Rudolf Fritz GmbH: quantity takeoff in hours, not weeks

The starting point

The first contact with Monco came through Stephan Jung, Head of Estimating and Sales at Rudolf Fritz GmbH. Looking for ways to reduce the effort in the bidding phase, he came across the solution and assessed its potential for calculating electrical projects.

After the first conversations, Stephan Jung presented the platform to Marius Nihorencu, Regional Director South and Head of the Rastatt branch. Together they decided to test the solution on real tenders under everyday conditions.

Before every calculation, Rudolf Fritz faced the same bottleneck: manual quantity takeoff. Outlets, luminaires and detectors had to be counted one by one; cables and trays measured meter by meter. The quantities were then matched to the positions in the bill of quantities.

On larger projects, this single step tied up an estimator for several days — sometimes even weeks. The number of bids the company could submit was set not by the order pipeline, but by the capacity available in estimating.

A project in point: Kuppenheim substation

One example of the scale of these projects is the Kuppenheim substation. A total of 25 execution and installation plans were processed for it, at an order value of over €600,000.

The scope of work included:

• the complete TGA electrical installation
• the measurement, control and regulation technology (MCR) in three parts of the building
• the full outdoor lighting system, including all installation and connection work

Getting started: a pilot month with real projects

In March 2026, Rudolf Fritz began with a pilot month. The trigger was the initiative of Stephan Jung, Head of Estimating and Sales, who had made the first contact with Monco and recognized the potential of AI-assisted quantity takeoff early on.

After the solution was presented to Marius Nihorencu, Regional Director South and Head of the Rastatt branch, the team decided to test the platform under real conditions. Instead of test data, they worked directly with four current in-house projects.

The AI analyzed floor plans and schematics, recognized the relevant elements and determined the required quantities. The team then compared the results against their previous manual workflow.

After just four weeks, the decision was made to move to regular operation. Since then the team has worked through the web platform on an annual license. Thanks to the team license, staff from estimating, site management and other areas can access the solution without a user limit.

The workflow is simple:

1. Upload plans
2. Review quantities
3. Transfer the results into the calculation

No local installation or elaborate IT integration was required.

The results: more bids with the same team

Five months after rollout, Smart Surveyor is a fixed part of the estimating process. In total, 18 projects with 364 plans were evaluated through the platform. Per project, that works out on average to:

• around 20 plans
• almost 4,000 detected elements
• nearly 5 kilometers of cable trays

Altogether, 71,073 elements and 85 kilometers of trays were evaluated that would previously have had to be recorded by hand.

The biggest gain, though, is not the time saved alone but the estimating capacity unlocked. Where quantity takeoff used to be the bottleneck, a reliable basis for the bid is now ready within a few hours.

One further figure is especially telling: after just five months, around 90 percent of the booked annual quota had been used — roughly twice as much as originally planned.

Outlook

For Rudolf Fritz, automated quantity takeoff is long past being a pilot; it is now a fixed component of estimating.

The next step is to extend it to lump-sum projects at further locations. Beyond that, the team has identified an additional use case: supporting on-site measurements during the execution phase.

What was originally introduced to speed up bid calculation now also supports the billing of ongoing projects. Given the high usage, a move to a larger package is already planned.