Glodon QuantifAI Turns Malaysian Takeoff Into Cost Data

Glodon launched QuantifAI in Kuala Lumpur on 14 August 2026 as an AI quantity takeoff tool for Malaysian surveyors. The debut sat inside Glodon AEC Connect Day 2026 at the KLGCC Convention Centre, under the banner Double Intelligence with AI × 5D BIM, and Glodon put attendance at nearly 1,000 people from government, contractors, consultants and campuses.

QuantifAI is a 2-in-1 structural and architectural takeoff product, and it is the AI successor to Cubicost TAS. The useful context is the rule that already forces BIM onto most serious jobs, and the Cubicost desks Glodon has been filling in Malaysia since 2015.

The RM10 Million BIM Floor

Treasury circular PK 1.15, in force from 1 July 2025, requires BIM on government and private development jobs valued at RM10 million and above. That floor pulls cost teams into model-based measurement whether their old workflow was paper, PDF, or a mix of both.

JKR had already put BIM into 455 construction jobs from 2021 through August 2024. Works Minister Datuk Seri Alexander Nanta Linggi said on 24 February 2026 that 9,375 people had finished BIM training through CIDB and the myBIM network, as the 13th Malaysia Plan pushes industrialised building and digital delivery.

CIDB is building public rails at the same time vendors sell private ones. On 9 March 2026 it relaunched CIDB E-Construct as CIDB Digital and switched on a Digital Construction Management platform already live on more than 60 large jobs across five countries, with a combined project value above USD8 billion. The same statement put RM19 million into the myBIM Centre in Kuala Lumpur and 12 satellite labs, with a target of 2,000 people a year.

MALAYSIA’S DIGITAL CONSTRUCTION RULES

CIDB chief executive Ahmad Farhan said on 2 September 2026 that construction still relies on about 600,000 foreign site workers, and that the industry needs technology to replace about 60,000 of them each year, a 10 percent cut, because local workers will not take those jobs. He also said a painting robot that cannot read a model still needs a person at the controls. Quantity files are not site robots, but they are part of the model data that policy is trying to make standard.

QuantifAI Reads Drawings Into a Quantity Pipe

Glodon pitched QuantifAI around three words, Simpler, Speedier and Sharper, and as a 2-in-1 takeoff tool that folds structural and architectural work into one product. The mechanic that matters is the one Glodon calls Smart Table: the software pulls key facts from 2D drawings, ties them to a 3D model, and turns that link into quantities.

That is the specimen. A drawing stops being a picture to measure by hand and becomes a table that is supposed to stay in step with the model when someone changes a slab, a wall, or a rebar mark. Cubicost already sold that idea in slower form through the TAS, TRB, TME and TBQ tools, covering architecture and structure, rebar, MEP, and the bill of quantities. QuantifAI is the AI front end on the measuring side of that stack.

Malaysian bills of quantities still have to follow the Standard Method of Measurement of Building Works, Second Edition, known as SMM2. Cubicost has long advertised built-in local rules, including SMM2, plus HKSMM4, SMM7, NRM2, CP97, British Standards and Eurocodes. Academic comparisons of BIM takeoff in Malaysia keep finding the same snag: model quantities often fail the descriptive rules in SMM2, so a surveyor still has to check, recode, and defend the bill. Faster extraction does not retire that check. It moves the scarce time onto it.

The English BIM 2.0 paper released at the Kuala Lumpur event, Evolving into BIM 2.0: A New Stage for BIM Application and Development, is blunt about why a takeoff file is the hinge.

Many BIM tools are still centered on model representation, with limited integration into design, cost, construction and operations workflows, reducing BIM to a drawing tool rather than a foundation for decisions.

Glodon, Evolving into BIM 2.0 white paper

The same paper lists three barriers holding BIM at modeling: tools that stop at pictures, data stuck in separate models, and management habits that treat BIM as extra work. QuantifAI is Glodon’s answer on the cost side of that list. If the quantities are trusted, the model can feed a bill, a tender, and later a progress claim without being rebuilt in a spreadsheet.

An Indonesian Price Tag and a Long Trial

Malaysia is not the first market to get this product. Glodon launched QuantifAI in Indonesia in May 2026 at an AEC Connect Day there, and Country Director Florentina Edrea said other countries were still on TAS and TRB. She told the room the AI reads AutoCAD drawings, picks up rebar detail, and can produce a bar bending schedule without the old manual input path.

Edrea said users who had tried the tool since the year before were seeing work run 5 to 7 times faster than TAS and TRB. Glodon also told that launch it had validated the product with more than 280 users at more than 50 companies, after close to three years of work with those desks. The Indonesia list price announced on stage was Rp 38 million, with a 40 percent cut for that launch day. The Indonesian family included architecture and structure plus a separate MEP product, a wider set than the 2-in-1 Malaysia launch described.

Those speed figures are vendor testimony from a launch, not an independent time study on Malaysian SMM2 bills, and they should be read that way. They still show what Glodon is selling: not a new viewer, a replacement for the measuring products its own customers already run.

QUANTIFAI ACROSS SOUTHEAST ASIA

1. May 2026: Glodon launches QuantifAI in Indonesia as the AI replacement for TAS and TRB in that market.
2. 5-6 August 2026: Politeknik Pekerjaan Umum runs basic 5D BIM QuantifAI training for lecturers with Glodon Indonesia.
3. 14 August 2026: Glodon launches QuantifAI in Kuala Lumpur at AEC Connect Day 2026.
4. 10 September 2026: Glodon Singapore holds a full-day Zoom workshop on QuantifAI before an official Singapore launch.

The classroom step came before the Malaysia night. Indonesia’s public works polytechnic trained teaching staff on AI takeoff and cost management, which is how a vendor turns a product into a habit for the next cohort of surveyors.

Politeknik Pekerjaan Umum melalui Unit BIM bekerja sama dengan Glodon Indonesia menyelenggarakan Basic Training 5D BIM QuantifAI bagi dosen dan tenaga kependidikan pada 5–6 Agustus 2026.#SigapMembangunNegeriUntukRakyat #BPSDMPU #SmartGreenCampus #LifeatPUtech #BIM pic.twitter.com/ScjXXbOoOA

— Politeknik Pekerjaan Umum (@politeknikpu) August 10, 2026

What Faster Takeoff Does to Surveyor Hours?

Measurement and bills of quantities scored 76.7 percent among digitalisation-driven quantity surveying services in a 2024 study prepared as a statistical reference for the Royal Institution of Surveyors Malaysia QS Division. That is the pile of hours QuantifAI is aimed at. Cost planning sat behind it at 66.7 percent.

Consulting firms still recover a lot of those hours as billed measurement. If a takeoff that took days drops toward hours, the firm can run more tenders with the same staff, or it can keep the fee and watch the measurement line shrink. Either way, the junior path changes. People learn SMM2 by measuring, and a tool that fills the first pass removes the drill that used to train the eye.

Northern Malaysian QS firms, in a 2024 survey of 22 practices, named the high cost of BIM software and the high cost of training as the top two barriers to adoption. An AI product does not erase licence fees. It can make the fee look smaller if one seat replaces a week of overtime. It can also lock a practice into one vendor’s quantity file just as PK 1.15 makes model-based work harder to avoid.

WHO FEELS A FASTER TAKEOFF FIRST

• Consulting QS firms: The billable measurement week is the line most exposed if AI fills the first pass on architecture and structure.
• Contractor estimators: Bid teams that already run Cubicost can move more packages through the same seats, as long as SMM2 checks still hold.
• Junior surveyors: The apprenticeship that taught people to see a drawing by measuring it gets shorter, and the remaining skill is checking an AI bill against SMM2.
• Other takeoff desks: CostX, Cubit, Buildsoft and BinaLink already appear in Malaysian QS digital tool lists; they now sit next to an AI SKU from a vendor already in the room with JKR, CIDB and RISM.

Glodon says the point is to free surveyors for judgement, not to replace them. The second effect is simpler than that slogan. When measurement is cheap, the scarce asset is the trusted quantity file, and the firm that owns the file owns the next pricing round.

A Decade of Cubicost Desks in Malaysia

Glodon has been in Malaysia since 2015. At the Kuala Lumpur event it ran a Legacy Alliance Recognition Ceremony for 31 long-term benchmark partners, and it signed an MoU and an MoA with Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology and Taylor’s University. Those campuses are how a takeoff tool gets into the first job, not only the tenth.

The 2026 night was also a sequel. On 24 April 2025, Glodon AEC Connect Day at Le Méridien Petaling Jaya drew more than 700 industry people and put Gsite, Cubicost AI upgrades, and AecGPT on the same stage. QuantifAI is the takeoff-shaped follow-through of that AI push, aimed at the one task QS offices still treat as core production.

Cubicost is already a recognised product in neighbouring public digital schemes. Singapore lists grant-backed Cubicost packages in Singapore for bill-of-quantities work, MEP takeoff, architecture and structure, rebar, and Revit integration, sold by Glodon International Pte. Ltd. Malaysia does not need that grant page to have the desks. It already has them, which is why a TAS successor is a conversion event, not a cold start.

People still buying Cubicost TRB now have to decide whether to renew the old rebar tool or wait for the AI line that already replaced TAS and TRB in Indonesia. That pause is the quiet sound of a product transition. A surveyor who has muscle memory in TRB is rational to hesitate, and Glodon is rational to keep the workshop circuit running until that hesitation breaks.

Singapore Got a Workshop Before a Launch

On 10 September 2026, Glodon Singapore ran a QuantifAI hands-on workshop on Zoom from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. GMT+8, free, limited seats, and explicitly before an official Singapore launch. The session promised AI × 5D BIM takeoff, guided practice, and a look at how quantity takeoff rules differ across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

That is the regional pattern. Indonesia got a priced launch and a classroom deal. Malaysia got the government-room event, the English BIM 2.0 paper, and the partner medals. Singapore got a long demo before the ribbon. Each stop feeds the same stack: drawings in, quantities out, bills sitting in Glodon’s cost tools instead of a disconnected workbook.

Local measurement rules still differ, which is why the workshop sold the comparison. A product that already claims SMM2, SMM7 and NRM2 inside one engine is built for that tour. The risk for a Malaysian practice is the inverse of the pitch. If the engine is wrong on a deduction or a description, the error repeats at AI speed until a surveyor catches it.

The Cost Data Layer Under Every Bill

PK 1.15 made BIM a condition of serious work. CIDB is standing up its own project platform and a training grid. Glodon, after Cubicost TAS, TRB, TME and TBQ, is putting an AI reader on the front of that cost stack and walking it from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur to Singapore.

The launch in Kuala Lumpur will be remembered as a product night. The thing that lasts is narrower. Once a bill of quantities is born inside QuantifAI and priced inside TBQ, the cost layer of a Malaysian BIM job has a default home, and switching later means rebuilding the file that every variation, claim, and final account still has to match.