Planning Fabricated Components for a Commercial Build

On a commercial project, fabricated components rarely arrive as a neat order. They sit inside a structural package, a mechanical package and an architectural package, each with its own drawings and its own revision history. Getting them fabricated starts with sorting out what is actually being bought.

Find the drawings that describe parts

Three kinds of document turn up. Shop drawings developed for fabrication, design drawings with enough dimension to build from, and specifications that describe performance without geometry. The first two can be quoted. The third needs a drawing before it means anything.

Where a design drawing exists but is not a fabrication drawing, say what has been resolved: material, thickness, connection type, finish. KorFab reviews and quotes; it does not carry out the design work or develop shop drawings from a performance specification on its own initiative.

Draw the package boundary

A commercial job usually splits into several fabrication packages: embeds and plates, miscellaneous steel, formed components, tube and profile work, assemblies. Define what is in each one.

The common failure is a gap between packages: an embed that nobody included, a plate assumed to be part of the steel contract, a bracket that appears on two lists. Writing the boundary down is the contractor's job and it is the thing that most affects a fabrication quote.

Quantities by area or by floor

Buildings repeat. A component schedule organized by area, floor or bay makes the repetition visible, which is what allows a fabricator to say that forty identical brackets are forty of one part rather than five variations of four.

This is also where a build can be improved. A schedule with slight differences between floors is worth checking before it is quoted, because standardizing a part is cheaper than fabricating three versions of it.

Finish and delivery sequencing

Finish belongs in the package definition, since coating runs through a partner shop and takes its own time. Then delivery: components needed early in the build versus those needed at close out should be stated, because a single delivery date for everything is rarely what a site needs.

KorFab fabricates in Phoenix and delivers locally, statewide and by freight nationwide. Large orders are scheduled around the installation window with the contractor, which only works if the sequence is communicated.

Revisions

A commercial job generates revisions steadily. Confirm which revision the order is built to, and send changes as drawing changes rather than as site instructions. Confirming the approved drawing before a production run covers that confirmation in detail.