# SpecRecon — Bid intelligence for HVAC > Bid intelligence for HVAC (iPhone/iPad app by Calvin Timmons.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/specrecon/id6788918154 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Calvin Timmons](https://appshunter.io/developer/6788918156) - Category: Business, Productivity - Price: Free - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 15.0 · 5 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2026-08-17 - Data updated: 2026-10-06 ## What is SpecRecon? SpecRecon is the field-and-office companion for HVAC and mechanical subcontractors who bid Division 22 (Plumbing) and Division 23 (Mechanical) work. It turns the daily flood of plan-room activity into a clear, role-based pipeline — from the first project sighting through spec classification, estimating, pursuit, and order release. Built for how estimating teams actually work, SpecRecon keeps spotters, applications, estimators, and salespeople on the same page, so the right projects get pursued and nothing slips through the cracks. WHAT YOU CAN DO • Scouting Report — triage each day's flagged projects at a glance: verdict, engineer, bid date, and the competitors named in the documents. • Project Dossier — see your spec position, targets, and next action; call the engineer, clear out bad mentions, and route work to the right team in a tap. • Spec Intelligence — upload the plans, specs, and addenda and get the basis of design, approved-equal manufacturers, model numbers, and spec sections identified automatically. • Hunt Board — track every pursuit from bid sent, through GC award, to order release. • Reports — win/loss, pipeline value, and eligibility mix, filterable by owner, GC, engineer, manufacturer, and more. BUILT FOR TEAMS Role-based access keeps each person focused on their part of the workflow — spotting, spec classification, estimating, and pursuit — with a clean handoff trail so accountability is always clear. SUBSCRIPTION & ACCESS SpecRecon is a subscription service for mechanical and plumbing contracting companies. Access is granted by your company's administrator — there is no consumer sign-up, and nothing is sold inside the app. To explore without an account, tap "Demo Login" on the sign-in screen to load sample data. ## Is SpecRecon safe? Not enough ratings yet to assess SpecRecon. ## Is SpecRecon legit? SpecRecon has limited verification signals. The AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for SpecRecon is 58 out of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.4 — 2026-10-05 This update is about phoning your subs, seeing what is in play, and asking Kestrel about the market. CALLING YOUR SUBS • Confirm call: after a bid goes out, each salesman gets a list of the subs to phone. Open the job, press Confirm call on the sub's row, and note where our price stands and when they expect it to award. The list opens whenever you open the Hunt Board. • The timer counts up from the bid date: green for the first week, yellow after, red after a month. A revised bid starts it over. • Any Hunter can confirm a sub nobody owns yet, and Spotters can confirm any call. • Reports has a Sub calls tab showing who is phoning their subs and who is not. • Open bids follow the account: when a sub changes salesman, its open bids go with it. THE HUNT BOARD • Sort each column by bid date or dollar value, and filter to a range of bid dates. • Jobs still in design reach the Hunt Board once their bid goes out, so you can confirm with the subs. They stay until someone sends them back out for bid. PRICING • Every unpriced line carries an estimate until the quote is scanned in. After that the quote wins, and any line it left out keeps its estimate, marked not quoted, so the money we did not quote stays visible. • Estimates learn from the quotes we have scanned. Venting is estimated per boiler. • A bid sent by mistake can be taken back to Optics from the division card, with a reason. • A job with two divisions sends only the priced ones to the Hunt Board. REPORTS • Tabs are named for the boards: Pre-Bid, Bidding and Post-Bid. A Manufacturer report shows one brand across every live job, and prints. • Every column sorts, and every project name opens its dossier. • The No-Bid report shows what is waiting, whose desk it is on and how long, and lists jobs not yet handed to the Tagmaster. A job leaves the queue when no No-Bid line is left. MARKET ANALYSIS • Managers and Executives can ask Kestrel about the market: statewide counts by region, what the spec books say, and our own numbers, such as win rates, projects we did not bid and items not quoted. Kestrel can research the web for any equipment. SMALLER THINGS • Engineering calls save per project, and the project opens in a new tab. • A 75% CD set can be tagged by hand. • Removing a member takes them off every board, and Delete erases the account. • A notification opens the right job, and a refresh keeps account-admin rights. • Kestrel speaks your vocabulary. ### 1.3 — 2026-09-03 This update is about who owns each bid, who owns each customer, and jobs that are still being designed. WHO OWNS EACH BID • Optics can be filtered to one estimator or one office, and your choice is remembered. The office comes from the salesman on the subs bidding the job, so it works before anyone has accepted it. • A division can be handed to a different estimator after it has been accepted, for when a bid is due and someone is out. Whoever takes it over is told, and the job moves to their board. • You can accept a division on someone else's behalf. It defaults to you, so accepting your own work is still one click. • Every division shows the estimator bidding it, and has a place for your own project reference number — mechanical and plumbing are quoted separately, so each carries its own. WHO OWNS EACH CUSTOMER • Sub accounts have a salesman, and Reports has a new Sales tab: sales dollars by salesman, win rates by sub, and the jobs behind every number. You can add and edit accounts there. • House accounts: customers who bid very little can be marked House and worked by inside sales as a pool, and a spotter can carry one of those jobs all the way to the order. • Nobody claims a job any more. Everyone whose sub is bidding is chasing it, and once a sub is awarded, that sub's salesman is the one who stays in. DESIGN-PHASE JOBS • A job still in design — Narrative, SD, DD, 25/50/75% CD, or design-assist — can be tagged as such. The scan tags it when the drawings say so, and you can set or change it by hand. • A tagged job is scouted and priced like any other, but takes no Hunt Board tile, no commission and no queue clock, because it cannot be won yet. • Design jobs with no live bid date stay off the Scouting Report until you ask. The DESIGN toggle shows them, with a count, sorted by how long each has sat at its stage. • Budget rounds are recorded as they happen, each with its own due date and number, so you can see how a budget moved between pricings. • When the final set arrives the two listings merge, the job keeps its history, and the app tells you which brands changed — staying quiet about everything that held. COMMISSION • The commission number is labelled ESC, and the Sales Manager can now see it. • The Hunt Board header shows the ESC total beside the dollars in play, and both follow whatever the board is filtered to. DUPLICATE LISTINGS • Duplicates are detected across every source, not just the daily scan, and flagged where they can be merged. • When a group is flagged, you tick which listings are actually the same job, and only those merge. A group of three or more starts with nothing ticked, and the confirmation names what is being left out. • Any listing can be marked "not part of this group" without affecting the rest. BID LISTS • A job you have already ruled on is not scanned again when it turns up on the next bid list — the dossier says it arrived and was already vetted. • A bid-list email attached to the wrong job can be undone, and pointed at the right one. DIVISIONS • A target filed under the wrong division can be moved by hand, without re-scanning the job. • A division you dropped no longer blocks the job behind it. Some jobs reached the Hunt Board with no way to mark the GC award; that option is back. • Removing a project, or dropping one division, now asks why from a list, so the reasons are countable. SMALLER THINGS • Pinch to zoom works on iPhone and iPad — a schedule or a drawing can be read at phone size. • Forgot your password now sends a SpecRecon email that lands on a screen with a password box on it, and every password field has a show/hide toggle. • Subs carried across a merge keep their sales account and salesman, so sales numbers stay whole on consolidated jobs. • A notification about a job opens that job, and the ones two people got by mistake have stopped. ### 1.2 — 2026-08-23 This update focuses on the phone. • The sign-in screen now shows the SpecRecon logo, so it is clear which app you are in. • The Scouting report's counters are far more compact, so the project list starts near the top of the screen instead of below it. • Project cards are shorter: queue age, bid date and status now share one line. • The target dossier drops layout a phone could not use, and its action buttons wrap to fit rather than running off the edge of the screen. • Projects awaiting acceptance show a short summary of the equipment on the job instead of the full equipment list. • On the Hunt Board you can now collapse a stage that holds more than one job, so Submittals and Order Received are reachable without a long scroll. Also new since the last release: sales offices, so a board can be filtered to one office; a new Executive role that can see everything and change nothing; merging two listings of the same job by hand, with likely duplicates flagged; and recovering a project someone removed, with a record of who removed it. ### 1.1 — 2026-08-18 Subcontractor accounts and salesmen. Keep a record for each subcontractor you bid to, assign a salesman to the account, and see who is chasing every job. Name variations are recognized automatically, so the same company is one account however it is typed. Sales reporting. New reports for salesmen and for subcontractors, including win rates by subcontractor. Submittals. A job now moves from the sales chase to a letter of intent, then to submittals, with approved and rejected actions before a purchase order is recorded. Project notes. Add internal notes to any project dossier. Bid reminders. Get notified two business days before a bid is due, in the app, by email or by text. Addendum acknowledgement. A single prompt asks you to confirm you have seen new addenda. Also includes improved contrast on project cards and a number of fixes. ### 1.0 — 2026-08-17 No release notes. ## Apps similar to SpecRecon | App | Rating | Price | Category | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [FieldRamp](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/fieldramp/id6786315266) | 5.0 (1) | Free | Business | | [MKC \| MWF Connect](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/mkc-mwf-connect/id1616009998) | 5.0 (1) | Free | Business | | [Solar Energy Industries Assn.](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/solar-energy-industries-assn/id6739558916) | 4.5 (16) | Free | Business | | [Wisenbaker HR Vu](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/wisenbaker-hr-vu/id1446311489) | 5.0 (6) | Free | Business | | [Dodge One](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/dodge-one/id6756326282) | 5.0 (7) | Free | Business | | [TML Annual Conference 2025](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/tml-annual-conference-2025/id6751903978) | 4.0 (1) | Free | Business | --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-10-06.*