Picking a fabricator. Questions that matter.

1. Who stamps the drawings?

"We have an engineer" can mean several things. Ask:

• Is the engineer registered with PEO (Professional Engineers Ontario)? Verify here.
• Is the engineer on staff full-time, or is the design subbed to a third-party engineering firm?
• Whose name will be on the stamp? Get it before signing.
• How many active projects does that engineer have at the moment? (Bandwidth matters.)

White-labelled engineering — where a fabricator routes drawings through a stamp-for-hire engineer — is legal but introduces risk: the engineer hasn't been on your site, doesn't know your building, and can't answer questions during install.

2. Is the welding CWB W47.1 certified?

Canadian Welding Bureau W47.1 is the certification standard for welded steel construction in Canada. It's a real audit — the fabricator's procedures, qualifications, and ongoing quality system are reviewed by the CWB. A non-CWB shop may still produce good welds; the certification is what proves it.

Ask:

• What division of CWB W47.1 — Division 1, Division 2.1, Division 2.2? (Division 1 is most rigorous.)
• Are welders CWB-qualified or just "experienced"?
• Is per-project weld traceability provided as part of the deliverable?

For permit-bound work in Ontario, CWB W47.1 isn't optional — building inspectors will ask.

3. Who installs?

Many fabricators subcontract install to specialty erectors. That's not inherently bad — some erectors are excellent — but the failure mode is real: communication gaps between fabricator and installer cause more install delays than any other single factor we see.

Ask:

• Is the install crew employed by the fabricator or subcontracted?
• If subcontracted: which company, and what's the relationship history?
• Who's the single point of contact during install? Whose phone do I call?
• Does the install crew see the drawings during fabrication, or only at install?

4. What's the engineering-to-fab handoff?

This is the question most buyers don't ask, and it's where projects come unstuck. The fabricator's drawing accuracy depends on what the engineer specified. Ask:

• Does the engineer provide member sizes only, or full shop-detail drawings (cut lists, weld schedules, hole patterns)?
• Who handles the field-measure verification before fabrication starts?
• Who's responsible for connection design — the engineer, the fabricator's detailer, or someone else?

5. References for the specific work type

"Have you done this before" is too soft a question. Sharper:

• "Three projects similar in scale and load class to ours, in the last 18 months. Names, locations, contact at the client."
• "What's the most recent project that didn't go well, and what happened?" (How a fabricator answers this is informative — perfect-record claims usually mean they don't track honestly.)

6. What's the failure mode?

Best question to ask any fabricator. "If something goes wrong on this project, what's most likely?" The answer reveals what they actually know about their own process:

• Vague answers ("we don't usually have problems") = inexperience or sales talk.
• Specific answers about real risks (slab capacity surprises, lead-time slippage on galvanizing, tight access at install) = the fabricator has seen the work before and is honest about it.

7. Insurance & WSIB

Less interesting to ask about than the others, but non-negotiable. Get a Certificate of Insurance and current WSIB clearance before signing. Most B2B fabricators carry these as standard; a balking response on this question is a red flag.

What we'd flag in our own answers

• Span Line is small. We're not the cheapest in every quote; we're rarely the most expensive. We come in mid-pack on most comparisons.
• Our engineering is in-house, not subbed. CWB W47.1 Division 1. Install is our crew.
• We don't claim a perfect record. We've had projects we'd run differently with hindsight; we'll talk through them on a reference call.
• The most common thing that surprises us at site measure is slab capacity in converted retail / office buildings — we look for it now, but we don't always find it before drawings if the building documentation is thin.

If those are the kinds of answers you want from a fabricator, we'd like to talk. If you want certainty and zero risk, no fabricator in Ontario will give you that honestly.