Coming to Kestrel™ from Bluebeam?
Published on 5 June 2026
Bluebeam is a brilliant, deep PDF tool, and a lot of estimators know it well. Kestrel is narrower on purpose. It is built around one job: turning UK construction drawings into a priced-ready NRM2 Bill of Quantities, on Windows, without a per-seat cloud subscription. If that is the part you spend your day on, here is how Kestrel handles it. Still weighing it up? See how Kestrel compares to Bluebeam first.
What Kestrel focuses on
- Measuring lengths, areas and counts straight on the PDF, organised by finish and zone.
- An NRM2 Bill of Quantities out the other end, in Excel, with live formulas so your rates drive the totals.
- Annotated PDF exports with a Take Off Legend and Quantity Key per sheet, plus a drawing register for the audit trail.
- Optional bring-your-own-key AI to read the finishes on a drawing and the scale from the title block, so they are not keyed by hand.
- Single-file projects on your machine, with drawings embedded. No cloud lock-in, and no login needed to take off.
An honest view of the fit
Bluebeam is a broad platform: markup, collaboration, document management and measurement, built for whole project teams. If you need all of that, it is worth it, and you pay for all of it. Kestrel is built the other way round. It does one job and does it exceptionally well: turn your drawings into a priced-ready NRM2 Bill of Quantities, with less to learn and less to pay for, and the bill comes out finished instead of being rebuilt in Excel by hand. If takeoff to bill is your day, that focus is the whole point.
Kestrel is priced for smaller practices: £25 per month plus VAT (or £250 a year), with a 14-day free trial you can cancel anytime.
Moving over
There is nothing to migrate: you work from the same PDF drawings you already have. Open a set in Kestrel, set the scale, and measure. Your takeoff exports to Excel as an NRM2 bill you can price straight away. The step-by-step takeoff guide walks through the whole process.