Estimating Capacity
100%
increase in estimating capacity
Turnaround Time
50%
faster turnarounds on estimates
Overnight Advantage
12 HRS
head start on most quotes
From Bid Board to Proposal
How Valley Custom Woodworking doubled its estimating capacity without the overhead.
Valley Custom Woodworking builds architectural millwork out of Belvidere, Ill. Corporate break rooms, multifamily kitchens, high-end residential casework. The work is varied and the tolerances are tight.
Eventually, the shop had more opportunity flowing in than it could quote. Every bid that sat in the queue was a job someone else was already pricing. The obvious fix was hiring another local estimator, and the obvious fix carried a salary, a recruiting cycle, and an overhead line that would outlast any single busy season.
The Ceiling Valley Kept Hitting
Three limits, all pointing at the same bottleneck.
Quotes Queued Up
Estimating throughput was fixed. When volume spiked, turnaround slipped in exactly the weeks it mattered.
Estimators Are Scarce
Millwork estimators take months to find and longer to train. An empty seat is a season of bids nobody submitted.
Payroll Doesn’t Flex
Bid volume swings by season. Salary, benefits, and management load do not.
One Estimator. Assigned to Valley and Nobody Else.
TSARSI started Valley with a single full-time estimator. Not a queue, not a bench, one person. He spent his first months learning Valley’s quoting workflows, drafting standards, and customer requirements, working inside Innergy and Cabinet Vision rather than asking Valley to change anything.
He also works about twelve hours ahead of Belvidere. Work handed off when the shop closes is finished before it opens.
A year in, Valley added a second: a full-time drafter for the engineering department. Today the shop has two.
“We spent time in the beginning months getting him engrained in our workflow. Just as if he was our own employee.”
Al Wolny, President, Valley Custom Woodworking
Most Shops Hand Off the Estimate. Valley Hands Off the Search.
-
1
Valley starts here
Inbound Project Request
Bid boards combed for projects that fit Valley’s niche.
-
2
Information Gathering
Scope, drawings, specs, deadline.
-
3
Most shops start here
Estimate Handoff
Takeoffs, bills of materials, and drawings built in Innergy.
-
4
Estimate Delivery
Complete proposals back, often by morning.
-
5
Follow-Up and Tracking
Nothing sits in the pipeline unattended.
TSARSI runs a five-step estimating workflow. Most clients come in at step three, once the project is already on the desk. Valley took it a step further and enlisted TSARSI's help at the project request stage, which means TSARSI isn’t just responding to quotes. Our estimators are helping Valley find new business.
“He’ll pull work from bid boards without us telling him that he has to. He understands what type of work we are looking for, what our niche and our specialties are.”
Al Wolny, President, Valley Custom Woodworking
Quoting twice as fast only matters if there’s twice as much to quote. At Valley, the same estimator does both.
What Changed at Valley
The gains showed up in the first year and kept building.
More Estimating Capacity
Valley processes more quotes and absorbs higher project volume without overloading internal staff or turning work away.
Faster Turnarounds
Estimating and drafting move faster with fewer delays at the front of the job. Work handed off at the end of the day comes back completed by morning.
Leadership Is Back to Business
With takeoffs and drawings handled, Valley’s internal team spends its time on customer relationships, project management, and growth instead of production estimating.
Consistency, Not a Rotating Bench
Unlike traditional third-party services, Valley works with the same dedicated people every day. Standards, expectations, and workflow familiarity carry from job to job instead of resetting.
“Our initial objection to this idea was the time zone difference. To be honest, we have done a complete 180 on that. The time zone difference has worked in our benefit as TSARSI helps us achieve a 24-hour operation.”
Al Wolny, President, Valley Custom Woodworking
No New Software. No New Processes.
Valley didn’t have to switch a thing.
A partner who can’t work in your software isn’t much of a partner. Most estimating help shows up with its own tools, its own file formats, and a request that you meet it halfway.
TSARSI works the other direction. Valley’s team operates directly in the systems Valley already ran, Innergy alongside Cabinet Vision, using Valley’s templates, naming conventions, and standards.
The partnership started by building out Valley’s product library inside Innergy. That meant the integration ran deep from the beginning, and Valley added estimating and drafting capacity without a single day of operational disruption.
Whatever you run, the work happens in your environment.
Start With One Estimator. Build from There.
That’s how Valley began. One estimator, trained in their software, working ahead of their clock, quoting their kind of work. When it proved out, they added a drafter.
That’s the part that’s hard to get from a hire. Capacity you can add when the bids stack up, without a recruiting cycle, an onboarding runway, or a payroll line that outlasts the season.
“Based on the value TSARSI has brought to our estimating department, we recently made the decision to have TSARSI add a drafter for our engineering department as well.”
Al Wolny, President, Valley Custom Woodworking
If your bids are queuing up and hiring locally isn’t the answer, we'd love to talk about how TSARSI can help increase your estimating capacity and win more jobs.