Estimators don't get fired for being slow. They get fired for missing scope.

Synthspec reads your drawing set, parses the fixture schedule, and counts every fixture across every sheet. Built for lighting distributors, contractors, and reps — so the EM variant the GC tagged three different ways doesn't cost you margin on Monday morning.

  • Lighting only

    Built for lighting, not "construction tech."

  • Risk first

    A wrong count costs more than a slow count ever will.

  • 25 years

    Built by people who've spent 25 years on the estimating desk.

Request early access
Synthspec count review screen — fixtures counted across an RCP with bounding boxes and a hierarchical type breakdown
The Problem

Distributors measure success not just in speed, but in margin.

Manual takeoffs miss things. Tired estimators miss things. Drawings get revised mid-bid and the second pass misses what the first pass caught. Generalist AI tools — built for earthworks, drywall, everything — miss things in lighting specifically.

Lighting requires reading fixture schedules, distinguishing variants, and tracking emergency egress. Speed at the cost of accuracy isn't a value proposition. It's a liability.

$480*
margin lost per missed fixture at 22% GM on a typical project
3.7×
average schedule-vs-plan discrepancies per project that manual takeoffs miss
6–10×
faster than manual — because catching everything once eliminates rework
* Based on a $480k project at 22% GM [update stats and put in real citations].

Built so lighting estimators
stay in control of every step.

Same workflow you'd run by hand, condensed by automation, audited by you.

  1. 01

    Upload the drawing set

    Architectural PDF, any sheet count, any revision.

    Including messy sets — rotated sheets, scanned addenda, fixture schedules on page 47.
  2. 02

    Reads fixture schedules like an estimator

    Every base type, length, voltage, EM tag, and finish — pulled into a structured table from the LFS.

    When the schedule is hand-marked, revised, or messy, Synthspec handles it cautiously, with the schedule open next to the plan.
  3. 03

    Count fixtures across every sheet, distinguishing details that matter

    Each instance gets a bounding box, a base-type assignment, and a sheet/floor/room segmentation. Emergency fixtures separated from standard. Exit signs counted independently. The kind of distinctions that cost real money when missed — and cost careers when missed twice.

    Variants the schedule didn't anticipate — EM, EMB, EM-GEN — surface as flagged rows for you to merge or split.
  4. 04

    Review in a hierarchical view

    By type, by sheet, by floor — whatever organizes the audit fastest. Bbox overlays land you on the exact instance.

    Manual corrections persist across revisions. Wednesday's set update doesn't wipe out Tuesday's work.
  5. 05

    Built for the BOM, not just the count

    Clean CSV for your estimating system. Marked-up PDF for the customer. Or both.

    The number you ship is the number you reviewed. Synthspec counts; you sign off.

Three deliberate choices. Each one is the reason the tool actually works.

We could ship a faster, broader, more autonomous version of this. We won't, on purpose.

01 / Trade

Built for lighting, not for "construction tech."

Trained on lighting drawings, lighting fixture schedules, and lighting workflows specifically. It knows a 2x4 troffer isn't a downlight even when the schedule is light on detail. It knows EM, EMB, and EM-GEN are all emergency variants. It knows your firm's letter codes aren't the next firm's.

02 / Risk

A wrong count costs more than a slow count ever will.

On a dense set, the bites come from what you missed — a variant the GC tagged inconsistently, a fixture buried in a corridor on a sheet you skimmed at 11pm. That's where margin walks out the door, and that's what Synthspec was built to catch. It's faster than counting by hand too. We don't lead with that.

03 / Control

Human-in-the-loop is the design, not a workaround.

Synthspec produces the count. The estimator verifies, corrects, and signs off. This is the only honest way to ship an automated takeoff tool in 2026 — and it's why the output is something you can actually send to a customer.

vs. the alternatives
Manual takeoffGeneric AI takeoffPhotometric toolsSynthspec
Counts fixtures from RCPs
Reads variant letter codes per firm
Preserves corrections across revisions
Outputs estimator-ready BOM
Time to first reviewable count6–8 hoursUnverified instantlyN/A~30 minutes, audited
Trade-specific judgmentYes — yoursNo — generalistLighting design, not takeoffLighting takeoff, specifically

The questions an estimator actually asks.

How is this different from a generic AI takeoff tool or a Bluebeam plugin?
Generic AI tools treat lighting as a footnote inside a broader construction-tech platform. They're trained on everything and tuned for nothing. Synthspec was built for lighting takeoff and only lighting takeoff — by people who've done the work. Bluebeam plugins automate the keystrokes; they don't read the schedule.
How accurate is it?
On our largest beta project to date — 964 fixtures across a revised commercial set — Synthspec produced a count that was 98% accurate before manual review. The remaining 2% is exactly the kind of thing the estimator should be the one to catch.
What file formats does it accept?
Architectural PDF, vector or scanned. We handle revised sets, addenda, sheet rotations, and fixture schedules that span multiple pages. CAD and Revit ingestion is on the roadmap; today, PDF is the workflow.
What happens with revised drawing sets?
You upload the revision; Synthspec diffs it against the prior set and surfaces what changed and where. Manual count corrections you made on the prior version are preserved — you don't redo Tuesday's work because Wednesday's drafter rotated three sheets.
Does it replace my estimators?
No. The tool counts; the estimator verifies, corrects, and signs off. This is a deliberate design choice, not a stopgap. If we shipped a tool that asked your estimators to trust an unverified count on a real bid, none of them would use it twice.
How is my project data protected?
Drawing sets and project data are stored encrypted at rest and in transit, isolated per customer, and never used to train models on other customers' work. We can walk your IT team through the full security posture on a call.
How does pricing work?
Pricing is in development. Get in touch and we'll talk through what fits your shop.
Request early access

If you've made it this far, you're the kind of estimator we built this for.

We onboard a handful of firms per month, hands-on. Tell us what your shop looks like and we'll be in touch.

Who we're talking toLighting distributors, electrical contractors with in-house lighting takeoff, and lighting reps doing budgetary takeoffs.
What we'll talk aboutYour current workflow, drawing-set complexity, where Synthspec fits — or doesn't. Honest call.

Tell us about your shop

5 fields, ~30 seconds. We read every submission.

No marketing automation. No drip sequences.