate spreadsheet for site concrete pricing. A word processor for proposals. A kanban board for the pipeline.

Bid days were 6 AM starts. "I'd be in the office by 5:30 making sure the cost database was right," Sarah said. "By 9 AM I'd already switched between four tools 40 times."

A bid mistake. A site concrete scope on a Whole Foods job had the wrong rebar tonnage because the assembly in their spreadsheet had been edited for the previous job and never restored. Drift was awarded the job and ate $34,000 on the rebar miss.

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