How to Automate Conest IntelliBid

IntelliBid turns a drawing full of symbols into a number

A structured cabling bid begins as a counting problem. Somebody opens the drawing set, finds every workstation outlet on the floor plan, works out which telecom room each one homes back to, and turns that into cable, jacks, patch panels, racks, tray, firestop and the hours to install all of it.

IntelliBid, from ConEst Software Systems, is where that arithmetic lives. It is estimating software for electrical, low voltage, datacom and solar contractors, sold in Standard, Plus and Pro editions, and ConEst is part of the JDM Technology Group. The material database carries NEC-friendly items and pre-built assemblies, so a device with its box, ring, plate and connectors is one pick rather than five.

An estimator's day is the takeoff, the extension and the bid summary. What the company earns for the next eight months is settled in the two afternoons before a bid is due.

The bid calendar is built out of other people's emails

Nothing about a bid arrives on your schedule. An invitation lands in a shared inbox from a general contractor you have worked with twice, with a project name, a date and a link to a plan room you now need an account on. Four more like it turn up that week, and two are the same job posted by two different contractors.

Then the set changes. An addendum moves a wall, adds eleven drops on level two and reissues the riser diagram, and it appears as a notice in the plan room on a Thursday afternoon. Nobody emails it to you. Somebody has to go and look.

Meanwhile the bid you sent in March is a live job. Drops are being pulled, fiber and copper certified, and test reports are piling up in a folder on somebody's drive. The manufacturer wants those results and the installer certificates before it will register the long-term warranty the specification insisted on.

Conest IntelliBid

Addenda found the day they post Every plan room you hold an account on checked each morning, so a reissued riser diagram reaches the estimator with days left rather than hours.

Invitations that never go unanswered Bid invitations pulled out of the shared inbox and matched against what is already open, so the same project posted by two contractors is estimated once.

Closeout evidence gathered as it lands Certification reports collected from the field folder and set against the runs the estimate priced, so the missing test is found long before the package is due.

Conest Connect reports on what IntelliBid already holds

IntelliBid does more of the estimating work than most contractors switch on, and it is worth being exact about where its reach stops.

SureCount, the ConEst takeoff side, counts symbol types off an electronic drawing instead of one click at a time, and its Overlay lays a revised sheet over the original so new items appear in green and deleted ones in red. That is the addendum problem solved, once the addendum is in front of you, and the takeoff passes into IntelliBid. Auto Labor Factoring varies the hours for the conditions a job is actually installed under. Smart Substitution swaps a specified part for the one you can get. Pricing services including NetPricer, EPIC and TRA-SER keep material costs current, and Conest Connect adds custom dashboards, with a Bids due tile listing what is coming.

Every one of those reasons from what is already inside IntelliBid. Conest Connect reads the estimating database, not the week around it. The contractor's plan room, the inbox where invitations land, the distributor's quote page, the warranty portal and the folder of certification reports each sit behind their own login, and no estimating package opens those.

Every open bid can keep watching the plan room

A bid that keeps reading after it is priced changes what an estimator has to hold in their head.

Each plan room you have an account on checked every morning, so an addendum posted on Thursday reaches the estimator on Thursday and not on the morning of the bid. Due dates read back off those same sites, so a project that slipped two weeks moves in your calendar too. Invitations lifted out of the shared inbox and set against the jobs already open, so one project posted by two contractors is priced once and the ones nobody opened are raised as a choice to make rather than a deadline already missed.

Then the part that starts after a win. Distributor quote pages read against the unit costs the job was priced at, so a reel of cable that moved since March surfaces while the buyout is still open. Certification reports gathered from the field folder and ticked off against the runs the estimate priced, so a missing test is found in week three rather than at closeout. Warranty registrations assembled per manufacturer, test results and installer certificates attached, left ready for a person to send.

Counting devices is estimating. Reloading a GC portal is not.

An estimating department is judged on how many bids it gets out, not on how many browser tabs it kept open.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens the plan room, the bid inbox, the distributor account or the manufacturer portal, reads each the way a junior estimator would, and hands back one list: addenda posted, dates that moved, prices that changed, invitations unanswered.

Nothing has to be integrated first, which is the point when half the sites belong to contractors you will bid twice and never see again. It runs on your schedule, restricted to the sites you allow, and anything sent to a contractor or a manufacturer is drafted and waits.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.