How to quote fabrication jobs: from the RFQ package to a priced, qualified quote

Start from the document list: every drawing with its revision, every specification with its date. Count the sheets you received against that list before reading any of them. Then go through the documents and write one line per requirement that costs something, with the clause or note it comes from. Each line ends in one of four states: priced, excluded, accepted at no cost, or sent to the customer as a question.

Contradictions are the lines that matter most. A note pointing to a specification section that was not sent, a material grade on the drawing that differs from the data sheet, a title block listing fewer items than the drawing shows. John Cockerill's teams found that the title blocks and nomenclatures they worked from regularly had omissions or manual counting errors (case study): count from the drawing, record both figures, and ask. If the RFQ states an order of precedence between documents, apply it and say so; if it does not, the question goes to the customer.

Send the questions in one batch, before the buyer's deadline for queries, and keep the answers with the quote. They are part of what you priced.

A requirement you meet with procedures and people already qualified costs shop hours. One you do not meet yet costs a qualification, test coupons, a third-party witness and weeks. Read these requirements against what you hold before you price them.

• Pressure equipment, EU and UK. Permanent joints must be made by qualified personnel to suitable procedures, and for categories II, III and IV both procedures and personnel are approved by a competent third party; NDT personnel for categories III and IV are approved by a recognised third-party organisation (PESR 2016, Schedule 2, paragraphs 21 and 22, which carry the directive's Annex I, 3.1.2 and 3.1.3). A procedure approved at one site can be used at another under the same technical and quality management (PED Guidelines, F-10).
• ASME work. Section IX of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code sets the rules for qualifying welding procedures and the welders who use them, and who is responsible for each (ASME). Check the RFQ's materials, thicknesses and processes against the qualifications you hold.
• Structural steel in Europe. EN 1090-2 has four execution classes, EXC1 to EXC4, the fourth the most onerous; choosing it is a design decision for the specifier, and the class sets quality, testing and qualification requirements (BCSA SN32). EXC2 is the anticipated class for most building structures, bridges generally EXC3 (SCI AD 394). A class above your certification is a no-bid or a partner.

NDT extent and pressure tests come from the specification and the inspection and test plan. Each witness point means waiting for an inspector, sometimes paying one: price the wait in the schedule and the fee as a line, or exclude it.

The price is only as good as the scope written next to it. AISC 303 shows the logic: when the documents give no shop painting information, provisions for it are absent from the bid, and member reinforcement at connections that is neither shown nor quantified is not included; if either turns out to be required, price and schedule are adjusted (3.1 and 9.4.1). Write the same rule into your own quote for every gap in the register.

• The drawing list and revisions the price is based on.
• The material standard, certificate type and traceability assumed.
• The welding code, NDT extent, heat treatment and tests included.
• The coating system, or coating excluded.
• Third-party inspection fees, witness tests and retests: included or excluded.
• Design responsibility, connection design, site work and erection: in or out.
• Delivery point and Incoterm, lead time counted from order and drawing approval.
• Validity in days, and whether material prices are held for that period.

Allowances need the same care. AISC 303 calls an allowance "only an estimate and placeholder in the bid", adjusted by change order once the work is defined, and says it should state whether it covers materials, fabrication or erection (9.1.5 and commentary).

The buyer's purchase order and its terms

In a US sale of goods, the Uniform Commercial Code decides what happens when the purchase order does not match the quote. An acceptance that states additional or different terms still operates as an acceptance, unless it is expressly made conditional on them; between merchants the additional terms become part of the contract unless the offer limited acceptance to its own terms, they materially alter it, or you object within a reasonable time (UCC § 2-207). Read every purchase order against the quote, and answer the differences in writing.

Validity has a rule too. A merchant's signed written offer that gives assurance it will be held open cannot be revoked for the time it states, or a reasonable time if it states none, and never for more than three months (UCC § 2-205). State the validity in days, and say what is not held for that long, such as a material surcharge.

Everything above can be prepared before anyone decides. Then the estimator and whoever owns the price answer four questions the documents cannot:

1. Can we make it? Qualifications held, execution class, certification, equipment, shop capacity in the required window.
2. Do we accept the risk? Liquidated damages, payment terms, warranty, the open questions the buyer has not answered.
3. How much contingency? In proportion to what the register left uncertain, not a fixed percentage.
4. What margin? The customer, the competition, the load in the shop.

A structured scorecard helps when several RFQs compete for the same estimating time; the one in Estimating under pressure was written for construction bids and carries over. A no-bid sent early, with its reason, is also an answer the customer remembers.

• Few RFQs, small packages. If an estimator reads a package in an hour, reading is not your bottleneck.
• Catalog or configured products. Quotes from a price list or a configurator are order entry, not drawing reading; see the guide to automating order entry.
• No drawings yet. A performance specification you must design from is engineering before it is a takeoff.
• Unreadable documents. Scans of scans with illegible dimensions need a question to the customer, not a tool.
• No cost history. Without your own hours per operation, an automated routing has nothing to apply. Record them first.

The opposite case is large drawing packages, deadlines that force you to decline work, and estimators who spend their days counting. That is what Mirage's RFQ and quote automation for manufacturers does: it reads the package, takes off the quantities and builds the BOM, every line traced to its drawing, and leaves the price to your estimator.