Any Steel Detailers In The House?

pritch

I've got a few questions. I'm thinking about getting into it, structual steel and/or rebar. I've always had a knack for it and I do quite a bit of it at work now without getting paid for it, but what really brought it to a head was this:

The job I'm on now is not large, a 30 thousand sq ft two-story school house. When I got the steel drawings from the fabricator, his detailer hadn't called out any of the embed plates for the joists and beams. I called him up and asked WTF and he said it was VE'ed out by our office. So I called the project manager and he told me yeah-those guys wanted $12,000 to do it, and he figured I could do it for nuthin'. Great. I was shocked and pissed off, but I did it anyways. There wasn't that many, probably not more than 200 or so, so I went through and figured out which plates go where and at what elevation. It took me maybe 4 hours. I just can't believe that was worth 12K. I can't believe that I got talked into doing it for salary. So I guess my question is-just how much do detailers make?

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There's only enough money in this job for 1 guy to be goofing off. And that's me!

rustyjames

Are you referring to fabricating the structural or just installing it?

Bodger

Last year I was on a project that had three large moment frames and a lot of detailing, stiffener plates and the like. The steel contractor didn't line-item that work as I recall.

Seems like a profitable business to be in though. We spent 50 grand with out guy, and he was the most competitive bidder that had any kind of reputation you could trust.

joasis

I know what a pain it is, but, be thankful you have a job, detail the steel, and move on.

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Aggie67

I have the AutoCad add-on software for doing steel detailing and shop drawings, and a bunch of steel design manuals and a software package. So I can speak from experience. $12,000 for details on emded plates? I wonder if he takes his burglar mask off when he goes to bed at night. That doesn't sound right.

Steel detailing is like anything else, it's a skill. But as long as you know connection design and have an engineer specify the steel members for you proper, the new add-ons make it go very quick. But a word of caution (and this obvious to all the pros out there). You could get a set of bid prints that show a steel framing plan and no connection details, with a requirement that steel shop drawings and details are to be submitted for approval. You need to know steel design to do the shop drawings and connection details, or have an engineer dope them out. You can't just wing that, which I'm sure you don't, but for anyone else out there, you need to know what you're doing and you need to live and breathe the AISC manuals. Big steel fabricators will have their own in-house engineers and draftsmen taking care of this.

pritch

Yeah-I'm not talking about designing anything, just creating fab drawings. I have seen plenty of S sets without too many details, but most have everything you need. Anything missing is only an RFI away, anyways. It's just something I've always been good at when I have to do it. I've never been around the autocad systems, but others have told me that they are not too tough to learn. I'm just looking to try to make a buck doing something I enjoy doing. I've been looking to get out of field work and detailing might just be what I'm looking for.

__________________
There's only enough money in this job for 1 guy to be goofing off. And that's me!