The Value Behind the Bid: Why manufacturers bring more to a project than production capacity

There is a point on almost every architectural woodwork project when the manufacturer looks at the drawings and sees something everyone else has missed. Maybe the material will not behave the way it appears on paper. Maybe the hardware needs more clearance. Maybe a beautiful detail will be extremely difficult to fabricate, transport or install. Maybe the specified construction will work, but there is a simpler way to achieve exactly the same design intent. Or maybe two perfectly reasonable details simply cannot exist in the same space.

This is not criticism of the design process. It is the reality of building custom work. Architectural woodwork manufacturers turn two-dimensional ideas into three-dimensional objects that have to survive fabrication, finishing, shipping, installation and years of use. That gives them a very particular kind of expertise. The question is whether our industry is using enough of it.

Too often, the manufacturer enters the conversation after many of the most important decisions have already been made. The drawings are substantially complete. Materials have been selected. Details have been developed. Budgets have been established. Timelines are already tight. Then the people responsible for actually building the work are asked to price it. That is a strange place to introduce some of the deepest practical knowledge on the project.

THERE IS KNOWLEDGE IN THE SHOP THAT CANNOT BE DRAWN

A good architectural woodwork manufacturer understands far more than how to operate machinery. They understand what happens when veneer moves across a large elevation. They know where tolerances accumulate. They know which details look simple on a drawing but become complicated once hardware, fasteners, substrates and adjoining finishes are introduced. They understand how a twelve-foot feature gets through a doorway. They know what can be preassembled, what has to travel in sections, and what an installer will actually be able to reach once the ceiling, flooring and adjacent trades are in place. They know what happens when a material that performs beautifully in one application is pushed into another.

Design professionals are responsible for vision, function, coordination, code requirements and countless other decisions that extend far beyond the millwork package. Manufacturers bring another layer: the accumulated knowledge of repeatedly turning those ideas into finished work.

CONSTRUCTABILITY SHOULD NOT BE A LATE-STAGE DISCOVERY

We sometimes treat constructability as something to confirm after design. I think we should think about it much earlier. By the time a manufacturer identifies a problem during shop drawings, changing it can already have consequences. Other finishes may have been coordinated around the original detail. Material may have been ordered. Approvals may be pending. The construction schedule may not allow much room for reconsideration.

What could have been a five-minute conversation months earlier becomes an RFI, a redesign, a substitution or a delay. Everyone involved then spends time solving a problem that, in many cases, someone in the industry already knew how to avoid.

We have incredibly sophisticated manufacturing capability in Canada. We have companies working with advanced CNC equipment, engineering software, automated production systems and highly skilled craftspeople. We manufacture some extraordinarily complex work. Yet the value of a manufacturer is still too often measured primarily by the number at the bottom of a bid. There is much more value sitting behind that number.

EARLIER INVOLVEMENT DOES NOT MEAN TAKING OVER DESIGN

There can be a reluctance to bring manufacturers into a project too early because it may feel as though fabrication considerations will begin driving design. That does not have to be the case. Good collaboration does not reduce ambition. It creates a clearer path to achieving it.

A manufacturer can say, “Here is what that detail means in production.” A designer can say, “Here is what matters most about the design.” Then the two can work out how to protect both. That conversation is far more productive than discovering during fabrication that the original solution cannot deliver what either side intended.

This is also where value engineering deserves a better reputation. Done poorly, value engineering becomes synonymous with stripping quality out of a project. But when done well, it could mean using knowledge to achieve the required result more intelligently. Sometimes the best solution costs less. Sometimes it costs the same but reduces risk. Sometimes the right answer actually costs more upfront because the alternative is likely to create problems later. The important part is that the decision is informed.

WE SHOULD BE MAKING IT EASIER TO ASK GOOD QUESTIONS

Our industry spends a great deal of time improving machines, software and processes. We should put the same effort into improving the conversations between the people designing the work and the people building it. That means creating an environment where manufacturers are comfortable identifying concerns before they become deficiencies, questions are not interpreted as resistance, designers can ask manufacturers what they are seeing in the market, manufacturers explain why a detail is difficult rather than simply pricing the difficulty into the work, and both sides have a common technical reference when opinions differ.

On September 1, NAAWS 5.0 became the effective edition of the North American Architectural Woodwork Standards. There are many reasons to pay attention to a new edition, but perhaps one of the simplest is this: a standard gives us a place to begin the conversation.

It cannot design the project or anticipate every unusual condition that may appear on a custom architectural woodwork project. But what it can do is establish a common technical foundation so that the industry’s expertise can be applied to the questions that actually require expertise. That distinction is important. The goal should never be to eliminate professional judgment from architectural woodwork. It should be to give that judgment better information to work from.

OUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE MAY BE WHAT WE KNOW

There is a tendency to talk about the future of manufacturing in terms of equipment: faster machines, better software, automation, data. Sure, all of those things matter. But I would argue that one of the greatest competitive advantages in architectural woodwork is something you cannot purchase: experience.

The employee who has seen the same problem ten times before. The installer who knows immediately that a detail will be difficult on site. The engineer who recognizes where a span needs reconsideration. The project manager who knows which question needs to be asked before the shop drawing goes out for approval. The craftsperson who understands what the material is going to do before a machine ever touches it.

That knowledge exists throughout our industry and we should be finding more ways to bring it forward. Because the future of architectural woodwork will be built by an industry that gets better at sharing what each of us already knows.

And perhaps the most valuable question we can start asking manufacturers a little earlier is also the simplest: What do you see that we don’t?

Kasia Robinson is the Director of Standards, Inspections & Assurance for AWMAC National