Case StudyDrywall Genie

About Project

Drywall Genie is a job estimating and material takeoff platform built for drywall contractors. Estimating a drywall job by hand — measuring each room or area, working out how many sheets of which type and thickness are needed, tallying up nails, tape, corner bead and other supplies, and keeping it all tied to the right job, client and delivery date — is slow, error-prone and hard to keep organized across multiple jobs and crews. The objective of Drywall Genie was to give contractors a mobile-first tool that replaces paper takeoff sheets and spreadsheets: create a job, break it into areas (rooms), record the sheets and supplies each area needs, and have the platform automatically roll everything up into accurate square-footage totals and job-wide material lists — all from a phone on the job site. The platform is built as a React Native mobile application backed by a dedicated FastAPI service, giving contractors a fast, native-feeling experience for a workflow that traditionally lived on paper or in disconnected spreadsheets.

Client Requirements

The client required a mobile-first estimating tool purpose-built for the drywall trade, usable directly on the job site, with accurate automatic quantity and square-footage calculations. Key requirements included: Create and manage jobs with contractor, address, lot/subdivision, measurement date and delivery date Break each job down into areas (rooms) with their own sheet thickness and supply needs Support multiple drywall sheet types (regular, 54-inch, and other/custom sizes) with per-area quantities Track supplies (nails, tape, corner bead, etc.) per job area Automatically calculate square footage per area and roll it up to a job-wide total Let each contractor define their own custom, reusable job questions/fields (a "master" template) in addition to the fixed job fields Search and sort jobs by name, job date or most recently edited User accounts with email/password login as well as Apple, Google and Facebook sign-in Configurable data retention — automatically clean up old completed jobs after a period the contractor controls Secure, versioned backend APIs ready for cloud/serverless deployment The system also needed to support many active jobs per contractor without becoming cluttered or slow, and to keep every quantity calculation consistent and trustworthy, since contractors use the totals to order real materials.

Solutions We Delivered

Ogma Conceptions developed the complete Drywall Genie platform: a React Native mobile application and a FastAPI backend. The mobile application was built with React Native, giving contractors a fast, native-feeling experience for creating jobs, adding areas, and recording sheets and supplies directly from the job site on both iOS and Android from a single codebase. State is managed with Redux and Redux-Saga, keeping API calls, job data and authentication state predictable and centrally testable, while navigation uses React Navigation's stack and drawer navigators to organize the auth flow, job workflow, profile and settings into a clear structure. The most complex part of the app is the Add Job Area screen, where a contractor records a room/area's sheet thickness, sheet types and quantities, and supplies — this screen alone reflects the full depth of the backend's nested job → area → sheet/supply data model, and was built with careful state handling so adding, editing and removing rows stays fast and reliable even on a long, detailed job. Sign-in was built around native SDKs for Google, Apple and Facebook, alongside standard email/password authentication, with session data kept in encrypted on-device storage rather than plain storage. A connectivity check runs before key actions so the app can warn the contractor and avoid silent failures when the job site has poor signal. The Job Summary screen lets a contractor generate a complete job total — sheets, supplies and square footage — and send it straight from the app as an email or text message, matching how contractors actually hand off a materials list to a supplier or crew. AdMob banner ads are integrated for the free tier, consistent with the platform's monetisation model. A dedicated Manage Forms area in Settings gives contractors a UI for maintaining their own sheet types, suppliers and custom job options — the mobile-side counterpart to the backend's master job option system — so contractors can tailor the app to how they work without needing a developer involved. The backend was built with Python and FastAPI, using SQLAlchemy models and Alembic migrations to represent the full job hierarchy: a Job contains JobAreas, each JobArea links to JobSheets (via a JobAreaSheet join with its own quantity) and JobAreaSupplies, and every layer computes its square footage by aggregating sheet size × quantity up from the area level to the job level. This gives contractors one accurate, always-consistent total no matter how many areas or sheet types a job has. To support the client's need for flexible, contractor-defined fields, a Master Job Option system was built — contractors can define their own reusable question templates (text, list, boolean, number or custom types, each with optional placeholders and preset answer choices), which are then answered per job as JobOptions, keeping custom data structured and consistently validated rather than free text. Job search and sorting was implemented directly at the database level — filtering across description, contractor name, address and contact details, and sorting by name, job date or last-edited — so job lists stay fast and relevant as a contractor's history grows. A configurable job-lifespan setting was added so each contractor controls how long completed jobs are retained before automatic cleanup, checked safely against job creation dates rather than being applied indiscriminately. Authentication supports both traditional email/password login and SSO (Apple, Google, Facebook) under a single user model, with JWT-based sessions tracked per device/IP so contractors can safely stay signed in across their devices. The backend was also built with dual deployment in mind — running as a standard server or packaged for AWS Lambda — for flexible, scalable hosting. The application enables contractors to: Create a job and break it into individual areas (rooms) Record sheet types, thicknesses and quantities per area Track supplies like nails, tape and corner bead per area See automatic, always-accurate square footage per area and per job Answer their own custom job fields alongside the standard job details Search, filter and sort their full job history Sign in with email/password or with Apple, Google or Facebook