GoSmarter vs Strumis for Structural Steel Management

GoSmarter and Strumis serve different parts of the structural steel operation. Strumis manages fabrication: workshop production, piece marks, and Building Information Modelling (BIM) data. GoSmarter manages the incoming material layer: mill certificates, inventory, and traceability. They hand off cleanly.

Strumis exists because structural steel fabrication has problems that general manufacturing software cannot solve. Managing BIM data from design through production. Allocating structural sections to specific members. Generating NC files for CNC machines. Tracking fabrication progress by piece mark. These are not generic manufacturing problems. They are specific to steel fabrication. Strumis was built to handle them.

Also, Strumis was designed when BIM was an emerging idea and most fabricators were still running AutoCAD on desktop PCs. The workshop tools are excellent. The world moved on around the edges.

This post is about understanding where each tool fits and where they complement each other.

What Strumis Does Well

Strumis earns its position in structural steel fabrication for good reasons.

• BIM and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) integration. Strumis reads structural models from BIM software, extracting member data (profile, length, grade, piece mark) directly from the design. This eliminates the manual transfer of information from drawings to the shopfloor.
• Workshop production management. Strumis tracks fabrication by piece mark through the production process: detailing, cutting, drilling, welding, coating, and despatch. The shopfloor knows what to make and in what order.
• Material allocation. Strumis assigns structural sections from stock to specific members in a project. When a 254×254×73 UC is allocated to column C07 in job 2347, that allocation is tracked and the available stock is updated.
• Numerical Control (NC) file generation. For Computer Numerical Control (CNC) drilling and cutting machines, Strumis generates the NC files directly from the model data. This removes the manual programming step and reduces errors.
• Surface treatment and coating tracking. Paint spec, blast grade, primer, topcoat: Strumis tracks the coating requirements for each member and logs what was applied.
• Despatch and site delivery management. Strumis tracks what goes on which load and to which site, which is critical for multi-storey steel projects with phased erection programmes.
• Contractor and subcontractor integration. For connections: bolted or welded: Strumis manages the relationship between the main contractor’s model and what the fabricator produces.

If you are a structural steel fabricator, Strumis is doing a job that GoSmarter was not designed to do. This is genuinely its domain.

Where the Gap Appears

Strumis manages fabrication brilliantly. What it does not do is follow the paper trail upstream. From the mill certificate on the lorry to the column going into a building, that chain needs GoSmarter.

Mill certificate extraction and validation

When steel arrives at your yard, it comes with mill certificates. Those certificates contain the chemical composition, mechanical properties, heat number, and EN 10204 (the European standard for mill test certificates for metallic materials) type for the material. For construction projects with traceability requirements, particularly CE marking under BS EN 1090 (the European standard for the execution of steel and aluminium structures), that certificate data needs to be linked to the specific members that the material ends up in.

Strumis can store certificate references and attachments. It does not extract structured data from mill certificates automatically, validate that data against the declared grade specification, or process multi-heat certificates that cover multiple items from a single delivery.

See it in action:

GoSmarter’s MillCert Reader processes certificates from any mill, in any format, without template training. It extracts structured data: heat numbers, chemical composition, mechanical properties, grade designation, and validates it against the expected ranges for the stated grade. The extracted data is structured and searchable, not a scanned PDF in an attachment field.

Inventory management before material enters fabrication

Strumis’s material management is project-focused: allocating specific sections from stock to specific members in a job. The upstream question: what steel do you have in your yard, what cert did it come with, and is it available for allocation: is handled at a level of abstraction that does not always reflect the reality of a busy steel yard.

For businesses that hold significant stock ahead of project allocation, or that buy and sell steel alongside fabricating it, the inventory management layer needs more depth than Strumis’s stock view provides.

Cutting optimisation across the full stock

Strumis’s material allocation prioritises project needs: which stock goes to which member. GoSmarter’s Cutting Optimiser takes a different approach, optimising across all orders simultaneously to minimise scrap across the entire stock.

See it in action:

For businesses cutting bar and section stock against multiple concurrent jobs, a whole-yard optimisation produces better material utilisation than a job-by-job allocation approach.

What GoSmarter Adds to the Material Chain

GoSmarter operates in the layer between raw material receipt and the point where Strumis takes over.

• Mill certificate extraction. GoSmarter reads certificates from any mill, extracts structured data, validates against grade specs, and links the data to stock items.
• Inventory management for steel. Grade, section, heat number, delivery condition: structured and searchable. Know what you have and what cert it came with.
• EN 10204 audit trail. The chain from certificate to stock to project is built automatically. For BS EN 1090 CE marking, this is the traceability evidence you need.
• Cutting optimisation. For businesses cutting section or bar stock to order, GoSmarter’s Cutting Optimiser reduces scrap rates using mathematical optimisation. Midland Steel achieved a 50% scrap reduction after deployment.
• Vendor trust and data security. GoSmarter is EU-hosted and GDPR compliant. Your data is exportable as CSV at any time. No exit fees. If you cancel, you have 30 days to export your data.

The Direct Comparison

Using Both Together

For structural steel fabricators, the most natural use of GoSmarter alongside Strumis is to handle the incoming material layer that sits upstream of Strumis.

When steel arrives at the yard, GoSmarter processes the mill certificates: extracting structured data, validating it against the declared grade, and linking it to the stock items received. That data: structured, validated, and searchable: is then available to Strumis when material is allocated to project members.

The result is that the traceability chain runs all the way from the mill certificate through to the fabricated member and out to site. For BS EN 1090 CE marking, that audit trail is not optional. GoSmarter builds it automatically. You do not want to be reconstructing it manually when an auditor turns up.

GoSmarter handles what arrives at the yard before Strumis takes over. They hand off cleanly. It does not require Strumis to be removed or replaced. It adds the data quality and certificate intelligence layer that Strumis was not designed to provide.

For fabricators who also hold significant stock and trade material, GoSmarter’s inventory management adds additional depth to the stock management layer before project allocation begins.

Frequently Asked Questions

Try GoSmarter

If your incoming material management and mill certificate traceability are the pain points in your operation, GoSmarter can be running in a day.

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Or book a demo and we will show you what the cert trail looks like when GoSmarter and Strumis hand off cleanly.

Related Reading

• GoSmarter MillCert Reader product page — the AI-powered certificate extraction tool
• Integrated Cert Traceability & Auditability — EN 10204 and BS EN 1090 traceability explained
• GoSmarter vs Generic OCR/IDP Tools for Mill Certificates — why metals-specific AI matters for cert processing
• GoSmarter Inventory Management product page — features, pricing, and free trial

GoSmarter is made by Nightingale HQ, a UK-based AI company building practical tools for metals manufacturers.