Case Study: R.L. Drafting achieves paperless, more accurate quotes—85% less paper and 15% fewer man-hours with Bluebeam Software, Inc.

R.L. Drafting Ditches Paper for PDF and finds a Better Solution for Bids and Quotes

R.L. Drafting, a structural steel detailing firm, struggled with slow, error-prone, paper-based estimating for construction bids. Senior Technology Manager Ian Jonsen needed a way to review large-format drawings, capture takeoffs and product data reliably, and eliminate the risk of manual transcription errors.

They switched to a paperless workflow using Bluebeam Revu to redline PDFs and attach custom markup data, export an XML summary, and feed that into MS InfoPath (with a custom script) to automatically generate detailed quotes. The automated process produces more accurate bids faster, cuts paper use by 85% and reduces man-hours by about 15%, while eliminating much of the manual quoting error.

R.L. Drafting

Ian Jonsen

Senior Technology Manager, R.L. Drafting