Reporting for Engineering From RFQ Turnaround to Backlog in Shop Hours

Engineering and fabrication firms have a sales process shaped by two constraints: quotations depend on technical input from people who are busy, and delivery depends on capacity that is finite. Reporting that ignores either is describing a business that does not exist. These five connect the enquiry desk to the shop floor.

RFQ to quotation turnaround

Time from enquiry to a technically credible quotation, by job family, as a median and a worst case. It decides where estimating support goes. A bad number is a long worst case rather than a slow median, which almost always means one engineer or one missing input is holding up a subset of enquiries.

Hit rate by client, job type and value band

Quotations issued against orders received, segmented properly. It decides which enquiries are worth quoting at all. A bad number is a client with a long quoting history and almost no orders, which usually means your quotation is being used to validate somebody else's price.

Technical clarification ageing

Quotations stalled awaiting a drawing, a specification, a measurement or a client decision, separated by who is holding it up. It decides the follow up list. A bad number is a large share of pipeline stalled on the client side and still being forecast as live, which is how engineering forecasts become fiction.

Order backlog by delivery month

Confirmed orders arranged by expected delivery month, in value and in shop or engineering hours. It decides what to sell next. A bad number is a full month next to an empty one, which is a selling problem disguised as a planning problem and is correctable if it is seen early enough.

Loss reasons and estimation accuracy

Why orders went elsewhere, from a closed list, read alongside quoted against executed cost on completed work. It decides pricing and the estimating basis. A bad number is losing on price while estimation accuracy shows systematic under recovery, which means the price you regret losing was probably a price you should not have offered.

RFQ turnaround. It is derived from dates, it sits at the point where enquiries are won or lost before pricing is even discussed, and the fix is usually operational rather than commercial. Backlog in hours is second and requires cooperation from works planning, which is worth the effort because it makes the sales pipeline useful to the rest of the business.

Each of these should produce an action for the estimation desk, the sales team or works planning. Reports that produce only a percentage for a monthly review are not earning their place.

Every RFQ logged on arrival with client, job family and value band, including the ones you decline to quote. Quotation issue dates recorded automatically rather than remembered. Clarification status held as a field with a named holder. Expected delivery month maintained on confirmed orders. Estimated hours captured at quotation so backlog can be expressed in capacity. Loss reasons from a closed list, entered by the person who ran the enquiry rather than assumed later.

Quotations issued per month, enquiry counts and a revenue chart against target are produced in most firms and change little. Quotation counts reward quoting anything that arrives, which is expensive when each quotation consumes engineering time. Enquiry volume reflects the market. Revenue against target is an outcome. Keep the reports that name a stalled quotation, a delivery month with no load, or a job family that keeps running over.

It does not carry out detailed estimating, hold bills of material, plan production, control the shop floor, manage purchase or dispatch, or keep your books. Those remain in your estimating and ERP systems. This is the commercial layer that decides what those systems will be asked to build.

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