The tonnage sheet is the bid's backbone. Columns, beams, braces and their connections carry a real quantity and a real unit rate, and every estimator prices that part carefully. Where a steel bid goes wrong is at the handoffs: grouting nobody claims, an anchor bolt survey nobody scheduled, a connection note that quietly moved engineering hours onto your desk. None of it shows up as tonnage. All of it shows up as cost.
The tonnage sheet already settles this part
- Structural steel supply, fabrication and erection — columns, beams, braces and their connections per the S-drawings, including shop drawings, shop coatings and erection. This is the tonnage line, the one part of the bid every estimator already reads carefully.
- Steel joists and metal decking — OWSJ supply and erection, deck supply, placement and fastening. Pull the deck closure and pour-stop assignment out explicitly rather than assuming it rides along with the deck itself; it's a separate line item on plenty of tenders.
- Connection design where delegated — delegated connection engineering, including stiffeners, doublers and reinforcing plates the conceptual details never show. When the notes delegate connection design to the fabricator, that's real engineering hours added to the bid, not a formality.
- Miscellaneous metals assigned to this package — stairs, railings, ladders, lintels, shelf angles, bollards. Extract exactly which items the tender assigns here; generic "misc metals as per drawings" language is a dispute waiting to happen, not a defined scope.
Three verbs, three owners
Almost every dispute in a steel package comes down to the same three verbs landing on different desks: who supplies it, who sets it, who verifies it. Anchor bolts are the clearest case — bolts, templates and embeds are frequently steel's to supply but concrete's to set, and the third verb, verify, goes to whichever trade happens to read the spec closest. The split itself is standard practice. The trap is that most tenders state it in fragments across two sections instead of one clean sentence. Extract the supply/set/verify split verbatim, per item, rather than trusting a single default answer to cover the whole anchor bolt package.
Base plate grouting fails the same test in reverse: nobody supplies, sets or verifies it, because neither trade thinks the verb is theirs. Erectors routinely exclude it as finishing work; concrete subs rarely claim it because grouting happens after their pour is long done and paid. The gap sits open until someone notices it at close-in. Pull every grouting statement in the documents and who it names — material, strength, the responsible party — because "grout by others" with no named other is not an answer.
Spray fireproofing carries the same risk in a smaller way. It's normally a separate trade entirely, but the steel sections mention it anyway: a surface-prep note, a primer compatibility requirement, a coordination clause with no clear owner. A mention inside your own section reads as inclusion to whoever proofs the estimate against it later, so flag the assignment every time steel references it, even in passing.
What isn't yours, even up close
- Concrete work, including bolt setting — setting anchor bolts in concrete is the concrete trade's placement work, not steel's. The nuance: verification tolerance and as-built survey requirements still gate your erection schedule even though the setting itself isn't your labour, which is exactly why the survey line above deserves its own entry.
- Cold-formed steel framing — light-gauge framing belongs to the drywall or framing trade unless the documents expressly assign it here. Structural and cold-formed read as the same material to a casual glance; they're priced by different trades on almost every tender.
- Field painting — shop primer is this trade's, full stop. Finish painting and any touch-up after erection belongs to the painting schedule; confirm that split before pricing avoids carrying a coat of paint that was never yours to carry.
Six things that hide outside the S-drawings
- Grouting, always. Worth repeating on its own: base and bearing plate grout — material, strength and who — is the single most-litigated gap between steel and concrete bids.
- Anchor bolt survey and tolerance language. As-built anchor plans required before erection, tolerance classes, and who's responsible for remediation when bolts miss.
- Delegated design triggers. "Connections by fabricator," performance-specified members, stair or railing engineering stamps — real engineering cost hiding in a note that reads like boilerplate.
- Crane, hoisting and site logistics. Crane supply, pad requirements, site access and shared-use language — erection cost the logistics paragraphs decide, not the tonnage sheet.
- Deck openings and reinforcement. Frames and reinforcing at mechanical openings, assigned inconsistently between steel, miscellaneous metals and mechanical.
- Galvanizing and coating triggers. Exterior, exposed or corrosive-environment members can flip from shop primer to full galvanizing with a single line in the general notes.
Sharing the structure
| Trade | What to reconcile before you price |
|---|---|
| Concrete | Anchor bolts split six ways — supply, templates, setting, survey, remediation, grouting — across documents that scatter the assignment. Extract each duty with its named owner rather than assuming one clause covers all six. |
| Mechanical & electrical | Deck and framing openings, equipment support steel, and hangers off structure — sizes and ownership routinely arrive from M/E drawings after the steel package is already priced. |
| Fireproofing | Surface prep compatibility — primer versus unprimed steel for adhesion — and the erection-to-fireproofing sequence. Flag a spec conflict here rather than absorbing it as your own cost. |
| Drywall | Cold-formed versus structural steel boundaries at parapets, headers and shaft framing, where the two systems sit close enough on the drawings to blur. |
Read the S-drawings the way they deserve — connection by connection, since a delegated-design note or a grouting callout rarely repeats itself. Then hunt the same three verbs, supply, set, verify, across every section touching concrete, because neither trade defaults to claiming them. The tonnage sheet is the bid's backbone; the handoffs above are what keep a correctly-tonned steel package from turning into a dispute the day the bolts miss.