Constructio is a planning and cost tool for people building a villa or a detached house, and for the architects and contractors who build it with them. It puts every phase from the building permit to the occupancy certificate in the right order, tells you what to buy and when, and keeps track of every purchase and every payment until the keys are handed over. Planning is free. You pay only when the build actually starts.

Why I Wanted This

I build houses. On every job I keep the same list: the phases in order, the items under each phase, what has been ordered, what has been paid and what is still to come. For years that list lived in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet only worked because I already knew the order of the work by heart. The people who pay for the house usually don't. They find out that the rebar should have been ordered last week when the foundation crew is standing on site, and they find out what the house really cost only after the last invoice.

Constructio is that list turned into software, so that someone building their first house can follow the same order an experienced builder follows, and see the money as it moves rather than at the end.

The Work in the Right Order

When you create a project you enter your floors, their areas and your structure system. Constructio builds a work plan of 22 phases with around 100 cost items, adjusted to the structure: reinforced concrete, steel, light steel, timber frame, CLT, masonry, hybrid or prefabricated. A basement adds its own phases; a lighter system gets a lighter foundation.

  • Every phase has a duration and an overlap with the next one, so the plan becomes a calendar. When a phase really starts, you enter the date and everything after it moves.
  • Every item knows how long its material takes to arrive, so the plan tells you the latest day to order it.
  • From your floor areas Constructio estimates quantities: concrete, rebar, blocks, plaster, tiles. These are marked as rough estimates, because that is what they are. When your engineer's take-off arrives, you overwrite them, and your numbers are never recalculated over.

From the Model to the Cost

Most houses today are drawn in SketchUp, Revit or ArchiCAD. Export the model as IFC, drop it into Constructio, and it measures it: walls by material and thickness, in square metres and in number of blocks; concrete by slab; windows and doors by size; plaster, tiles and skirting room by room. Click any quantity and you see exactly which faces it came from. Anything it cannot classify is listed and shown in red rather than silently guessed.

The file is read in your browser and is never uploaded. Only the measured totals are saved. A building model is someone's design, and it should stay on their computer.

For SketchUp we also made a free extension. It gives every part an IFC type, a material and a name the site understands, finds parts that cannot be measured yet, shows a quick take-off with block counts while you model, and exports the IFC file with one button. Extensions for Archicad, Revit, Rhino and Blender are planned. They are not ready, and we will say so when they are.

Prices: Yours, or Averages With Sources

Constructio does not invent unit prices. Every price comes from one of two places. Either it is your own: you bring your price list as a PDF, Excel, CSV or pasted table, and the prices you enter become your library for the next project. Or it is an average material price that lists its sources and the month it was checked, kept up to date with the official construction cost index. An item without a source stays empty. You see a forecast in the cost table and the real cost in the work plan, which is the sum of what you actually bought, side by side.

Purchases, Payments and the Team

Once the build starts, the part that matters is the money. You can record each delivery under its item, so the item shows what has been bought and what is left. Payments get their receipts. Suppliers and craftsmen, documents and site photos all stay with the project.

A house is never built by one person. You can invite your architect, structural, electrical and mechanical engineers, site manager, contractor, building inspector or accountant, and decide what each of them sees: which trades they can edit, whether they see costs, whether they handle payments, whether they can change the 3D model. Someone who should not see prices does not see them anywhere, including in the assistant's answers.

The House on Its Real Plot

Constructio draws a 3D model of the house from your floors, your plan or your IFC file and places it on your real plot. You can see how much sun each façade gets in winter, look at the local climate, separate the floors and walk through the rooms. It is not a rendering studio; it is there so that you and your family can understand the house before it exists.

An Assistant That Knows the Project

The assistant has read the whole project: the plan, the items, the purchases and the dates. You can ask it what to order this week, what a phase involves, or ask it to suggest a floor plan, which it checks against your outer dimensions before proposing it. With a paid plan, every morning it can leave a short note about what is coming up, and once a week a summary. It obeys the same permissions as everyone else on the project.

What It Is Not

Constructio is not an engineer and not a lawyer. It does not replace your structural design, your official quantity take-off or your permit documents. Its estimates are there so that you can plan and ask the right questions early. The real figures come from your project team and replace them.

Pricing

  • Free: one project with the work plan and calendar, estimates and cost table, quantities from an IFC model, the 3D model with plot and climate, the SketchUp extension and a monthly assistant allowance.
  • Build Pass, €99 once: covers one house for 24 months and opens purchases, payments, suppliers, documents, site photos, the team and the daily assistant notes. It does not renew by itself.
  • Pro, €19.90 a month or €179 a year: for architects and contractors, up to 10 projects. Clients in a Pro member's projects get the Build Pass features without paying.
  • Team, €49 a month or €468 a year: for firms, unlimited projects.

Prices are in euro with VAT included. The first 500 founding members get 40% off for 12 months with the code KURUCU40. The site is available in English, Turkish and Estonian.

Try It

Open constructio.talivio.com, sign in with your Talivio account and create a project for the house you are planning. The work plan and the first cost estimate are ready within a few minutes. If you are an architect or a contractor, try it on a house you have already built and tell me where the order or the quantities differ from what really happened. That is exactly the kind of correction that makes it better.