About Coffer

What does Coffer do?

Coffer takes the vendor quotes for a bid and turns them into a finished comparison and purchase orders. The work runs in this order:

1. You send the material list and the quotes. The material list, or your HeavyBid resource codes, plus the vendor quotes that came back, in whatever format the suppliers used.
2. Coffer maps every line. Quote mapping is matching every line of a vendor's quote to the contractor's own resource codes so pricing lands on the bid sheet without retyping. Coffer ties every proposed match back to its line on the source quote.
3. Gaps stay visible. Items not quoted, partly quoted, quoted in a different unit, or offered as an alternate are marked, not hidden.
4. Coffer levels the quotes. Every vendor is compared at your quantities and in your units. Coffer recommends a carry for each row and shows why.
5. The comparison sheet comes back in your workbook. Your estimator makes the final carry decision.
6. PO drafts follow award. Coffer drafts purchase orders for the vendors you selected, in your PO format. Your team sends them.

Matches stay with each vendor and inform the next quote from that supplier.

Who is Coffer for?

Self-perform heavy-civil and utility contractors that buy materials through vendor RFQs: sewer, water main, storm drain, water and wastewater treatment, and underground utility work. Many bid in HCSS HeavyBid. The people who choose Coffer are usually the chief estimator, the VP of estimating or the COO. The people who see its work every day are the estimators.

Firms that supply most of their own materials get little from it.

What is Coffer not?

• Not a cofferdam. A cofferdam holds water back so a crew can build in the dry. Coffer takes its name from that structure, and from coffers, where the money is kept. It is a company that works on vendor quotes for estimating.
• Not an estimating system. Coffer does not replace HeavyBid, your bid sheet or your resource codes.
• Not offshore estimating. Coffer does not do takeoff, price labor and equipment, or build the bid. It does one job: vendor quotes to comparison sheet to PO drafts.
• Not a sub-bid platform. It does not run bid invitations or level subcontractor bids on a bid form.
• Not software you have to set up and run. Coffer does the work. Your estimator makes the final carry decision.

How does Coffer work with HeavyBid?

Beside it. HeavyBid stays your system of record. Coffer maps quote lines to your HeavyBid resource codes and returns the comparison in your workbook. Today, moving confirmed prices into HeavyBid follows your current import or entry process.

In its Summer 2026 product release (July 2026), HCSS added AI price extraction to HeavyBid quote folders. See How do you get vendor quotes into HeavyBid in 2026? for how that works. Coffer is a different shape of help: a service that works across every vendor quote on the bid and carries through to the comparison sheet and PO drafts.

What does the customer keep?

Everything that is theirs stays theirs.

• The decisions. The carry, every vendor choice, every override and every send.
• The formats. Your workbook keeps its columns, order and codes. POs follow your form.
• The learnings. The mappings between your codes and each vendor's descriptions, and a plain-English record of the rules behind your choices. Your learnings stay yours and export whenever you need.
• The files. Anything Coffer produces exports to Excel or CSV.

Who is behind Coffer?

Coffer is built by dkBuilds. Declan Kramper is the founder and works directly with each customer's estimating team. Each deployment is set up around the firm's own codes, vendors and formats.

A $300M self-perform civil contractor in Texas is moving into deployment after seeing it on their own bids.

How do you reach Coffer?

Email declan@coffer.build or use the contact form below. Customers sign in at app.coffer.build.

What is the next step?

Send one past bid's material list and the vendor quotes that came back. You get the mapped, leveled comparison back, so you can check it against what your team carried.