Restoration & construction takeoff glossary

The vocabulary of turning a scope into a priced material order — defined plainly. Each term links to its own page.

Material takeoff: A material takeoff is the itemized list of every material a construction or repair job requires — each item with its quantity, specification, and waste allowance — derived from a scope of work, estimate, or drawing set. It is the bridge between an approved scope and the purchase order that buys the materials.
Construction buyout: A buyout is the step between winning work and building it: converting an approved scope into actual purchase orders at real supplier prices. The gap between what the estimate allowed for materials and what the buyout actually costs is where a job's margin is won or lost.
Xactimate material allowance: An Xactimate material allowance is the material portion of an Xactimate unit price — what the estimate budgets for goods, separate from labor and equipment. Comparing real supplier pricing against this allowance, by trade, shows a contractor the variance before ordering rather than after the invoice arrives.
Waste factor: A waste factor is a percentage added to a net material quantity to cover cuts, breakage, and overage, so enough is ordered to finish the job. It varies by trade — drywall and flooring run around 10 percent, roofing shingles higher on cut-up roofs — and is applied before rounding to package sizes.
Scope normalization: Scope normalization is the process of parsing estimates, drawings, specs, and photos — in any format — into one consistent, structured scope of work. It lets a claim delivered as a PDF and the same claim delivered as an ESX export produce an identical takeoff, because both resolve to the same canonical line items.
ESX file: An ESX file is Xactimate's native estimate export format — a compressed package holding the full claim: line items, quantities, unit prices, and sketch data. It is the richest way to move an Xactimate scope into another tool, which reads the structured line items directly instead of re-keying them from a PDF.
Selective demolition: Selective demolition is the removal of only the damaged or affected portions of a structure, leaving the rest intact — partial drywall, a section of flooring, specific assemblies. It is the norm in restoration, where a takeoff must cover irregular quantities and match existing materials rather than rebuild a whole room.
Overhead and profit (O&P): Overhead and profit, often called 'ten and ten', is a markup added to a restoration estimate: overhead covers a contractor's cost of doing business, profit is the margin. It is typically warranted on claims complex enough to require general-contractor coordination across three or more trades.
Specification matching: Specification matching resolves a scope line item to a supplier product by its attributes — thickness, fire rating, coverage rate, R-value — rather than by product name. It ensures a '5/8 Type X' drywall line matches an actual 5/8 Type X board, not a similarly named product with the wrong specification.
Material variance: Material variance is the difference between the material allowance an estimate budgets and what the materials actually cost at a supplier. A positive variance erodes job margin; catching it during buyout — while specification and supplier are still negotiable — is the difference between absorbing an overrun and supplementing it.