Price by system.
Commit by approval.
Containment, power, HVAC, controls — M&E jobs are systems, and that's how Vyntworks prices them. Estimate each system from your own rates, tender the packages to specialist subs, and keep committed cost answering to the budget from first fix to final account.
Set up by our team. We load your products, rates and assemblies at setup, before you price anything live.
Systems, not spreadsheet tabs.
Build the estimate the way the job is engineered — mechanical and electrical systems as sections, each carrying its own material, plant and labour build-up from reusable products and rate tables. Fitting counts and containment runs come off the drawings, not off a scale rule and a notepad.
- Price by system with reusable products & rates
- Labour and material split on every line
- Count-based takeoff for fittings, points and terminations
- Revisions tracked — a re-issued drawing never silently moves your price
Long-lead kit and specialist subs, committed with eyes open.
Switchgear, AHUs and specialist packages bind you the moment the order is raised — not when the invoice lands. Vyntworks puts value-band authorisation on every purchase and subcontract order: the £40 box of glands flows straight through, the £40,000 panel order gets the eyes it deserves.
- Competitive tendering of every sub-package
- PO sign-off matched to the size of the commitment
- Committed-vs-estimated tracking per line
- Full order document pack emailed to the sub automatically
Read: PO sign-off that protects margin without the bottleneck →
Overspend flagged before it becomes a post-mortem.
Labour-heavy jobs drift quietly. Live CVR holds budget, committed, actual and valued side by side per system and per job, and scheduled automations watch GP movement and line overspend for you — delivered to email, Slack or Teams before month-end, not after it.
- Live CVR per job and across the company
- Overspend alerts on a schedule you set
- Applications for payment with retention
- Governed AI answering questions across quotes, POs and WIP — read-only by default
From the services drawings to commissioning and handover.
Mechanical and electrical work carries more line items, more sub-packages and more long-lead plant than almost any other trade. Here is how a typical M&E package moves through Vyntworks.
Points and fittings by count
Count luminaires, sockets, data outlets, diffusers and sprinkler heads on the layouts, grouped by type. Each count drives the quantity on its line, with the fitting, fixings and labour built up underneath.
Containment and pipework by length
Trace tray, trunking, conduit and pipe runs as linear measurements, snapped to the drawing’s own linework. Runs land on lines with their own rates per size, so a 300 mm tray is never priced like a 100 mm one.
Price by system, not by tab
Structure the estimate as systems — LV distribution, small power, lighting, HVAC, controls, fire alarm — each a section with its own build-up. Prelims, testing and commissioning, and builders’ work are priced as visible lines, not percentages lost at the bottom.
Tender the sub-packages
BMS and controls, sprinklers, insulation and specialist commissioning go out as tender packages. Subs price online against your lines, missing scope is levelled at your estimate, and the award carries onto a subcontract order as tendered.
Commit long-lead plant early, with sign-off
Switchgear, AHUs and chillers are ordered weeks ahead. Raise the purchase order against the estimated line so the commitment is visible on day one, routed to the right approver by value, with the site address and contact on every order and delivery note.
Snag to a signed-off handover
Log defects against the job with photos or video, assign them to the sub responsible, and close each one through subcontractor, internal and client sign-off before practical completion.
Prelims, attendance and commissioning: the lines that get forgotten
M&E margins rarely go on the cable; they go on the things around it — supervision, access, temporary services, test certificates, witnessing and the commissioning engineer who needs one more day. Default Quote Items let every new estimate start with your standard prelims and T&C lines already there, and Fast Quotes can calculate transport, attendance and programme time from your own template. See prelims in construction, explained for what belongs in them.
Once the job is live, every purchase and subcontract order adds to the committed figure for its system, so a long-lead order that came in over budget is visible weeks before its invoice. That is the point of committed cost, and it is why company-wide WIP and live CVR matter on labour-heavy jobs. Many M&E firms work as specialist subcontractors to a main contractor — applications for payment and retention run on the same job.
M&E teams usually ask
Our estimates are built from thousands of catalogue items — can Vyntworks cope?
Yes. Products and price tables are built for exactly this: your catalogue items, supplier rates and assemblies live once in the library, get reused on every estimate, and are updated in one place when a supplier reprices. A supplier spreadsheet can be turned into a priced quote without re-keying.
We tender the same packages to the same subs on every job — does that get faster?
Considerably. Packages go out through the tender portal to your usual subs, returns come back structured against your lines rather than as PDFs, and comparison is line by line — so awarding takes minutes and the awarded price flows straight into a subcontract order.
Directors are on site half the week — does approval become a bottleneck?
No, because sign-off is value-banded, not all-or-nothing. Small orders flow immediately; only commitments above the thresholds you set wait for a director — who can approve from anywhere, with the full context attached.
How should testing and commissioning be priced?
As its own section or lines with labour, specialist attendance and certification shown separately, not as a percentage on the total. Put them in your Default Quote Items so no estimate starts without them.
Can the drawings be measured for containment and fittings?
Yes. Basic takeoff on every plan measures lengths, areas and counts from the PDF. With the Takeoff & Drawings add-on, the AI estimator can draft counts and runs from the drawing’s vector geometry, with evidence for each figure, for you to approve.
Can we see which long-lead orders are over budget before the invoices arrive?
Yes. Every purchase order is raised against its estimated line, so committed-vs-estimated shows per line as soon as the order exists, and the overspend report lists every line where order spend has passed budget. With Vyntworks Intelligence, scheduled automations can send that list to email, Slack or Teams.
See it on one of your systems.
Book a walkthrough and bring a recent M&E tender — we'll price a system from your own rates so you can judge it properly.