Where structural steel ends and miscellaneous metals begins

MasterFormat draws the line at the section number. Structural steel framing is 05 12 00 — beams, columns, braces and base plates, the steel that holds the building up. Metal fabrications is 05 50 00 — stairs, railings, ladders, grating, floor plate, bollards, lintels, dunnage, the loose pieces that make the building usable. Ornamental work moves again, to 05 70 00.

A general contractor does not buy it that way. He buys Division 5, from two different subs, and assumes the two bids meet in the middle.

The items in the gap are always the same. Loose lintels over masonry openings, drawn on the architectural sheets and priced by nobody. Roof-screen and equipment support steel — dunnage — detailed on an S sheet, read as structural by the misc shop and as misc by the fabricator. Stair support steel: the beam that catches the top landing, which the structural set hands off as by stair supplier while the stair details say steel by others. Slab-edge angles, pipe guards, elevator divider beams, trench frames.

The scope gap is not in either bid.

It lives in the space between them, invisible until buyout — and then it belongs to whichever sub wrote the vaguer exclusion. Read the specification's section list, then name the section you are not carrying. One line, and it saves the job.

Stairs and landings: count risers, not linear feet

A stair is the item most often taken off wrong, because it is not a length. It is a count.

Read the stair section, not the plan. A 12'-8" floor-to-floor at 7-1/4" risers is 21 risers, and 21 risers rarely fits one straight run. It lands as two flights and an intermediate landing — and the landing is a separate fabrication, with its own channel frame, pan and connections. Counting one stair per floor loses half the work.

The flights ride on a pair of channel stringers — MC12×10.6 is the one you see most — and the stringer is sized by the span between landings, not by the riser count. Split the flight and the stringer gets shorter; that is a different piece, not the same piece measured twice.

Then the tread. A metal pan tread is a formed pan filled with concrete by somebody else, and the fill note decides who. Bar-grating treads with a nosing are a different unit price and a different lead time.

The guard is where the money leaks. The rail along the open side of a flight and its landings usually rides with the stair. The guard at the floor opening — the run at each level that keeps you out of the stair opening — often does not; it is drawn on the architectural plan rather than the stair sheet, and both subs assume the other has it. The wall-side handrail is a third item again. We take all three off separately.

Guardrail, handrail, and the LF-versus-each problem

A rail quantity in linear feet is half a takeoff.

The linear feet buy tube or pipe. Everything expensive about a rail is a count. Posts carry the concentrated load, so they set the spacing — roughly 4'-0" to 6'-0" on center for a picket guard, tighter for cable, where tension pulls the end posts hard enough to change their size. Then the infill: picket at 4 inches clear, glass that pulls Division 8 into your scope, or cable that turns the guard into a tension problem.

Two runs can measure the same 60 linear feet and be nowhere near the same price, so the workbook carries each part of a rail separately.

Guardrail, 42 in: Open sides of floors, landings, mezzanines and stair flights. Take the run first, then the posts.LF + EA posts
Wall-mounted handrail: One each side on a stair, 1-1/2 in Schedule 40 pipe unless the schedule says otherwise. Brackets at 4'-0" on center, one within a foot of each end.LF + EA brackets
Returns and terminations: Every rail returns to a wall or a post. Each is a fitting, a joint and a finish operation.EA
Post base connection: Welded base plate, cored sleeve with grout, or a side-mounted fascia bracket. Three different prices.EA

Ladders, grating, floor plate and bollards

This is the work a GC calls the small stuff and a fab shop knows is half its hours.

Fixed ladders: Rung or side-rail, with walk-through extensions 42 in above the landing. Cages are no longer the default on new work — check whether the spec calls for a ladder safety system.EA + VLF
Ship's ladders: 50 to 70 degrees, with their own handrail and landing detail. Not a stair, not priced like one.EA
Roof hatches and safety posts: The hatch is usually not yours. The ladder below it, the safety post and the curb angle are.EA
Bar and plank grating: 19-W-4 bar grating on 1-1/4 × 3/16 bearing bars, plank, or serrated safety grating. Every cutout, band and hold-down clip is labor that square footage will not catch.SF + EA cutouts
Trench and pit covers: The angle frame — L3×3×1/4 and up, with anchors — is a separate fabrication from the cover, and normally set by the concrete sub.LF frame + EA cover
Floor plate: Checkered plate over a frame. Deflection sets the thickness, not strength.SF
Bollards and pipe guards: Fixed or removable, filled or hollow, capped or sleeved. Each variation is its own line; the footing is not yours.EA

Embeds, anchor bolts, and who sets them

Three verbs decide this scope and they are not synonyms: furnished by, installed by, set by.

The default for anchor rods is written into the AISC Code of Standard Practice: the rods are the fabricator's to furnish, along with the embedment drawing that locates them, and somebody else sets them in the formwork. It is also the most common place a metals bid and a concrete bid fail to touch. Embed plates for stair landings, rail posts at a slab edge and equipment supports sit in the same crack.

So we write it out item by item, before the GC decides for you. Neither column is a rule; the value is in stating which default you took.

Carried in the metals package

Anchor rods, nuts, washers and setting templates, furnished loose
Embed plates, weld studs and deformed bar anchors shown in the details
Loose lintels and bearing plates scheduled in Division 5
Rail post sleeves and stair landing embeds, ahead of the pour
Shop primer per the finish schedule

Excluded, in writing

Setting embeds and anchor rods in the formwork
Layout and survey of the anchor bolt pattern
Non-shrink grout under base plates
Coring, cutting and patching of finished concrete
Firestopping at floor and shaft penetrations

Elevator and shaft steel

Hoistway steel is a small quantity with outsized risk, because you bid it before the drawings for it exist: the elevator supplier's shop drawings arrive after buyout, carrying the loads and dimensions your steel has to match.

Normally in the metals package: divider beams between hoistways, the hoist beam at the top of the shaft with its capacity tagged, sill angles at every landing, backing steel at the rail brackets where the shaft is CMU or metal stud, the pit ladder and sump grate.

Normally not: the guide rails and their brackets, the cab, the hoistway door frames and the toe guards. Those ride with the elevator contract, in Division 14.

So carry the steel you can see, state the hoist-beam capacity and landing count you assumed, and put the question in writing. That RFI is already drafted in the package we send you.

How we split the scope on your proposal

Every package states scope by section number, item by item, on the face of the proposal: what you carry, what you exclude, and what you carry furnish-only. That third column matters more in misc metals than anywhere else, because furnish-only is the honest answer for embeds and anchor rods.

Each quantity in the workbook carries the sheet it came from — a rail run says A4.02, a grating quantity says S3.1. Every line traces back to a sheet, which pays twice: while you are pricing, and after you win, when the GC asks why a change order is a change order.

Your logo, your rates, your language. Excel, Word and PDF, all editable. Nothing goes to a GC that you have not read first.

What it costs

Your first sample package is free. No card, no contract. Send one plan set and see whether the takeoff holds up against the way you bid.

After that it is per bid package: Starter $299–399 for small scopes, Standard $549–899 for a typical commercial bid, and Complex $1,200–2,500 for large or multi-building work. Add 35% for a 24-hour rush; standard turnaround is 24–48 hours.

We work remotely from Campbell, California, and take plan sets from every county in the state — out of state too. Your plans are never shared, never used to bid against you, and deleted on request.

Structural steel and miscellaneous metals — CSI Division 5 — is the trade that is live today. Concrete, framing, mechanical, plumbing and electrical are in development; each launches only when it meets our accuracy bar. If your scope is beams and columns, start with structural steel estimating instead.

Send one plan set. See the scope split for yourself.

Email a PDF to bids@topoutapp.com or call (408) 306-0094. Stairs, rails, ladders — whatever you have. The first package is free.

Email your plan set

Miscellaneous metals estimating — Division 5 without the scope gaps.