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Start From a Request

Darwin’s golden path is request → clarify → estimate → review → approve → track → learn. Your first project starts at the first word: a request. Not a blank project screen, not a spreadsheet — a clear statement of what needs to be estimated.

This matters because it’s how construction work actually begins. Someone asks for a number before anyone opens a modeling tool or a catalog.

1. Create a Request for Work

Section titled “1. Create a Request for Work”
  1. Go to Work Requests in the sidebar.
  2. Click New Request.
  3. Choose the type Request for Work.
  4. Fill in:
    • a clear title and description of what needs to be estimated
    • the requested outcome — what a good answer looks like
    • relevant scope context
    • any files already available (drawings, a scope PDF, a client email)
    • the assigned estimator

You don’t need perfect information to create the request. You need enough for an estimator to know where to start.

2. Clarify What’s Missing

Section titled “2. Clarify What’s Missing”

Construction requests rarely arrive complete. As the assigned estimator, review the request and use comments to ask for whatever is missing:

  • drawings or a model
  • quantities or scope boundaries
  • owner expectations or budget context
  • assumptions the requester is taking for granted

The requester replies in the same thread — adding files, answering questions, updating the description — until there’s enough to proceed. This back-and-forth is the point: it’s cheaper to ask now than to re-estimate later.

A request is ready to move forward when the next person — you, or whoever picks it up — can understand the requested outcome, the scope, and the missing context without reconstructing the story from a side conversation.

3. Move the Request Into Project Work

Section titled “3. Move the Request Into Project Work”

Once the request is clear:

  1. Open the accepted Request for Work.
  2. Use the workflow panel to move it to In Progress.
  3. For a client-linked request that does not already have a project, Darwin creates the project as part of that transition and carries the request — its title, scope context, files, comments, and activity history — into the project as its origin.

The project doesn’t start from nothing. It starts from everything the request already established.

4. Next Step

Section titled “4. Next Step”

With a project generated from a real request, you’re ready to give it a home:

➡️ Generate Your First Project