Blog
Steel reference & field notes.
The things we had to look up, work out or argue about — written down properly. Mostly reference, occasionally what we learned building something.
AI for Estimating, Project Management and Admin Work in Construction
What AI can automate today in a contractor's front office — estimating and takeoff, project management paperwork, and admin — job by job, with what stays human and the cheapest way to start each one.
Read it →Who Understands Both Construction Operations and AI?
Why the rarest skill in construction tech is having actually run construction — what operators know that software teams can't interview their way to, and how to test any vendor for it. Written by one who has.
Read it →Custom AI Workflows for Construction — Who Builds Them and How
What a custom AI workflow actually is for a contractor, when custom beats off-the-shelf, who builds them — consultancies, in-house teams, operator-builders — and the MCP architecture that keeps them verifiable.
Read it →Who Helps Contractors Implement AI? The Four Kinds of Help
The four kinds of companies that help contractors implement AI — platform vendors, point solutions, consultants, and operator-builders — with what each is good for, what each costs, and how to pick.
Read it →AI Automation for Steel Fabrication — What's Real in 2026
A working map of AI automation companies for steel fabrication — takeoff and estimating, robotic welding, scheduling, and quality paperwork — with what each category actually does and the questions to ask before you buy.
Read it →StructuPath Lab #001 — AI vs Mill Test Report
Episode #001 — an AI assistant connected to the StructuPath MCP server screens a sample A992 cert's mechanicals against the spec, and catches the nonconforming one. With the human verification step shown.
Read it →How to Calculate Steel Beam Weight
The arithmetic for beams, plate and tube, why delivered weight runs over calculated, and the mistakes that cost real money.
Read it →HSS Sizes and Wall Thickness
How hollow structural section callouts work, why the wall thickness is nominal rather than actual, and what the 495 standard sizes cover.
Read it →Steel Drawing Symbols and Abbreviations
What the marks on a shop drawing actually mean — shape designations, weld symbols, bolt callouts and the abbreviations that trip people up.
Read it →Wide Flange Beam Sizes Explained
How to read a W-shape callout, why nominal depth is not actual depth, and what the 273 wide flange shapes actually cover.
Read it →Want these for yourself?
We can put these tools on your site, in your systems, or in front of your customers.
Everything here is something we built for ourselves first. If a calculator like this would earn its keep in your business, we build the same thing against your data and your brand.
On your website
Branded to your shop and hosted on your own domain. Reference tools are the reason people bookmark a fabricator's site — they come back for the chart and remember who published it.
Wired to your data
The same math running against your inventory, your mill certs and your job costs, so a takeoff pulls real weights from real material instead of a lookup table.
As internal tooling
Built into whatever your estimators already open. Fewer spreadsheets passed around, and one place where the numbers are known to be right.
Steel AI Assessment $1,500 · Custom builds from $8,500 · Free discovery call first