How early fabricator engagement can transform the steel value chain

A conversation with Bryan Wilken, Director, and Johnny van Vuuren, Operations Manager, of B&T Steel Construction

South Africa’s structural steel industry has enormous potential. It employs skilled people, produces world-class buildings, and sits at the heart of the country’s construction economy. But realising that potential fully requires an honest conversation about how projects are structured and, more specifically, about where fabricators fit into the picture. Bryan Wilken, Director of B&T Steel Construction, and Operations Manager Johnny van Vuuren believe the answer is straightforward – bring fabricators in earlier, treat them as part of the professional team, and watch the entire value chain perform better.

“We should be involved from the beginning,” says Bryan. “We can assist with value engineering, with what’s practical in the workshop, and that could allow us to deliver to site sooner and with fewer issues.” It is a simple idea with significant implications for quality, cost, and project timelines across the industry.

Closing the Detailing Gap

One of the clearest opportunities for improvement lies in the detailing process. Before a single piece of steel can be cut or welded, a fabricator must produce accurate shop drawings that specify every hole, every bolt, every plate and connection in the structure. This process depends entirely on the completeness of the engineering information provided, and it is here that earlier collaboration could make an immediate difference.

When engineering drawings arrive without all the necessary connection details, detailers have to pause, raise queries, and wait for answers before they can proceed. On a large industrial or commercial project, those pauses accumulate. “Many times the shop drawings almost take the same amount of time as what we take to fabricate it,” Johnny notes. “Sometimes longer.”

The fix is not complicated. If fabricators are engaged earlier in the design process, the questions that currently cause delays can be resolved before they become bottlenecks. Detailers would have what they need from day one, procurement could begin sooner, and the full fabrication programme could run without unnecessary interruption. “When we are in control and part of the process from the start, those projects run so much smoother,” says Johnny. “It’s not that we don’t get hiccups, we do, but they’re so much easier to sort out.”

Rethinking the Weight and Pricing Equation

A related conversation worth having across the industry concerns the trend toward lighter steel structures. Over the past decade or so, average steel use per square metre has fallen considerably, from roughly 22 to 23 kg down toward 14 kg in some segments. This is understandable because lighter designs can appear more cost-competitive at the tender stage, and engineers working in a competitive environment respond to those market signals.

But the full picture is more complex. Lighter structures do not always mean simpler fabrication. A truss that weighs 500 kg can take significantly longer to fabricate than one weighing a full tonne, because lighter designs often require more varied component sizes. Where a top chord might once have been a single uniform member, it may now involve three different section sizes, each requiring separate cutting, separate procurement, and a more complex workshop setup.

The opportunity here is for a more transparent conversation across the value chain about what efficiency actually means. True efficiency is not just structural weight on paper. It includes fabrication time, procurement complexity, erection requirements on site, and total project delivery. When fabricators are part of the design conversation early, they can contribute, collaborate and help teams find solutions that are genuinely efficient from end to end.

Navigating a Changing Procurement Landscape

The procurement environment for structural steel has become more complex in recent years, largely as a result of changes in local supply. With ArcelorMittal having stopped long-product manufacturing, certain steel section sizes and lengths are no longer as readily available as they once were, and lead times on imported material can be significant.

Johnny gives a practical example. On one recent project, B&T Steel needed channels of a specific size for a large staircase installation. The specified size was unavailable. The substituted size was also out of stock. The team eventually waited close to a month for the right material to arrive. Throughout that period, the project programme did not shift to accommodate the delay.

This kind of variability is why early fabricator involvement matters so much. When a fabricator knows what is and is not available in the market at the time of design, section sizes and member lengths can be selected with supply realities in mind. Substitutions and delays that currently disrupt programmes mid-build can often be avoided entirely with a short conversation at the design stage.

The Case for a Tiered Fabricator System

Beyond project-level engagement, Bryan sees a structural opportunity in how fabricators are selected and recognised across the industry. He advocates for a formal tiering system, one in which fabricators are benchmarked against defined standards of capability, safety compliance, quality management, and technical capacity.

“For a 500-tonne warehouse, you need your safety to be in place, you need to have a data book, you need a letter of good standing,” he says. “There should be a defined group of fabricators in a given area who meet those criteria, and those are the guys a project should go to market to.”

This kind of system would benefit the entire value chain. Professional teams would have greater confidence in the fabricators they engage. Clients would get more predictable outcomes. And fabricators who invest in their people, their processes, and their infrastructure would compete on a more level playing field against those who do not.

The SAISC’s quality management programme, which Bryan understands is working progressively through the supply chain from mills and merchants toward fabricators, points in exactly this direction. It is a development he welcomes. “That’s kind of how I would see it,” he says. “We want to be involved on the professional side from the beginning, and fabricators should be tiered.”

The good news is that the model Bryan describes is already producing results in markets where fabricators are treated as integral members of the professional team. In New Zealand, for example, a select group of pre-qualified fabricators is consulted before a project goes to tender, their input shaping design decisions around what is practical to build, procure, and erect. The outcomes are better designs, fewer surprises, and smoother delivery.

The industry-led Steel Fabricator Certification (SFC) scheme categorizes fabricators based on their capability, quality systems, and experience. This system, managed by Steel Construction New Zealand (SCNZ), ensures compliance with international best practices and AS/NZS standards, featuring four construction categories (CC1 to CC4) based on project complexity.

Wilken sees the same dynamic at play in B&T Steel’s own design-and-supply projects, where their involvement from early in the process gives the team visibility and influence that competitive tender work does not. “We dream up stuff, we make stuff work, we find solutions,” he says. “When we’re engaged early, we can add so much more value.”

Structural steel is a significant portion of total project cost, typically representing 10 to 15 percent of contract value on commercial and industrial builds. It deserves to be treated with the same strategic importance at the design table as any other major cost driver. The expertise fabricators bring, grounded in real workshop conditions, live market intelligence, and years of practical problem-solving, is a resource the industry is not yet fully using. That is the opportunity. Not a small one.