Background
A regional steel fabricator engaged Advastar after several years of outsourcing delegated connection design to an outside engineering consultancy. Volume had grown to the point where the arrangement was costing both money and schedule, with shop drawings frequently returning marked up and detailing sitting idle while engineering questions were resolved.
The Challenge
Bringing connection design in-house required an engineer with genuine depth in connection detailing and AISC provisions, not a general structural designer who had touched connections occasionally. The fabricator also needed the engineering and detailing functions to sit together, which meant recruiting detailers at the same time. Software depth mattered more than usual: the firm intended to standardize on IDEA StatiCa and Tekla, and candidates who had seen those tools once were of no use. Volume was growing but not yet certain enough to justify permanent detailing headcount.
The Solution
Advastar recruited the connection engineer first, screening on AISC knowledge and on work personally sealed rather than checked and testing IDEA StatiCa depth through specific questions about connection types the fabricator regularly builds. Two Tekla detailers were then added so that engineering and detailing operated as one group under a single set of conventions. Because sustained volume was not yet proven, both detailing roles were filled contract-to-hire, giving the fabricator a decision point once the order book was clearer.
The Outcome
Connection design now sits inside the business with engineering and detailing in the same group. Shop drawings stopped returning marked up within the first two projects, which removed the schedule risk that had prompted the change. Both detailers converted to permanent positions once volume held, and outsourced engineering spend has fallen to occasional overflow use.