A real case
Architectural metalwork is the fabrication work somebody other than the chief estimator can price today: a browser configurator takes height, run and post spacing and returns tonnage, fit-up hours, weld metres, coating area, a should-cost curve and an execution-class traveler. Structural one-offs still wait on him.
The situation
Eleven enquiries came in this week and one person in the building can turn any of them into a number. Two are architectural: a school refurb wanting three flights of stairs and eighteen metres of balustrade, standard posts, priced by Friday. The other nine are structural one-offs somebody else detailed. The estimator spends the week on the structural work because that is the work only he can do, the two architectural packages sit behind it until Thursday, and the main contractor chasing them has already had a number from somebody quicker.
Step by step
Stair and balustrade packages are priced in a parametric configurator in the browser: set the height, the run and the post spacing and the job is described. No file, no takeoff, no CAD seat, and nothing an estimator has to build first — which is the whole reason this is the work that can leave his desk.
Tonnage, fit-up hours, weld metres and coating area are worked out automatically for the run you configured, with a should-cost curve across the quantity breaks instead of one flat per-piece figure. A hundred posts and eighteen metres of rail land as a curve you can price against rather than a tonnage rate somebody multiplies.
Each joint on the run is matched to a weld process — SMAW, GMAW, FCAW, SAW or GTAW — with deposition time, duty cycle, and the wire, gas and flux costed alongside it. Fit-up time and arc-on time land as their own ledger lines at your shop's labor and burden rates, and every line traces to a named rate, a posture setting or a rule in the engine, so the chief estimator can audit a colleague's Friday number on Monday instead of rebuilding it.
The floor traveler takes consequence class, service category and production category and returns the BS EN 1090 execution class those imply, and every route closes with an inspection line. Advisory context, not a certification — but it lands while the number is still being built, rather than turning up after the job is won as inspection and paperwork nobody quoted.
The nine structural enquiries. There is no file-upload path into fabrication takeoff — a detailing BOM or a 3D weldment does not become a member schedule or weld metres here — so a one-off structural job is still built by the estimator by hand. And nothing in the suite touches the enquiries themselves: no RFQ queue, no assignment, no view across jobs. Everything described here starts at the moment somebody sits down with one job, which is a moment after the bottleneck has already happened.
What you get
The two architectural packages go out on Wednesday, priced by whoever had the afternoon, with a should-cost curve behind them, weld and fit-up as their own ledger lines rather than a percentage on the steel, and an execution class already settled on the traveler. The estimator's week is still the structural book — that work has not moved and this page will not pretend it has. What moved is the share of the queue that had to wait for him, and the fact that the number sent by somebody else is one he can take apart line by line rather than take on trust.
FAQ
Stair and balustrade runs, yes. A parametric configurator in the browser takes the height, the run and the post spacing — no file, no takeoff, no CAD seat — and returns tonnage, fit-up hours, weld metres, coating area and a should-cost curve across quantity breaks. Every cost line traces to a named rate, a posture setting or a rule in the engine, so a number sent by somebody else is one the chief estimator can audit afterwards.
Consequence class, service category and production category go into the floor traveler while the number is being built, and the BS EN 1090 execution class those imply comes back with them; every route closes with an inspection line. Advisory context rather than a certification, but it is in the estimate rather than arriving as paperwork nobody priced.
Nothing does. There is no RFQ queue, no assignment, no view across jobs — everything the suite ships starts at the moment one person sits down with one job, which is a moment after the bottleneck has already happened. Shifting architectural work off the estimator's desk is a real answer to a full week; the stack of enquiries on it is not something the software touches.
Rates are the usual difference between two people's quotes, and there is one set of them: machine rates, labor rates and the cost model live in Rates Studio, set by the shop once, and every quote across every process pulls from there rather than from a private spreadsheet. Fit-up and arc-on land as their own ledger lines at those rates, so what is left to differ is an assumption somebody can go and find.
Where this fits
You quote weldments where fit-up and arc time set the price, not the steel. What runs in the browser today is the handrail and stair configurator — tonnage, fit-up hours, weld metres, coating area, a should-cost curve — plus routing that prices the coating you send out, on a ledger where every line names its rule.
When one senior estimator has to touch every RFQ, the queue is the bid you lose. Put the shop's machine rates, labor rates and cost model in one place every quote pulls from, get the route built instead of rebuilding the takeoff, and have the shop-floor card that answers the job already open when it lands.
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