The drawing office:
fourteen people,
four on intake only

The first person to read your drawing is not a salesperson. It is the person who will later tell the workshop what to cut — and the list they write is free.

Everything described here happens in our own factory in Foshan, working 304 and 316L stainless steel.

Engineers and detailers: 14
Intake team: 4
First answer: 48 h
Review rounds: 2 included

Who reads your drawing first

Not a salesperson. The person who will later tell the workshop what to cut.

Four people work on intake only. Their job is not to price your job — it is to find the places where it cannot be built as drawn, and to write those down in a list you can read.

That list is what arrives within 48 hours. It is the same list whether you place an order or not, which is why it is worth reading even if you are only comparing suppliers.

What the intake list looks like

Details that cannot be folded in one piece at the thickness shown
Junctions where two trades will both assume the other closes the gap
Places where the drawing gives no tolerance, and we have to assume one
Finish references that will not survive the application — an exterior mirror, for example
Anything that will be discovered on site if it is not decided now

How the fourteen are split

Group	People	What they own
Intake	4	Reading new drawings, writing the 48-hour question list, quoting scope
Detailers	7–8	Shop drawings, 1:5 nodes, part numbering, install sequence
Trial-fit liaison	1–2	Turning drawings into a floor layout the trial crew can work from
QC interface	1	Making sure what is drawn can actually be measured after welding

Fourteen is not a large team for this work. A lobby with 300 unique parts needs most of it for two to three weeks. That is why we quote a schedule per job instead of promising a fixed one.

Why step one is 48 hours and not a week

Intake is a separate team

The four people who read new drawings do nothing else, so a new job is not queued behind a project in production.

If skippedA drawing waits behind the drawings of a job already sold, and the first answer takes ten days.

The answer is a list, not a price

You get the problem list first. The price follows once we agree on what the job is.

If skippedA price is given against a drawing nobody has questioned, and the questions arrive after the order.

We say what we assumed

Every assumption is written down, so a wrong one is your decision to reverse, not our mistake to hide.

If skippedAssumptions stay invisible until the parts do not fit.