Underbidding—it happens

Large stainless steel machined part.

What is underbidding to you or your shop? Did you price the job way low so you could get the work, or did you just flat-out shoot yourself in the foot?

The big shops can strong-arm the smaller guys like us by quoting low just to get the work. They really aren’t making that much money, but they are keeping people busy. We don’t have this “luxury,” so our shop quotes it as we see it or, sometimes, how we think we see it.

We have our methods of judging time, but some jobs come along that require us to talk to the guys who will be involved in the nitty-gritty—find out what their thoughts are on the work and how long they think it may take them to do certain parts of the task. You may have to sit on it for a day and let it soak in, but the final price you quote should be something that you are comfortable with.

We had a pretty large, underbid job for our shop that was to be fabricated from 12-ga. 304 stainless steel. The assembly consisted of a large wrap and two sides with multiple holes in the part for pass-through pipes. The overall dimensions were roughly 4 ft. by 4 ft., and the order was for 20 of them. They basically looked like a square tub that went into the side of a wall.

Each part had a different configuration of holes for different pipe sizes, but the overall size of the tubs was similar.

The CAD side of this job wasn’t too bad. I drew a solid model in Autodesk® Inventor® of the basic shape, wrapped it in sheet metal, added some flanges, and then added holes. The first sample piece came out, and we had to make a couple of changes before we ran the rest of the order. This part was basically scrapped, and we would move forward from here. Well, not exactly.

We knew we were going to pulse-MIG weld the corners and that the welds had to be ground down to a radiused inside corner. The first successful product was completed, and we shipped it to the customer for inspection. This part ended up coming back to us; we needed to spend quite a bit more time on finishing and grinding than we anticipated.

This was a returning customer that knew what we were capable of and was willing to work with us to get what they wanted. They sent an inspector to the shop, and we all felt a little more comfortable after he left.

We had to develop a process quickly so that we could get these parts moving. The welding and assembly were the fastest part of the process—about two hours to fit up and complete the welding before the grueling finishing could take place. An estimated 4-hour finishing time turned into more like 8 to 12. Adding up the numbers, we realized that this project was taking about three times longer than we had estimated.

The guys involved in finishing had their work cut out for them. All of their praying for overtime was going to come smack them in the face and suck the life right out of them.

After a couple of weeks of grinding and deburring, we had fine-tuned the process. We ground with a Walter 40-grit disc, then 60-grit, 80-grit, and then a combination abrasive mop disc with Scotch Brite™ and sandpaper. The final pass was done by hand with a Scotch Brite pad.

We had nearly completed this order when we learned that nine additional units had been ordered, and the “tubs” for these were bigger. The three-part assembly turned into a five-part assembly with more welding and grinding.

Overtime would continue, and the energy in the shop would continue to sink. The good thing was, we were staying busy, and we got to make up a little bit of our loss on the initial job by increasing the price accordingly. Our process was developed for the second run, and some of our lost time would be made up as well.

After a month of grinding and overtime, we barely made the customer’s production schedules with our parts, but we got the job done. We all looked forward to having a normal day working on something different.

Two of our guys who did most of the hard work were Randy Davis and Marty Perry. When I asked Marty what he thought about the job, he said “I used to want all the overtime, but now you can have it. I’m good.” Randy mentioned, “The past month has sucked. This job was a nightmare, and I hope we never see it again.”

You have to appreciate those bittersweet words. I honestly didn’t even think about taking pictures of these parts, because we were so anxious to get them done and move on. However, we are thankful to be busy and to have good employees to help with these types of jobs.

Not every job is as straightforward as it may look, but you have to learn to make your processes better. You can’t hit the nail on the head with every job, so underbidding sometimes is just the cost of doing business.

All images courtesy of Barnes MetalCrafters Inc.

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