Structural note takeoffs, read element by element for the estimator who carries the bid.

A commercial concrete bid starts with a stack: the structural general notes, the foundation plan and footing schedule, the framing plans and slab schedule, then Division 03 and whatever addenda have landed. Your estimator has to match every element to a strength, a finish, a cure and whatever sits under or around it, usually by bid day. The easy miss is pricing the slab the schedule shows and overlooking a line two sections away in the specification.

In the test, AI reads copies of those documents and drafts a takeoff sheet element by element: footing and slab marks, thickness, mix strength as scheduled, finish and flatness as stated, vapor barrier and curing requirements, each with the page it came from. Then it lists every place the notes, the schedules and the specification disagree. It measures nothing off the plans, writes no price and changes nothing in your estimating system.

Strength is keyed to the element, and every owner keys it differently. The general notes for Lake County, Florida's Fire Station No. 91 addition set 4,000 psi at a 0.45 water-cement ratio for foundations and 3,000 psi at 0.52 for the slab on grade. Ivy Tech Community College's standard starts at 3,500 psi for spread footings, 4,000 for grade beams, foundation walls, slabs on grade and slabs on metal deck, and 5,000 for structural columns, beams and slabs. Massillon City Schools' Westside PK-3 section sorts mixes into classes, with Class I for footings, piers and all interior concrete not otherwise noted, and a separate Class V for interior slabs on ground with a lower water-cement ratio and fiber. The sheet copies the strength and class as scheduled and shows which document said so.

Flatness comes in tiers. Massillon specifies overall FF 35 / FL 25 for slabs on ground and FF 35 / FL 20 for suspended slabs, each with its own minimum local values. Ivy Tech runs from 25/20 on ordinary slabs on grade to 45/35 on polished ones. The University of Wisconsin-Madison's January 2025 addendum for its libraries collections preservation facility goes to FF 100 / FL 66 on archive topping slabs, holds typical slabs on grade at FF 45 / FL 35 and suspended slabs at FF 30 / FL 20, and tells bidders to assume a separate minimum for picker aisles, with the final tolerance left to the picker manufacturer. ASTM E1155, the method behind these numbers, says its results aren't for enforcing contract tolerances on floors mainly serving fixed-path vehicles. The sheet lists each tier by area, in the document's own figures.

What goes under the slab changes by owner. Old Dominion University wants a minimum 15-mil reinforced vapor barrier over at least 6 inches of porous fill, continuous under and around the building footing. The University of North Dakota's standard starts at 10 mils of polyethylene. New York's state master specification sets 10 mils for its Class A sheet under ASTM E1745, and Wisconsin's sets 15. A schedule that only says vapor barrier sends your estimator to a section number, and the sheet follows it there.

Curing rules point in opposite directions. Fire Station No. 91's notes say all concrete receives a curing compound, with water or blanket curing as an alternate. The University of Minnesota bars curing compound on floor slabs that will take a topping or a tile setting bed. Old Dominion prefers wet curing and wants slabs under terrazzo cured at least 28 days and flat within a quarter inch in ten feet. Wisconsin falls back to seven days when no testing sets the period, and Massillon's section keeps air-entraining admixture out of trowel-finished floors. Each one changes labor, sequence or the finishers' day, so the sheet carries them element by element.

Documents disagree, and what governs depends on the job. Fire Station No. 91's notes make the contractor notify the architect before performing work and say the most stringent condition applies. A bidder on West Bolivar Consolidated School District's 2023 project in Mississippi found 5 pounds of collateral load on the structural drawings and 12 in the specifications, and the addendum answered that 5 was sufficient, per the structural engineer. Massillon's and Wisconsin's submittal sections ask for a concrete schedule by location and class with finish, curing process and floor treatment listed, close to this sheet's shape. The draft shows both readings with their pages. Whether to carry one, qualify it or send a question is your estimator's call, and nothing here is legal or engineering advice.

With your reviewer's yes, the same job runs on new bid sets for about 30 days.

An estimator approves every sheet before a number reaches a bid, and your bids still go out the way they do now.

The live job's price is fixed before you sign. Anything after that is a separate job, quoted on its own, with monthly support once it's running.