Steel Specialties cut a days-long takeoff to half a day
A family-owned El Paso fabricator went from pen-and-paper takeoffs to half-day takeoffs, hired a new estimator who stayed, and is calling its crew back.
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Impact
50%
Less estimating time on complex projects
4 days → 2 days
From a manual to an automated process
“Without [SketchDeck], I don’t think we ever would have even tried to take on that job. But because we had it, we knew we could use it to shortcut the process. And that’s exactly what we did.”
Troy Ernst, Vice President of Estimating, King Steel
Background
King Steel was founded in Lawrenceville, GA, in the 1990s, specializing in structural steel fabrication for clients in the southeast United States. In 2018, Marvin Brown and Gabe Tilley took over leadership and sought to expand the company and increasingly serve its customer base. This year King Steel will transition from a 70K sq ft fabrication facility to a 100K sq ft facility and is well suited to expand its estimating capacity. With estimating as a bottleneck, King Steel sought to implement innovative solutions across their workflows that would enhance their operational efficiency, with the aim of optimizing their fabrication capacity and improving the company’s profitability.
Solution
Manual material takeoffs are time-consuming, requiring hours of meticulous counting and data entry. Automated MTOs drastically reduce the time spent on these tasks by leveraging advanced algorithms and machine learning to quickly and accurately extract data from construction drawings. This time savings allows project managers and construction professionals to focus on more strategic and value-added activities, ultimately speeding up the entire project timeline.
