Your First Project

This chapter follows the work through Darwin:

request → clarify → estimate → review → approve → track → learn

Work through the estimate and approval with your team. Return to the tracking and learning step when the project has actual costs to record.

Before You Begin

If your company already uses Darwin, confirm which reviewed modules and price list to use, plus who reviews prices and approves the estimate. Your administrator or catalog owner can confirm the reference data is ready.

If you are preparing a new company, complete Initial Setup and Capture Your First Module first. You do not need to move your whole estimating library before starting.

You’ll also want:

A real request or scope package (or a sample one, for practice)
Optional: an IFC model or 2D drawing (PDF, JPG) you want to test
Optional: any supporting documentation (drawings, PDFs, notes)

If you don’t have an IFC model or drawing, that’s fine — Darwin works fully by manual input too.

The Journey, Step by Step

Step 1 — Start From a Request

Every project begins as intent, not a blank form. Create a Request for Work, and clarify it with the requester until it’s ready to become project work.

Next: Start From a Request

Step 2 — Generate Your Project

Darwin generates a project from the accepted request, carrying its context — scope, files, comments, activity — with it.

Next: Generate Your First Project

Step 3 — Import a Model or Drawing (Optional)

If you have a BIM model or 2D drawings, upload them and let Darwin extract quantities and classify elements. Skip this entirely if you’re estimating manually.

Next: Import a Model or Drawing

Step 4 — Map Elements to Modules (Optional)

Where design connects to cost: tell Darwin which module corresponds to which building element or measurement.

Next: Map Elements to Modules

Step 5 — Build the Estimate

Pull the modules your company already has, load the quantities, apply today’s prices. This is the moment the request becomes structured cost logic.

Next: Build the Estimate

Step 6 — Review Prices and Exchange Rates

Check market assumptions, update price lists if needed, and confirm the estimate reflects current conditions before anyone commits to it.

Next: Review Prices and Exchange Rates

Step 7 — Request Approval

The estimate gets reviewed and approved formally. Approval is the moment it becomes the committed baseline.

Next: Request Approval

Step 8 — Record a Cost and Review a Variance

When actual costs are available, record an entry with evidence, explain a difference, and assign the reviewed improvement. Your team decides what should change.

Next: Record a Cost and Review a Variance

Step 9 — Reuse Your Work on a Second Project

See how everything you just built — modules, price lists, mapping patterns — carries forward and makes the next project faster.

Next: Reusability — Your Second Project

What You Will Learn

By finishing this journey, you will understand:

How a request becomes a project, and why that origin stays visible
How modules act as reusable cost logic instead of line items rebuilt from scratch
How IFC models and 2D drawings accelerate quantity takeoff, without replacing estimator judgment
How estimation sections and margins let you price different kinds of work differently within the same estimate
How review and approval turn a draft into a committed, trackable baseline
How actual-cost evidence leads to a recorded variance and a human-owned improvement
How everything stays traceable inside the project container

Ready to Begin?

Start with the first step:

➡️ Start From a Request

Every project teaches the next one. That’s why it’s called Darwin.