Commercial Steel Estimating: A Comprehensive Guide to Mastering the Basics (Volume 1)

I have just received the and I'm eager to go through it more thoroughly, but one thing that is very clear from my initial survey of the topics covered is that this book is not as is says on the back cover, "how to create a COMPLETE steel estimate." Something everyone should be clear on is that this book STOPS at loading your fabricated steel on a truck for shipping. There is no discussion on estimating ERECTION of steel.To be fair, the book's Table of Contents is available here on Amazon to look at and I did look at it; not well enough though.Does this make the book useless? By no means. It appears to be very comprehensive and clear on what it does cover and well worth the investment. That being said, it also is NOT as complete as the book's description it might lead people to believe. All this means is that it will need to be supplemented by another book on estimating steel erection in order to create a COMPLETE steel estimate.

I've got 20+ years of steel estimating experience, but still found some good tidbits. It would be very good for a novice estimator or possibly a project manager that wanted more information about steel estimating.

It's a good book, and a decent value. However, It is definitely written for the novice estimator. I was hoping for something a little bit more advanced, because it spent a lot of time covering things that most people with construction experience will already know. Nonetheless, this book offers some good information and a solid foundation for beginners. Also, I was hoping for some topics on estimating field work, but this book really focused almost exclusively on shop fabrication. All-in-all a worthwhile purchase.

This book put years of estimating experience between nice binding. A good read for anyone wanting to learn the basic process of steel estimating. I have not found anything on the market like it.I would like to see something in this form for small projects aka misc steel, gates, handrails other weldments ect.

I have checked and double-checked myself on this. I absolutely ordered and paid for a hardcover book and got a softcover with poor quality images and print. Trust me, the hardcover is beautifully made. I had one and loaned it to someone and never got it back. The information in the book is very accurate. Even the welding times, which I find is usually way off in books like this.

Anything the Industrial Press puts out is worth having! Two other books I would recommend would be machinery's handbook about 1200 pages and math for machinists!!!! Machinery's handbook like commercial steel estimating are worth their weight in Gold!!!

Another reference source for the professional estimator planner/ scheduler. The time charts are great for estimating structural steel and calculating the timing/scheduling of tasks

Good information.

Good for fab estimates

Provides good grounding for steel fabrication and detailing - recommended if you are new to the industry. It is written with the US market in mind, however I think the general principles are the same.Of course it is expensive, but it will give you a head start. Most of the details seem quite obvious, but it is good to have it codified. Even if you can only take 5% of the contents away as extra it will pay for itself rapidly.