Three Questions to Ask a Specialty Fabricator Before You Send an RFQ

Knowing the difference between a cheap quote and a cheap job.

Most high-detail specialty RFQs go out the same way. Drawings are attached. Scope is described, often not well, and then everyone waits for a number. But do those numbers mean anything?

By the time that RFQ hits our inbox, the job has already made most of its important decisions. A lot of them are the kind that don't show up until the steel's on a truck or a crane's on the clock. So before you send anything, ask a fabricator these three questions. The answers tell you more than any bid will.

1. How are you actually going to build it?

A drawing shows you the finished piece. It doesn't show you whether anyone's thought through how it gets made, and on specialty work, that's the whole game. When a piece is hard, we're working on it long before it hits the shop floor: how it's fixtured, how it holds together through the truck and the pick, where the shop hands off to the site. There's always a little that gets figured out on the floor. But when most of it does, on a complex piece, that's where the schedule falls apart.

2. Do you know what it costs to stand it up?

The cheapest element to fabricate is not the cheapest element to erect. Crane time is some of the most expensive time on a project. We'll spend an extra dollar on steel every time it takes a pick off the schedule or turns a two-crane day into one, because that dollar can save ten on the erection scope. There's a calendar to it too: the more we finish in a controlled shop, the less of your project is exposed to a rained-out install day. Ask whether they've thought about the erection sequence, or if they're just counting pieces.

3. Who else needs to be involved, and will your fabricator get in the room?

Landscape, civil, and structural don't always talk before the RFQ goes out. We've caught a grading plan fighting a footing detail before anyone poured concrete, only because we asked who else was on the job before we bid it. Most fabricators won't even ask that question. They want the drawing and a number. Coordination is your problem after that. We'd rather be in the room, because that's where those conflicts are still cheap to fix, before concrete gets poured, not after. Ask a fabricator whether they plan to coordinate with your civil and landscape teams directly, or whether that's going to land back on your desk.

“Bringing Rebellion in early changed how the project got built. Once we were talking through fabrication and erection together, the structure they proposed didn't just meet the design intent, it made the concept more buildable without giving up what made it worth designing in the first place.”
— Ben Corotis, Principal, ADBC Design Architecture

What the answers are really telling you

None of this is really about steel. It's about how far past their own scope a fabricator is willing to go.

Ask these three questions of anyone you're considering, us included. Send us your answers, or your project, and we'll tell you plainly whether we're the right fit before you've spent time on an RFQ that wasn't worth writing.

Ross Gredys, Rebellion Founder, will be presenting at ASLA, in a session called "Design Without Boundaries" (Wed Sept 16, LA). I'll be there too. Let’s connect there.

The Moment Your Concept Becomes “Value Engineering”

You’ve drawn something ambitious. Somewhere between concept and construction, value engineering happens. Usually because the fabricator wasn't in the room when the design was still flexible, and by then, your vision gets simplified instead of built as drawn.

Here's proof. The pavilion at Creighton's Campus Quad was originally designed to be assembled in the field: a large number of individual pieces, joined one at a time with moment welds, skilled, weather-dependent work, done high off the ground. We pushed for something different before a piece of steel was cut: fabricate it as a handful of large-scale assemblies instead, larger pieces, fewer splices, welded in the shop and bolted in the field. The architect and structural engineer were part of that decision before it was made, not handed a substitution after the fact. We set the main structure in two to three days. Built the original way, it would have taken at least two weeks. That has nothing to do with how good our welders are (and they are excellent). It has to do with being in the room early.

Bring Us in at Concept. Three Things Change.

You get design options you’d otherwise cut. The curved boardwalk. The cantilevered overlook. The pavilion roof that twists instead of sitting flat. Most of those never make it past the design phase because a fabricator wasn't part of the conversation. Put us in that room early, and what looks impossible is often solved in just a couple working sessions.

Your design survives. The built version matches the drawn version instead of getting simplified by someone who didn't understand what you were actually trying to build.

The process gets faster and cheaper. Measurably. Fewer RFIs. Fewer field surprises. Fewer change orders showing up two months before a deadline you already promised your client.

Get the fabricator in the room before the design is locked. More of your concept survives. Fewer problems later. That’s it.

What Our Partners Say

I could tell you this story a hundred ways. Better to hear it from the people who’ve lived it.

“Bringing Rebellion in early changed how the project got built. Once we were talking through fabrication and erection together, the structure they proposed didn't just meet the design intent. It made the concept more buildable without giving up what made it worth designing in the first place.”
Ben Corotis, Principal, ADBC Design Architecture

“We don't have that kind of dialogue with a lot of our fabricators. Usually it’s just beams and columns. With you guys, we’re talking about solving challenging problems on projects.”
Brent Clausen, Owner, C2 Building Company

Let’s Keep This Going

This September, find us at ASLA in Los Angeles. I'll be there with Nathan Elliott of OJB Studios, who's lived this from the landscape architecture side, and Ben Corotis, who's lived it from the architecture side. Let's talk about your project. The conversation doesn’t end when ASLA does. Email or call anytime.