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.
