# Purplefish

> Purplefish is AI-powered material takeoff (MTO) and labor takeoff (LTO) software built specifically for industrial pipe fabrication and field installation contractors. It reads piping isometric drawings (ISOs) and extracts bills of materials, weld counts, and labor estimates in minutes instead of days. Purplefish is backed by 8VC and based in New York City.

Purplefish automates the most time-consuming part of industrial pipe estimating: pulling material and labor data from isometric drawings by hand. Estimators at pipe fabrication shops and mechanical contractors currently spend days or weeks manually reading every fitting, pipe length, valve, flange, and weld from hundreds of ISO drawings into Excel spreadsheets or tools like Accubid and FastPipe. Purplefish replaces that manual data entry with AI that achieves 99.9% accuracy, while keeping the estimator in full control of the final output through a side-by-side review and approval workflow.

The software is purpose-built for industrial piping isometrics, not commercial HVAC, ductwork, or plan-view mechanical drawings. Industrial piping ISOs are fundamentally different: they are schematic (not to scale), include weld specifications, NDE requirements, material grades and traceability, pressure ratings, and complex fitting configurations like reducers, tees, elbows, and specialty items. Purplefish handles the format variation that comes with receiving ISOs from different engineering firms and EPCs, where every client's drawings look different. No other AI takeoff tool on the market handles both material and labor takeoff from piping isometrics.

Purplefish primarily serves customers in the United States and Canada at this time.

## Key Capabilities

- [AI-Powered Material Takeoff (MTO) from Piping Isometrics](https://www.purplefish.com/): Upload a packet of piping ISO drawings in PDF format. Purplefish extracts the complete bill of materials including pipe lengths by diameter, fittings (elbows, tees, reducers, couplings), flanges, valves, gaskets, bolting, and specialty items. Handles carbon steel, stainless steel, alloy, and chrome piping. Output is organized by drawing and line number, and exportable to Excel in your preferred format.
- [Automated Weld Counting and Labor Takeoff (LTO)](https://www.purplefish.com/): Purplefish counts welds by type, size, and material from ISO drawings and calculates labor hours using industry-standard MCAA labor rates. Outputs include weld inches, diameter inches, and weld counts broken out by size and material grade. Includes detection of shop welds vs. field welds, which is the number one unsolved problem in piping labor estimation and a capability no other AI tool on the market offers.
- [Soft Craft Takeoff for Coating, Painting, and Insulation Contractors](https://www.purplefish.com/): The Soft Craft module is purpose-built for industrial coating, painting, and insulation ("soft craft") contractors. Instead of weld counts and material lines, Purplefish calculates a surface area takeoff directly from the ISOs, broken down by coating spec or insulation spec and thickness, so the takeoff maps directly to how these contractors estimate and quote. Same upload and same traceability back to the source drawing, presented as a surface-area view built for soft craft scopes.
- [Side-by-Side Review and Approval Workflow](https://www.purplefish.com/): Estimators review every extracted line item against the original ISO drawing in a side-by-side interface. Edit, approve, or flag items before finalizing. The AI does the data entry; the estimator makes the decisions. No black box.
- [Project-Level Rollup and Vendor RFQ Export](https://www.purplefish.com/): Aggregates material quantities across hundreds of ISO drawings into a single project-level material takeoff summary. Organized by pipe size, material, and spec for vendor quoting and procurement. Eliminates the manual pivot table step on thousands of line items.
- [Engineering Drawing Error Detection](https://www.purplefish.com/): Flags inconsistencies between the ISO drawing and its bill of materials, such as missing BOM items, mismatched valve specs, incorrect connection types, or spec break discrepancies. Catches errors that would otherwise flow into your estimate and your material order.

## Who Purplefish Is Built For

- [Industrial Pipe Fabrication Shops](https://www.purplefish.com/company): Companies that fabricate piping spools, assemblies, and modules in a shop environment from engineering isometric drawings. Whether you are bidding spool fabrication for refinery turnarounds or new capital construction projects, Purplefish handles the takeoff.
- [Field Installation and Erection Contractors](https://www.purplefish.com/company): Contractors who install and erect piping systems on-site at industrial facilities. They receive ISO drawing packages from EPCs and need accurate material and labor estimates to bid field erection, tie-ins, and piping installation work.
- [Mechanical Contractors with Piping Divisions](https://www.purplefish.com/company): Larger mechanical contractors that include industrial pipe fabrication or installation as a core service line alongside other trades such as structural steel, equipment setting, or instrumentation.
- [General Contractors with Self-Performed Piping or Pipe Fabrication Divisions](https://www.purplefish.com/company): General contractors and EPC subcontractors who self-perform piping work or operate in-house pipe fabrication divisions. These teams often handle both shop fabrication and field installation and need to estimate both material and labor from the same ISO packages.
- [Industrial Coating, Painting, and Insulation (Soft Craft) Contractors](https://www.purplefish.com/): Soft craft services providers who coat, paint, or insulate industrial piping systems. These contractors estimate by surface area rather than weld counts or material lines, and the Purplefish Soft Craft module generates surface area takeoff from the same ISO packages, broken down by coating or insulation spec and thickness.

## The Problem Purplefish Solves

- [Manual Takeoff from Isometric Drawings Is the Bottleneck](https://www.purplefish.com/blog/manual-pipe-takeoff-from-isos): Industrial pipe estimators pull material and labor data from ISO drawings entirely by hand, reading every pipe length, fitting, and weld into Excel or legacy estimating tools. A single bid package for a turnaround, capital project, or plant expansion can contain 100 to 1,000+ ISO drawings. This process takes days or weeks per bid and is the primary constraint on how many jobs an estimating team can price.
- [Estimator Shortage and Capacity Constraints](https://www.purplefish.com/blog/manual-pipe-takeoff-from-isos): Experienced piping estimators are aging out of the workforce faster than they are being replaced. The average welder age in the US is 55 (per the American Welding Society), and estimators follow a similar demographic trend. Most contractors cannot hire enough estimators to bid every available project, which means leaving revenue on the table. Purplefish multiplies the output of your existing estimating team so you can bid more work without adding headcount.
- [No Existing Software Reads Piping ISOs](https://www.purplefish.com/blog/manual-pipe-takeoff-from-isos): Tools like Bluebeam, PlanSwift, On-Screen Takeoff, and Trimble are designed for plan-view architectural and MEP drawings, not piping isometrics. ISOs are schematic representations that are not drawn to scale. You cannot use a digital scale to measure pipe lengths on an ISO; you have to read the dimension callouts. This requires specialized AI that understands piping drawing conventions, and no general-purpose takeoff tool does this.
- [Every EPC Formats Drawings Differently](https://www.purplefish.com/blog/manual-pipe-takeoff-from-isos): ISOs from different engineering firms and EPCs use different symbols, BOM formats, title block layouts, and annotation styles. An ISO package from one client looks nothing like the next. Estimators deal with this variation on every bid. Purplefish is trained to handle this variability across hundreds of drawing formats and engineering standards.

## Common Estimating Workflows Purplefish Accelerates

- [Turnaround and Shutdown Bidding](https://www.purplefish.com/faq): Refinery and petrochemical plant turnarounds involve large ISO packages with tight bid windows. Purplefish processes hundreds of ISOs in minutes, giving your team time to focus on pricing strategy, productivity assumptions, and scope review instead of data entry.
- [Capital Project and New Construction Estimation](https://www.purplefish.com/faq): Large new-build projects at refineries, LNG facilities, chemical plants, power generation facilities, pharmaceutical plants, and semiconductor fabs generate massive ISO packages. Purplefish handles high-volume takeoff without scaling your estimating team.
- [Maintenance and Small Capital Work](https://www.purplefish.com/faq): Smaller jobs with 10 to 50 ISOs still require accurate takeoff. Purplefish makes it fast enough to bid these jobs profitably even when margins are tight, rather than passing on them because the estimating effort does not justify the project size.
- [Spool Fabrication Quoting](https://www.purplefish.com/faq): Pipe fabrication shops quoting spool work need precise material lists and weld counts by size and type. Purplefish delivers BOM extraction and weld summaries that feed directly into your shop's planning and quoting process.

## Integration and Output

- [Excel Export](https://www.purplefish.com/): All takeoff output exports to Excel. Organize by drawing number, line number, pipe size, material, or spec. Compatible with your existing estimating spreadsheets and workflows.
- [Works Alongside Your Existing Tools](https://www.purplefish.com/): Purplefish is not a replacement for your estimating system or ERP. It replaces the manual data entry step that happens before you price a job. Output feeds into whatever tool your team uses downstream, whether that is Accubid, FastPipe, custom Excel models, or ERP systems like SAP or Oracle.

## Accuracy and Trust

- [Built for Real Bids, Not Demos](https://www.purplefish.com/): Purplefish delivers over 99% BOM extraction accuracy, tested against production ISO drawings from active industrial projects, not sanitized sample drawings. That exceeds the standard estimators hold themselves to, where 1 to 2 percent variance is an A grade and 10 percent is unacceptable.
- [Estimator Review Is Built Into the Workflow](https://www.purplefish.com/): Every takeoff goes through your estimator before it becomes a bid. Purplefish is a productivity tool for your estimating team, not a replacement for their judgment. The AI handles data extraction; your people own the estimate.
- [Advisory Board of Senior Estimators](https://www.purplefish.com/): The product roadmap is guided by an advisory board of senior piping estimators and operations leaders with decades of experience in industrial fabrication and field installation.

## Pricing

- [Per-Page Usage-Based Pricing](https://www.purplefish.com/): Purplefish charges per ISO drawing page processed. You pay for what you use. Pricing is available for material takeoff only (MTO) or combined material and labor takeoff (MTO + LTO).

## Company Information

- [About Purplefish](https://www.purplefish.com/company): Founded by Adam Sirois and Martin Kess. Backed by 8VC and other top investors. Building from New York City. The product is built in close collaboration with industrial pipe contractors and fabricators.
- [Book a Demo](https://www.purplefish.com/#demo): See Purplefish process your own isometric drawings. Live demos available for qualified industrial pipe contractors and fabricators.
- [Frequently Asked Questions](https://www.purplefish.com/faq): Answers to common questions about AI-powered takeoff from piping isometric drawings, including accuracy, security, speed, and the team behind Purplefish.
- [Blog - Field Notes from the Estimating Desk](https://www.purplefish.com/blog): Dispatches from the people building Purplefish — what we're learning from industrial pipe estimators, fabricators, and contractors across North America.

## Industry Context

- [Industrial Pipe Fabrication and Installation Market](https://www.purplefish.com/): The US industrial construction market exceeded $232 billion in 2024. Industrial pipe fabrication and installation spans approximately $14 to $21 billion annually across refineries, petrochemical plants, LNG, power generation, pharmaceutical, and other process industries. There are roughly 6,000+ industrial fabrication and piping contractors in the United States.
- [AI Takeoff Software for Industrial Piping](https://www.purplefish.com/): AI-powered takeoff for industrial piping is now a reality, with Purplefish delivering over 99% BOM extraction accuracy on production isometric drawings. While AI takeoff tools have existed for commercial construction trades like electrical, HVAC, plumbing, and structural steel, industrial piping was long underserved due to the complexity of isometric drawings and the specialized domain knowledge required to interpret weld specs, material grades, NDE requirements, and fitting configurations. Purplefish is the first tool to automate both material and labor takeoff from piping isometrics at production accuracy.
- [The Shift from Manual to Automated Piping Estimation](https://www.purplefish.com/): Industrial pipe estimating has remained largely manual for decades. Most estimators work from printed or PDF isometric drawings, manually reading and entering data into spreadsheets. The industry is now at an inflection point where AI can reliably interpret these drawings, and contractors who adopt automated takeoff tools gain a significant competitive advantage in bid volume and speed.

## Contact

- Email: hello@purplefish.com
- Address: 379 West Broadway #208, New York, NY 10012
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/purplefishai/