Ask practical NZ residential construction questions: treatment, materials, fixings, sequencing, scope, variations. Built for working builders.
The Foreman is a chat assistant for practical NZ residential building questions: materials, methods, sequencing, scope, and what belongs in an estimate. It gives straight answers, and says plainly what to check before you rely on one.
Scope and inclusions are the strongest use: what goes in a deck estimate, what is commonly missed on a bathroom quote, what a fair exclusion list for a reroof looks like. Those are the questions where a builder's memory competes with a checklist, and a checklist wins.
It is also built for variations: how to word rock found in post holes, whether a mid-job cladding change is a variation, how to describe rot found in framing once the linings are off.
You can point it at a job type to focus the conversation: deck, fence, bathroom, kitchen, windows and joinery, retaining wall, or a general renovation.
It also answers questions about using CostMate itself: where a button is, how to send a quote, what a price badge means. Signed in, it is open from every screen: tap the hard-hat button at the top and it opens over the page you are on.
Ask what size joists a 4m deck span usually takes, whether a small retaining wall is likely to need consent, the H1 insulation figure, or a rough price range, and it gives you a straight answer: then one plain line on what to check before you rely on it: the span tables or your engineer, your council, the current Building Code document, or a proper estimate.
Those check lines are not left to the assistant's memory. A second check runs over every answer before it reaches you and adds the line if it is missing, and it removes any NZ Standard number, which CostMate never cites.
Signed in, you can ask about your own work: how many deck estimates you have, how your last few fences came in against what they actually cost, what variations sit on a job, or how a named job is tracking. What you quoted against what you've spent so far. Those answers are read from your own saved jobs, and every figure in them comes from your data, not a guess. With too few jobs to call a trend, it says so.
The Foreman is guidance, not a determination. Confirm anything structural with your engineer, and anything consent-related with your BCA, before you rely on it.