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Quoting Sheet Metal Work by the Numbers
Pricing fabricated sheet metal jobs from the drawing: scope, nesting, cutting, folding, joining, finishing, set-ups, rates, margin, GST and actuals
Quote sheet metal jobs with numbers: scope, blanks and nesting, laser time, folding, joining and finishing, setups and batch size, rates and margin, GST, and learning from actuals.
Start readingAbout this book
A sheet metal shop lives on its quotes. Price too high and the work goes elsewhere; price too low and the shop wins jobs that lose money, often without knowing it until the year’s accounts arrive. Most of what decides a quote is countable from the drawing: the blanks and the sheets they nest on, the metres of cut and the number of pierces, the bends and the tool changes, the joints, the finished area, the setups. The rest is rates and judgement: what an hour of each machine and person really costs, how much margin the work can bear, and what can go wrong.
This book works through a sheet metal quote in the order an estimator builds it. It covers scope and what a quote must say, material and nesting, cutting, folding and forming, joining and assembly, finishing, setups and batch size, rates, overheads, margin and GST, risk and checking, and comparing quotes with the job’s actual costs so that the next quote is better.
It suits estimators, owners, production managers and engineers in small and medium fabrication shops. It assumes familiarity with sheet metal processes; Sheet Metal Parts by the Numbers covers the folded parts and Sheet Metal Joints by the Numbers the joints that this book prices.
The running case
Every chapter follows one fictional quote. This is an illustration. A fabricator is asked to quote for EN-700, the outdoor equipment enclosure of Sheet Metal Joints by the Numbers: a 700 × 500 × 250 mm body in 1.2 mm galvanised steel, a 2.0 mm aluminium door, a 2.0 mm steel equipment plate on two brackets, a rain hood and a cable plate. The customer asks for prices at 20, 50 and 200 off.
The fabricator, the customer and every price, rate and time in this book are invented illustrations in Australian dollars, excluding GST unless stated; none describes KEVOS® work, a real business or real market prices. Real quotes must use a shop’s own costs, rates and records.
Source limits and professional responsibility
The arithmetic of quoting is simple and every calculation in this book was checked by running it. The numbers that matter, a shop’s rates, its machines’ speeds, its overheads, its margins, are its own and change with time; the method, not the figures, is what transfers. Pricing decisions also carry legal obligations, including consumer and competition law administered by the ACCC and GST law administered by the ATO, and a business should take its own accounting and legal advice. This book is educational and is not financial, tax or legal advice.
Who this book is for
Estimators, owners, production managers and engineers in sheet metal and fabrication shops who price jobs from drawings and need quotes that win work and still make money.
What you will learn
- Define a quote's scope, quantities, inclusions, exclusions and validity so that it cannot be misread.
- Estimate material from blanks, nesting yield and sheet prices, and cutting time from perimeter and pierces.
- Estimate folding, joining, finishing and assembly from counts and times, and spread setups over a batch.
- Build hourly rates that recover overheads, and tell margin from markup before adding GST.
- Check a quote before it goes out and compare it with the job's actual costs afterwards.
Inside this book
Chapters
- 01What a quote must sayRead an enquiry for everything that drives cost, state scope, quantities, drawing revision, inclusions, exclusions, validity and GST, and catch a finish note on a general sheet that cost A$2,926.
- 02Material, blanks and nestingPrice material from blanks nested on whole sheets, by sheet price and yield rather than net area, round to sheets per batch, value offcuts, and catch a quote that priced net area and was 26% short.
- 03Cutting timeEstimate laser time from cut length, speed and pierces, add sheet handling, price it at the machine rate, check it against the nesting software, and catch a door grille's 60 pierces left out.
- 04Folding and formingEstimate press brake time from a count of bends and hits, keep set-ups apart from running time, allow for hems and awkward parts, and catch four hems left out of a bend count.
- 05Joining, hardware and assemblyPrice joining from counts and seconds per joint, add assembly, testing, inspection and packing, keep parts and labour on separate lines, and catch fasteners counted twice.
- 06FinishingPrice powder coating from area, masking, handling and freight, get the coater's quote for the actual parts, allow for coating's effect on fits, and catch masking and freight left out.
- 07Set-ups and batch sizeSeparate one-off, per-batch and per-unit costs, build price breaks from them, price repeats and call-offs correctly, and catch 200 off called off in 50s at the 200 price.
- 08Rates, margin and GSTBuild hourly rates that recover wages, on-costs, unproductive time and overheads, tell margin from markup, state prices with and without GST, and catch a 20% markup mistaken for a 20% margin.
- 09Risk and the quote reviewPrice what can go wrong as an explicit, listed allowance, review a quote line by line against its sources before it goes out, and catch an aluminium price entered ten times too low.
- 10Quote against actualCompare a job's actual hours and costs with its quote line by line, find what totals hide, update standards, track quotes won and lost, and catch an assembly overrun masked by the total.
Apply This in Practice
Use these KEVOS® tools to try the method from this reading with your own numbers.
Applies this method
Sheet Nesting Yield Check (Parts per Sheet, Material Utilisation, Sheets and Cost per Part)
Counts rectangular blanks per sheet with gaps and edge margins, the yield and the sheets to buy, the material pricing this chapter teaches.
Used in Material, blanks and nesting
References and source notes
The manuscript and worked examples are original KEVOS® writing. References inform particular concepts; their authors do not endorse this book. Web references were consulted on 26 October 2026.
- Eugene C. Graham, High School Press, Evansville, Indiana. Shop Problems in Sheet Metal for Secondary Schools, with Notes on Equipment, Materials and Shop Methods (1918). Supplied source, read as a subject map of a sheet metal shop's materials, sheet sizes, machines and sequence of operations in making articles. No text, drawings or projects are reproduced; this book's quoting method, examples and figures are its own, in Australian dollars and modern practice.
- Australian Taxation Office. GST (2026). Reference for the basics of goods and services tax in Australia, used in Chapter 8 for stating quotes inclusive and exclusive of GST. Tax treatment of a particular business's sales should be confirmed with the ATO or a registered tax agent.