TABLE OF CONTENTS Thomas Schlafly
Director of Research
American Institute of Steel Construction, Inc.
Chicago, Illinois
Designers of steel-framed structures must be familiar with fabrication and erection practices to provide designs that are practical and cost efficient. Awareness of the process and limits of routine practices will facilitate orderly construction of the project with a minimum of problems and lead to economical design.
Structural steel fabricators may be classified as general industry firms. They participate in the construction industry as suppliers, but also share many attributes with manufacturers. They operate fixed facilities with full-time employees hired on a permanent basis, not just for the project. While the successful fabricator considers the flexibility necessary to produce the variety of members anticipated for the type of project furnished, much planning time is spent on setting up the shop for efficient production. Issues such as information flow, material flow and handling, cost reduction of routine tasks, and taking advantage of repetition are fundamental to daily operations of a fabrication shop. Perhaps unusual in general industry is the size of projects in terms of annual sales, the physical size of pieces, and the amount of variation between pieces and projects, along with other conditions involved in construction projects. These all affect the balance of risk and cost against revenue and success.
Successful fabricators strive to distinguish themselves from others with good records of performance, experience with particular types of work, ideas to save money or time, or other attributes to...
