63% of construction firm respondents had an owner postpone or cancel a project in the past six months.

AGC of America and Sage surveyed 951 people at construction firms across 49 states and DC for the 2026 Construction Hiring and Business Outlook. Over three-fifths of them, 63 percent, reported that an owner had postponed or canceled a project in the previous six months.

From an estimating desk, postponed and canceled are not the same thing. A canceled job is gone. A postponed job comes back months later with a new revision block and a new bid date, and somebody counts the lighting again.

I'm 18 and I count lighting fixtures by hand at a preconstruction desk. The last set I did like that, I had already named every type once. Type A, A1, F, FA. Same engineer, same schedule on E-001. When it came back, I still typed every name from scratch, because those names lived in my old spreadsheet and in my head, not anywhere the next takeoff could use them.

The count has to be redone, because the drawings changed. The naming mostly does not, because the engineer did not.

What LumenTakeoff does about it

In LumenTakeoff, confirming a name on the Review by fixture screen applies it to every member signature in that family and writes it to the firm's library, on the estimator's own machine.

When the next set from that engineer is dropped in, the header shows sheets counted, symbol families, named, still need review, and how many the library pre-named from past jobs. A shelved job that comes back to bid starts with the names you already decided, shown as evidence for you to accept or override.

A name only arrives pre-filled from evidence like that: the firm's library from previous jobs, or colour and hexagon tags on the sheet. A ranked shape match can order candidates, but it never sets a name. If the drawing does not settle a type, it stays unresolved and waits for you.

Everything not pre-named goes to the naming queue, one family at a time, most frequent first, with a large ringed crop. Type the code and the set's own fixture schedule and the firm's past names complete as you type. Enter confirms, Esc marks not a fixture, and a counter shows how many are left.

The count itself is done again from the new drawings, deterministic on supported vector sheets. Scanned pages are reported as unsupported, never guessed. What carries over from the first round is your judgment, not the old number.

The machine counts. You decide.

The machine counts. You decide.