Detailing hour estimates you can defend.

Who uses detailing hour estimates

• Steel detailing companies quoting fabricators, who need a count they can stand behind at bid time.
• Fabricators with in-house drawing offices planning capacity or checking a subcontractor’s detailing quote.
• Outsourcing and BIM managers comparing vendor proposals on the same basis.

How the estimate is built

1. Count. Columns, beams, braces, roof frames and loose items are counted element by element from the structural set: framing plans, bracing elevations, column and lintel schedules.
2. Classify. Each member is sorted by detailing effort: repetitive, easy, medium or difficult beams; columns with or without anchor bolts; braces by connection type; roof frames by opening.
3. Apply unit times. Your minutes-per-piece rates or ours, by class, give the base hours.
4. Add the rest. Secondary steel, erection and model sheets, checking and fabrication support are added as percentages you can see and adjust.
5. Report. Hours by subject and in total, rounded the way you quote, with remarks on anything unusual and a comparison with a reference project if you have one.

Why the count matters more than the rate

Unit times are easy to agree on. Counts are where estimates go wrong: beams copied from a similar job instead of counted from the plan, an X-brace taken as one piece instead of three, a column that runs through two roofs counted twice. A few dozen miscounted members move an estimate by days of work. Every Steelest count starts from the drawing in front of us, and every element is marked so you can check it.

What you receive

• The estimate workbook: hours by subject, unit times and percentages shown, totals rounded to your convention, remarks column.
• The structural PDFs with Bluebeam markers on every counted element, a legend and per-subject counters.
• A takeoff tab with the per-subject summary, the element list with IDs, and the comparison with your reference project.
• Open questions for the engineer, listed instead of guessed.

Formats

Estimates are delivered in your own quoting workbook when you have one, so the figures drop straight into your proposal. Otherwise you get the Steelest workbook in Excel or ODS. The counts themselves are the same ones used for a structural steel takeoff, so both can be prepared from one pass through the drawings.