From Excel Spreadsheets to 1,900 Detected Members
Suburban Fabrication is a structural steel fabrication company in Waterford, Michigan. Like most fab shops their size, estimating meant opening a PDF, scrolling through every page, and manually entering every steel member into an Excel spreadsheet. It worked — but it was slow, especially on large commercial packages.
After running 20+ jobs through Steelflo, the results are concrete: residential takeoffs that used to take a full day now take a quarter of that time, and longer commercial projects are done in a third.
Suburban Fabrication was one of Steelflo's earliest production users. The numbers below are from real jobs, real drawings, and real daily use over several months.
The Before: Excel and Manual Counting
Before Steelflo, Suburban Fabrication's takeoff workflow looked like what most small-to-mid fab shops do:
- Open the structural PDF in a viewer
- Print key pages or mark up on screen
- Scroll through every sheet, visually identifying every steel callout
- Type each member into an Excel spreadsheet — designation, quantity, location
- Look up section weights from an external reference
- Cross-check the count against the drawings
For a small residential job — maybe 5-10 structural pages — this took most of a day. For a large commercial package with 30-50+ pages, it could stretch across multiple days. And the work could only happen at the desk, on the computer with the drawings pulled up.
The After: AI Detection + Remote Access
With Steelflo, the same workflow now runs like this:
- Upload the structural PDF
- AI detection runs — identifies every steel member across every page
- Review the results, confirm or reject flagged items
- Export the BOM
The detection step — the part that consumed hours of manual scanning — now takes minutes regardless of drawing size. With AI detection plus human verification, Steelflo delivers 95–99% accuracy on the final BOM. The estimator's time shifts from identification to verification, which is faster and catches errors that manual counting misses.
The Numbers
| Metric | Before (Excel) | After (Steelflo) | |---|---|---| | Residential takeoff time | Full day | ~25% of the time (a quarter) | | Commercial takeoff time | Multiple days | ~33% of the time (a third) | | Jobs completed in Steelflo | — | 20+ and counting | | Largest detection count | Manual count | 1,900 members detected | | Typical large job | — | 1,700+ members detected | | Previous tool | Excel spreadsheets | — |
The 1,900-member detection on a single commercial job is worth highlighting. That's 1,900 individual steel callouts that the AI found, classified, located on the source page, and looked up section weights for — work that would have taken days to do by hand in Excel.
What Actually Changed Day-to-Day
Beyond the raw time savings, two things changed how Suburban Fabrication works:
Everything Is Saved and Accessible
With Excel, the takeoff lived on one computer in one spreadsheet. If the estimator was traveling, at a job site, or working from home, accessing a past takeoff meant either emailing files around or not having the data.
With Steelflo, every job is saved in the app. Pull it up from any browser — at the shop, at home, on the road. Need to check a member count from a bid you ran two months ago? It's there. Need to reference a takeoff while you're on site? Open your phone.
For a shop owner who splits time between the office, job sites, and the road, this matters more than the time savings on any single takeoff.
The Moment It Clicked
The first time Suburban Fabrication ran Steelflo on a real job, the owner thought the AI was wrong. The detection count was higher than his own takeoff — which he'd already submitted a bid on. He was convinced the software was hallucinating.
So he pulled out the original drawings and his submitted bid to prove it. Instead, he found that he was the one who'd missed a piece. The AI had caught a steel member that he'd overlooked during his manual count.
That's the moment the tool went from "interesting technology" to daily production use. Not because the AI is perfect — it's not — but because it caught something a 30-year estimator missed. When the software finds your mistakes instead of the other way around, you start trusting it.
Confidence on Large Jobs
Small residential takeoffs are manageable by hand — the risk of missing a member on a 5-page set is low. But on a 40-page commercial package with 1,700 steel members, manual counting is where expensive mistakes happen. Missed members, double-counts, transposed designations — the error rate climbs with drawing size.
AI detection doesn't get fatigued on page 35. It runs every page with the same consistency whether the set is 5 pages or 50. The estimator still reviews everything — but reviewing a flagged detection list is a fundamentally different task than scanning blank pages hoping your eyes don't skip a callout.
Why It Works for a Small Shop
Suburban Fabrication isn't a 200-person operation with a dedicated estimating department. It's a working fab shop where the owner does a lot of the estimating himself, alongside everything else that keeps a business running.
For shops at this scale, the value of AI takeoff isn't "replace the estimating team" — it's "give the owner back hours every week." Hours that go into bidding more jobs, managing production, visiting sites, or just not working until midnight before a bid deadline.
Steelflo's pricing is designed for this buyer. The Pro plan at $399/month pays for itself if it saves 8 hours of estimating labor in a month — and at Suburban Fabrication, it saves that in the first week.
Try It on Your Own Drawings
Suburban Fabrication started with a single test — uploading a drawing they'd already estimated by hand and comparing the results. That's the fastest way to know if Steelflo works for your shop.
The free trial gives you one AI takeoff on your own structural PDF. No credit card, no demo call, no sales pitch. Upload a drawing and see the numbers.
Start free at steelfloai.com.
How Much Time Does Steelflo Save on Steel Takeoffs?
For Suburban Fabrication, residential takeoffs that took a full day now take about a quarter of that time. Larger commercial projects that took multiple days now take about a third. Results vary by drawing complexity and size.
How Many Members Can Steelflo Detect on a Single Job?
Suburban Fabrication has run jobs with up to 1,900 detected members on a single project, with multiple jobs in the 1,700+ range. The AI detection scales with drawing size — a 50-page package doesn't take proportionally longer than a 10-page one.
Does Steelflo Work for Small Fabrication Shops?
Yes. Suburban Fabrication is a small shop where the owner handles much of the estimating. Steelflo is designed for this scale — giving the estimator back hours per week without requiring a dedicated tech team or complex setup.
Can I Access Past Takeoffs Remotely?
Yes. Every takeoff is saved in Steelflo's web app and accessible from any browser — at the shop, at home, or on a job site. No files to email or sync.
What Did Suburban Fabrication Use Before Steelflo?
Excel spreadsheets and manual counting from PDF drawings — the same workflow most small-to-mid fab shops use. The switch to Steelflo replaced the manual identification and counting step with AI detection.