For trail builders and contractors

Walk it, price it, win it, build it

You walk the line once. TrailsIQ does the rest. By the time you're back at the truck, your paperwork is done — the route, the takeoffs, the price, the proposal, and the contract, all from that single walk. The trail's the fun part. Win the work faster, and get back to building.

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The field app showing a trail on the map with a task open
Filing a task in the field app

The problem

The quote is the risky part, and it is done from memory

Somebody walks the ground, forms a view, and turns it into a number back at the office — often from a photo, a rough distance and an instinct about the side slope. Win it and you find out whether the instinct was right. That is the loop TrailsIQ shortens.

Length is easy to estimate and it is not what costs money. What costs money is the two hundred feet across a 60% side slope that turns into structural work, the stretch running the fall line that will need armoring, and the drainage the grade profile demands. None of that is visible in a distance, and all of it is measurable from the line you actually walked.

Read from one walked line

413 ft running the fall line, needs armoring
60% unsustainable against the half rule
$133,178 build estimate, 13 line items, 15% contingency
Build estimate, unsustainable percentage, fall-line risk, drainage and side slope cards from the planner

What the planner does

A line that arrives already measured

Record the alignment on foot and TrailsIQ reads the ground under it — every claim below comes from samples along your line, not from a rule of thumb applied to its endpoints.

  1. Three ways to start a line

    Walk it with the phone, draw it on the map, or let the route finder propose one between two points and take the terrain into account while it looks.

  2. Grade, side slope and fall line

    Sampled along the alignment and judged against sustainable-trail rules — including the half rule, so a stretch that will not hold up is named rather than averaged away.

  3. Activity profiles

    A hiking bench, a flow line and a groomed nordic corridor are held to different turn radii and different widths — and the width feeds the price, because a ten-foot corridor is not singletrack with a wider number on it.

  4. Drainage worked out from the profile

    Grade reversals and dips counted from the line's own shape rather than guessed per mile, and priced accordingly.

  5. A build estimate against your rates

    Tread split three ways by side slope, rock armoring, culverts, bridges, crew hours by difficulty, machine mobilization and a contingency — every rate yours to set.

  6. Two options, side by side

    Compare alignments on length, climb, grade distribution, sustainability and cost. The real conversation is never "is this good" — it is "is this better, and by how much".

Working on somebody else's ground

When the client already runs TrailsIQ

Increasingly they do — and then the job gets easier rather than more complicated, because they can lend you exactly the trails you were hired for.

A client shares the trails you are working. They arrive in your own workspace, read-only — and, when the client allows it, with their maintenance items workable, so your crew files against the real record instead of emailing photographs to somebody who then re-types them.

  • A loan, and they can take it backThe trail stays theirs. Withdrawing ends your access on your next click, and on a phone that has been out of signal within fourteen days.
  • It comes offline with youDownload their trail before you leave the road and work it all day in a valley with no bars.
  • Your name on your workEverything your crew files carries your company on the client's side.
A maintenance item on the lent trail, filed from the field
A trail a client has lent, open in a builder's workspace: read-only, owned by the client, on the map

The job, end to end

Six stages, and the product knows all of them

A builder workspace turns on the half of TrailsIQ an operator never sees — the planner, your clients, the pipeline, job costing and handover — and leaves out the half you would never use. It is built around a job that ends.

01The site visit

Everything you need is on the phone

Walk the corridor and record it, dropping typed notes where a structure will go, where the rock is, where the water crosses. No signal is not a problem: download the area first and the map, the terrain and the work list all stay readable, with everything you file uploading itself when you come back into range.

  • Works with no barsGPS is a satellite fix. The recording never needed the network, and neither do your notes.
  • Notes stay on the alignmentAttached to the point on the line, not to a photo roll you have to re-interpret later.
  • Photographed at the spotWhich is the only time a photo of ground means anything.
The trail planner open in the field app on a site visit

02The quote

A proposal the client can open, not a PDF they lose

Send a page, not an attachment: the map, the elevation profile, the notes you dropped on the ground, and the price. A season of lines groups into one project and prices as one job — machine mobilization charged once, not once per trail, which is often the whole distance between your bid and the one that wins.

  • One link, no account for themThey open it on a phone, on site, in front of whoever else needs to see it. And you can kill the link the day the job is decided.
  • Costs hidden when it is a tenderHide the estimate per trail or per project when you want bidders pricing the work rather than anchoring on yours.
  • Every job against a clientOpen a client and see everything you have ever done for them.
A project proposal open on a phone: the map of both planned trails, total length, climb and grade, and what the job is

03The pipeline

Including the bids you did not win

Every job sits at a stage — lead, quoted, won, building, complete, handed over, and lost. Keeping the losses is what turns a list of jobs into an answer: how much of what you quote do you actually win, and what kind of work you win it on.

  • Finished is not paidA job can be built and still open while you chase the invoice.
  • Your hit rate has something to countBecause the losses are still there, not deleted to tidy the list.
  • Three seasons back, still thereWhat the job was worth and how it ended, long after you would have found the email.
Jobs filtered by stage — quoted, building, handed over and lost — each with its client

04The contract

Won is not signed

The gap between won and signed is where jobs slip. The contract builds itself out of the job you already have — the parties, the trails, the price, the payment schedule — with your own terms underneath. Minutes instead of an evening of retyping.

  • Signed before you drive awayShow the QR on site and the client signs on their own phone — no account, no app, no week of waiting on an email.
  • Frozen at signatureRe-price the job next month and the signed agreement does not move.
  • It states what the price assumedThe measured quantities go on the contract — tread by side slope, crossings, drainage, rock. When the ground is not what the line said, a change order has something to be measured against.
A contract already signed by the builder, with the client signing it on their phone

05The build

Did this job cost what you said it would?

An estimate nobody checks against reality is a guess that never improves. Hours and expenses logged against the project as the work happens sit next to what you quoted: the percentage used, hours worked against hours estimated, and what is left — or by how much you are over, in red. A job at 130% says 130%.

  • Hours as they are workedBy category and against the job, from the phone, not reconstructed on a Sunday.
  • Expenses and materials tooIncluding stock drawn from inventory, which counts as material rather than as money twice.
  • A punch list that is just workMaintenance stays switched on for builders, for the things that need putting right before handover.
Estimated against actual on a job: spend against the estimate, crew hours, and the entries still waiting on approval

06Handover

The job ends when the client holds the records

Not when the machine leaves. Hand over and the client gets their own copy in their own TrailsIQ — the as-built lines, the notes, the photographs from the build. Most builders finish with a folder of files and a handshake. This is the part a client remembers, and the reason they call you first next season.

  • A copy, not a loanTheirs to keep and to build a maintenance program on. Nothing you do afterwards changes it.
  • Your costs do not travelWhat they receive is the trail and its records — not your rates, your margin or your hours.
  • Even a client who has never heard of usOne code hands it all over. They make a free account to accept it, and the code waits thirty days while they do.
A handover code for the client, under the job's photos and linked maintenance

Quote from the ground, not from memory

Start free — 3 planner lines and a real build estimate against your own rates, no card. Your next site visit is the one to walk with it.

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