I color on plans and play with other people's money all day, and build tools when the software pisses me off.

I'm Ryan Cupples. I bid underground utility work in North Texas — water, sewer, storm, excavation, paving. Nights and weekends I build software and mess around in the shop.

Lone Star Bid Lab isn't a company. It's not a side business. It's just what I call the space where I work on stuff — the bidding, the tools, the experiments. If you're here because you reverse-looked an email address, now you know.

What My Days Look Like

Most of my time goes to estimating and bidding underground utility projects. That means reading civil plans, doing takeoffs, chasing material quotes, pricing labor and equipment, and putting together bids that win work without leaving money on the table.

The actual construction side — waterlines, sanitary sewer, storm drainage, excavation, paving restoration — that's what the numbers are about. I'm not out running equipment every day, but I've done enough of it to know what things actually cost and what goes wrong.

Reviewing plans and specs for new bid invitations
Quantity takeoffs — pipe lengths, fittings, manholes, trench volumes
Calling suppliers for material pricing
Building labor and equipment estimates
Figuring out what the spec actually requires vs. what's standard
Deciding which jobs are worth chasing and how aggressive to be
Submitting bids and waiting to see if the number hit

Tools I Tinker With

Estimating software is expensive, clunky, or both. So I build my own stuff when something's broken enough to be worth fixing.

AI agents for bid day

Scripts that read bid tabs, pull spec requirements, organize addenda, flag the stuff I'd miss at 2am. Not a product — just things I've duct-taped together because the alternative was doing it manually.

Takeoff helpers

Spreadsheets and scripts to speed up quantity work. The goal is less clicking and more thinking about whether the numbers make sense.

Random automation

If I do something tedious more than twice, I'll probably try to automate it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I spend more time automating than I would have spent just doing the thing.

Shop Stuff

Not everything is spreadsheets and code. I have a shop where I mess around with welding, fabrication, and fixing things that break. This is hobby territory — I'm not running a welding business or taking fab jobs. It's just where I go when I need to make something physical or when staring at a screen gets old.

Say Hi

📧 ryan@lonestarbidlab.com