Estimates from drawings and bid packages, drafted from your own past bids.

A GC sends a plan room link with a bid date. Your estimator sorts out what is in your scope, counts every member, plate and sheet part, weighs them, adds the shop operations and the finish, and writes up the exclusions and the questions. Most of that is counting, and it starts over with every bid.

For the test, AI works through copies of packages you already bid and drafts the takeoff and the operations line by line, in the layout your estimates use, with each rate traced to a past estimate or your rate sheet. A line with no rate in your history stays blank for your estimator.

The takeoff is a weight. A W12x26 weighs 26 pounds per foot, so the shape name carries its weight, and angles, channels and HSS come from the same AISC tables. Steel plate runs about 40.8 pounds per square foot for each inch of thickness. Connection material, the clips, plates and bolts the design drawings may not show yet, is often carried as an allowance, and the draft uses the one your estimator applied on past jobs rather than making one up.

Sheet comes by gauge, and gauge depends on the metal. Sixteen gauge is 0.0598 in. on the steel table, 0.0635 in. for galvanized and 0.0508 in. for aluminum, so a part marked 16 ga. with no material is a question, not a takeoff. "Galvanized" is unclear too: G90 sheet under ASTM A653 carries a mill coating, parts dipped after fabrication are galvanized to A123, and the American Galvanizers Association notes the coatings differ a lot in thickness. Sheet parts are estimated from flat size, nesting on your stock sheets, cut length, pierce count and bends.

Shop labor follows the operations. Each piece gets its cut, holes or copes, fit-up, weld and cleanup, at the labor your past estimates carried for similar pieces. Weld size matters more than it looks, because fillet weld metal grows with the square of the leg: AISC's Modern Steel Construction worked an example where a 3/16 in. fillet made as a 5/16 in. weld nearly tripled the weld metal and the arc time. The draft reads weld sizes from the symbols on the drawings and lists any it can't read. Bent plate gets checked against the minimum inside radii ASTM A6 suggests for cold bending, and a tighter bend becomes a question.

Finish is often its own quote. Galvanizing usually comes from your galvanizer's quote or rate sheet, and the draft uses those numbers as given. Tube and other closed shapes need vent and drain holes before they go in the kettle, so a galvanized HSS frame with none shown is a question. Painted steel depends on the surface prep the spec names: an SSPC-SP 6 commercial blast is a different job from SSPC-SP 3 power tool cleaning.

Scope and questions decide the bid. Structural framing usually sits in spec section 05 12 00, while lintels, shelf angles and similar items fall under 05 50 00 metal fabrications, with stairs at 05 51 00 and railings at 05 52 00, and a GC's scope sheet may split them differently. The AISC Code of Standard Practice gives the engineer of record three options for connections: shown complete on the drawings, completed by the detailer, or designed by a licensed engineer working for the fabricator. When the drawings don't say which, that is the first question. Your reviewer, the estimator who knows your numbers best, checks every quantity, rate source and question against the bid you actually sent.

With a yes, new bid packages get a draft takeoff and question list as they arrive, for about 30 days.

Your estimator checks, edits and prices every draft, and nothing goes to a GC unless a person sends it. Lines with no rate in your history stay blank for them to fill, and the same comparison scores the live month.