Knauf Material Calculator: Jira for Construction Professionals
Alexandros Shomper
Knauf Material Calculator
The Jira for construction professionals
From fragmented workflows to a unified product, helping construction applicators quote, plan, and order 3× faster.
Overview
B2B SaaS platform for construction applicators
Knauf Material Calculator is a B2B SaaS platform helping construction applicators quote, plan, and order materials in minutes instead of hours.
About Knauf
Knauf Digital is the innovation arm of Knauf Group (a 15+B global building materials leader with 43,500+ employees, operating in 90+ countries). The unit focuses on developing B2B digital products for the construction industry. The mandate was to scale a portfolio of digital solutions across global markets while driving a user-centric transformation.
Customer Type
Applicator: Contractors, on-site professionals who plan, measure, and execute installations.
Challenge
Delays led to quote errors costing millions in lost bids.
Project leads and applicators were spending hours moving between Excel sheets, PDFs, and phone calls, trying to calculate quantities, submit tenders, and order materials.
The Problem
Construction professionals managed tenders, calculations, and orders across Excel sheets, PDFs, and calls, leading to:
Error-prone manual calculations
Re-entry of data across fragmented tools
Lack of visibility on profitability
Low trust in “digital tools made for construction”
The Goal
Build a unified, end-to-end platform that helps applicators plan jobs faster, make fewer mistakes, and order materials with confidence. An end-to-end material management platform that:
Helps users reach value (first quote sent) within 15 minutes
Bridges quote → plan → order seamlessly
Builds trust through precision and reliability
Research
Discover the essential workflow that defines value.
Before designing, we needed to understand what “value” actually meant for our users.
I led field visits and interviews across 12 countries — observing how crews plan, measure, and order. We combined JTBD analysis, expert interviews, and a survey with 53 applicators in Germany.
Field shadowing • Expert interviews (12 countries) • JTBD analysis • UX surveys (n=53 DE).
Key Insights
“Trustable numbers” mattered more than UI polish.
Applicators didn’t want more tools, they wanted one place that just works.
Offline-first and minimal input were must-haves.
PMF Hypothesis
If applicators can quote, plan, and order in one workspace, they’ll make fewer mistakes and be more profitable; returning within one month to create another quote.
Solution
Designing for Activation
Once the problem was clear, we focused on time-to-value, helping users reach their “aha moment” (sending the first quote) within 15 minutes.
Scope decisions Desktop-first; all-in-one app; design system prioritized to accelerate delivery across 4 apps.
Tender Capture Read, capture, & translate tenders of any format into structured inputs
In-Plan Measurement Determine masses & quantities on plans & to tender positions.
Material Order & Tracking Order by floor, wall type, phase, or element; track ordering status.
Project KPIs & Documentation Proof of acceptance, certificates, and project health.
Key Feature 1: Tender Capture
Every tender arrived in a different format — Excel, PDF, or even hand-written. I built a guided import flow that parses items and matches them to Knauf’s product systems.
Highlights
Tenders arrive in every format imaginable. I built a structured quoting interface that can parse tender items and maps them to Knauf systems, so downstream steps inherit clean, linked data.
Quote Tracking
An overview of the quotes sent, but even more important, an overview of quote drafts with highlighted due-dates. Helping you find the most urgent actions on the screen.
Tender to Quote
New business starts with a tender, and providing a quote asap. Instead of manually transfering each position, customers can import the tender directly in seconds.
Quote to Project
After a Tender has been won and approved, it can be converted into a construction project in one click. Users can import all existing information and offering to add new resources like floor-plans.
Impact
Early trust increased: users saw reliable, structured data from the start
60%faster quote creation
3xhigher quoting rate
85%reduction in errors
"This is the tool I was looking for. Finally everything in one place."
Key Feature 2: In-Plan Measurement
Applicators could now measure directly on their digital plans, and link results to tender positions. From site measurements → plan → exact quantities → approved order in minutes.
Highlights
Take-offs & ordering happens across PDFs, spreadsheets, & calls; fragmented, error-prone, and slow. I bring them together: users can measure in plans, link elements to a tender position & turn those results into orders.
Plan Measurement tools
Users can plan mm-exact measurements and directly assign positions from the quote. Intuitive usage with immediate results.
Real-time quantity calculation
By making mm-exact measurements on the plan, the quantities of the matching positions get calculated in real-time; per wall, floor, or phase.
Impact
Major confidence boost among early users
3xquantity calculation speed
0re-entries between planning and ordering
40%reduction in communication
"With this system, there is no guessworking anymore, no blackspots between the team. We all know, what has been planned, what material do we need mm-exact."
Key Feature 3: Material Order & Tracking
Ordering materials used to happen over phone calls and guesswork. We introduced structured, flexible ordering, by floor, phase, or wall type; plus real-time delivery tracking.
Highlights
Split orders by date or project phase
Order material according to need. By floor, wall type, construction phase, element. Whatever the user needs.
Built-in delivery scheduling
Tracking orders & deliveries on a construction is complex, messy, and time-sensitive. Our order tracking provides real-time status that can be filtered down to any phase, section, floor, wall-type, etc. to give users the ETA they need.
Impact
Trust built between Knauf, dealers, and applicators
60% cut in order mistakes
30% reduction of delivery status update calls
20% improved logistics efficiency
"Now I finally have a clear picture of my orders and deliveries."
Results
Success in numbers
Knauf Material Calculator became the core product in Knauf’s digital ecosystem, adopted across 12 European markets.
A product that turned analog workflows into a digital growth engine — and a design-led transformation that shaped how Knauf builds all future tools.
Scaled design system across 4 apps, cutting delivery time by 40%.
Mentored designers in hypothesis-driven experimentation.
Built “Growth Guild” (Design + PM + Data + Engineering).
Introduced UX Maturity Assessments company-wide.
Metric Δ
Activation (Aha ≤15m) +25%
7-Day Retention +30%
Plan→Order Conversion +18pp
NPS15
Like this project
Posted Mar 17, 2026
Developed Knauf Material Calculator, a B2B SaaS tool for streamlined construction material management, reducing errors and increasing efficiency.
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Timeline
Jan 18, 2021 - Jul 17, 2024
