77% of contractors cannot fill an open estimator position, and the knowledge leaves with the person.

AGC and NCCER surveyed 1,342 member firms for the 2025 Workforce Survey. Of the firms with an open estimator position, 77 percent said they had difficulty filling it. Electrical Contractor magazine's 2026 Profile of the Electrical Contractor, built from 926 subscribers, found the average respondent was 59 years old, with 4 percent between 18 and 34.

Two different reports, one problem.

I am one of the 4 percent. I am 18, I count lighting fixtures by hand in electrical preconstruction, and I learned the job sitting next to people who have been doing it for decades. The thing that makes them fast is not in any manual. It is knowing that this engineer always draws a Type A1 as a circle with a slash, that their exit signs come drawn several different ways across one set, that the fixture schedule on E-001 lists types that never appear on a single sheet. That is a private library, built one job at a time.

None of it is written down. It sits in one person's head, and when that person retires it walks out with them. The firm keeps the drawings and loses the reading of them.

What LumenTakeoff does about it

LumenTakeoff writes every confirmed name to the firm's library, tied to the symbol geometry it was confirmed on and the engineer the set came from. Confirming a name applies it to every member signature in the family and writes it to the library in the same keystroke, so nobody is asked to document anything separately. It happens as a side effect of doing the takeoff.

The next set from that engineer arrives partly pre-named. The header says it plainly: sheets counted, families, named, still need review, and how many the library pre-named from past jobs. Those names arrive as evidence, not as answers. Each card still offers Confirm, a name to type, or Not a fixture, and whoever is at the desk can override any of them.

Names arrive pre-filled only from evidence: the firm's library of previous jobs, or colour and hexagon tags on the drawing. A ranked shape match orders the candidates and never sets a name. Where the drawing does not settle it, the family stays flagged rather than quietly resolved, which is the N4 against N10 case every estimator has argued about at least once.

For the person doing the work, the naming queue shows one unnamed family at a time, most frequent first, with a large ringed crop of a real instance. The set's own fixture schedule and the firm's past names complete as you type, and the schedule description fills in. A newer estimator gets the senior estimator's past decisions on screen while they are still learning the legend, rather than after they have guessed.

Demo phase, tested against real electrical plan sets. The machine counts. You decide.

The machine counts. You decide.