Cost Saving Tips For Your Next Metal Fabrication Job

We’re all looking for ways to save money, cut costs, and squeeze out every penny when it comes to our budget. Whether we’re at the grocery store, buying a car, or looking to repurpose an abandoned warehouse for something new. The end goal is usually the same: get as much good quality product for the best price possible. Sometimes, the best price doesn’t always mean the lowest price, but when it does, it’s an added bonus.

This is true in the world of metal fabrication as well. Although there are no coupons to clip or weekly ads to compare prices, when the bids come rolling in for a job, consumers have the task of sifting through the facts and figures to try to find the right fabricator or welder for the job. Although there are numerous factors to consider, the bid’s total dollar amount is one of the most important figures that anybody will ever look at.

When it’s time for you to put together an upcoming bid for a project, here are a couple of tips that can help keep those estimates as low as possible and those lead times as short as possible.

1. Provide shop-ready drawings. This eliminates the engineering process that many fab companies will need to spend money on to form their estimated bid.                                             
2. Provide a desired Date-of-Completion.  Because different fabricators have varying workloads at any given time, your desired delivery will impact their bid price and their ability to fit the project into their schedule.                                                                                                      
3. Provide site address and contacts. Many fabricators have the ability to do a majority of the work on-site, helping to shorten lead times. Having this information provided up front will each metal shop determine their costs based on the specifications of the job site.                                
4. Provide load specifications if possible. These include specs for tension, environmental loads, equipment limitations or restrictions, or even equipment cut sheets.                                   
5. Provide any available general arrangement drawings or engineering drawings. Once again, if these types of things are provided up front, estimators will have a clearer picture of the project in its entirety and will be able to provide a more realistic bid total. Plus, their bid total won’t need to include costs related to this prep work.                                                                     
6. Provide plans and profiles if available. See number five above for reasons why this is important.

The main point to remember here is that communication is the key to more precise bid quotes. As an interested customer, the more information you can provide up front, the better.

A second point to remember is that if you, as the customer, need to make any major changes to these pre-stated specifications AFTER a job begins, it can extend the completion date out beyond the deadline and tack on extra costs that weren’t accounted for in the contingency figures. If you’re prepared in advance and know what you want from the start, then your metal fabricator can get to work and complete the project as efficiently as possible.

Need a Request for Quote from Swanton Welding? Simply contact us by filling out the online form to get more information about our services, capabilities, and prices.