Per-point estimates across the whole delivery
Controls work is engineering-heavy up front and commissioning-heavy at the end. DarkBird models both instead of burying them in a point count.
Where building automation / controls estimates go wrong
Engineering and submittals are front-loaded and unpriced
Sequence of operations, submittals and panel drawings consume senior engineering time long before field labor starts.
Point-to-point checkout always runs long
Checkout and commissioning depend on other trades being finished. The dependency is real and rarely reflected in the hours.
Point counts flatten real difficulty
A point on a new panel and a point on a legacy integration are not the same work, and a blended per-point rate cannot tell them apart.
Your workspace starts configured
Pick Building Automation / Controls at signup and DarkBird seeds the setup below — categories, a delivery phase set, resources with rates, and units of measure. All of it editable. Install Card hours are bracketed by quantity, so a card prices per point, per panel, per AHU.
Controls Delivery
- Engineering & Submittals
- Panel Fabrication
- Field Installation
- Point-to-Point Checkout
- Commissioning & Turnover
Resources
- Controls Engineer
- Controls Technician
- Project Manager
Categories & units
- Building Automation & Controls
- Network Infrastructure
- Structured Cabling
- Units: Each, Hour, Foot, Point
How this work gets estimated
Per-unit labor patterns and field gotchas for the systems this trade installs.
Compliance, Standards & Certifications
NIST, CMMC, SOC 2, HIPAA, UL listings, low-voltage licensing by state, NSCA/AVIXA/BICSI standards, AHJ requirements, and how compliance scope affects labor.
Network Infrastructure
Switching and routing deployment, firewall sizing, VLAN design, SD-WAN, LTE failover, and wired network infrastructure labor patterns.
Structured Cabling
Cat6/6A per-drop hours, fiber pulls, patch panel termination, cable certification, conduit work, and ceiling/wall type effort multipliers.
Questions building automation / controls teams ask
Can hours vary by point count?
Yes. Quantity brackets on each task are the core model, so the per-point cost can fall as the count rises without you maintaining separate cards.
Does it separate engineering from field labor?
Yes. Controls Engineer and Controls Technician are separate resources with separate rates, and tasks assign to one or the other.
Can we push the plan into our project system?
If you run ConnectWise or HaloPSA, DarkBird pushes a phase-based work breakdown with task checklists and pulls time entries back for calibration.
Estimate from your numbers, not averages
45-day free trial with full Pro access — no credit card. Your workspace arrives set up for building automation / controls.