FlowMarket
Where to find welding services: FlowMarket is a B2B sourcing network powered by an AI agent. You describe the work — material, thickness, joint, position, the standard it must satisfy and whether it is workshop or site work — and the agent matches you with welding companies and contract welders qualified for it, then requests quotes, qualification evidence and availability so you can compare them in one place.
Sourcing welding services
Buying welding services is different from buying a welded part. Here you are buying qualified capacity — welders, procedures and often a company approval — usually because the work is on your site, on your existing equipment, or in a volume or timeframe your own shop cannot absorb.
That distinction matters when you write the enquiry. A fabricator quoting a finished assembly works from your drawing; a welding contractor works from your situation. Describe the material and its condition, the joint and position, what the structure does, the standard that applies and what access looks like, and you will get quotes that survive contact with the job.
Qualification is the first filter, not a formality
For anything load-bearing or pressure-retaining, the welder must hold a current qualification covering your material group, thickness range, position and process, and the company must hold a qualified welding procedure — a WPS backed by a WPQR — for that combination. A superb welder without a procedure covering your case cannot sign the work off, and no amount of goodwill on the day fixes that.
So ask for the evidence before the price. Welder qualifications to ISO 9606, procedures qualified to ISO 15614, and where relevant company certification: ISO 3834 for welding quality requirements, EN 1090 with an execution class for structural steel and aluminium, and the pressure-equipment route for vessels and pipework. Ask specifically whether the certificates cover *your* material and thickness, because the ranges are narrower than people assume.
The kinds of work under one name
- Structural site welding — steelwork, platforms and supports, governed by EN 1090 and an execution class agreed in advance.
- Pipework and pressure welding — process and utility lines, often TIG root and coded welders, with NDT extent set by the code.
- Repair and maintenance welding — cracked castings, worn shafts, damaged frames, where the material's history is half the problem.
- Hardfacing and cladding — wear-resistant deposits on crusher parts, screws, buckets and rolls, extending life rather than restoring shape.
- Specialist alloys — aluminium, duplex, titanium, nickel alloys, each with a much smaller pool of genuinely qualified companies.
- Overflow production welding — extra hands for a batch or a shutdown, usually working to your procedures in your shop.
Repair welding needs the history, not just the part
A repair on unknown material is a gamble. Old castings, weathered structures and equipment repaired twice before all behave differently from new plate, and the honest contractors ask what it is, how it failed and what has been done to it before quoting. If nobody asks, that is information about the quote.
Where the material is unknown or critical, expect positive material identification, a preheat and interpass plan, and sometimes post-weld heat treatment — and expect them to appear as line items. A repair that skips them is cheaper on paper and often cracks in the same place, which is how a shutdown repeats.
Distortion and inspection are the two cost surprises
Heat moves metal. On long fabrications and thin sections the sequence, fixturing and interpass control decide whether the finished item is within tolerance, and straightening afterwards is slow and uncertain. Ask how the contractor plans to control distortion; a clear answer usually means they have been caught by it before.
Inspection is the other item that expands. Agree the extent of visual, PT, MT, UT or RT up front, who carries it out, whether it is independent, and what happens when something is rejected. "NDT as required" in a quote means the number is not in the price yet, and the difference between 10% and 100% radiography on a pipe spool is substantial.
Site work: access is half the price
For on-site work, the welding is often the smaller part of the job. Access, scaffolding, permits, hot-work precautions, isolation, confined-space arrangements, working hours and standby cover shape the cost more than the metres of weld. Describe the environment honestly and quotes become comparable.
Shutdown work adds a further dimension: availability. A contractor who can put three coded welders on your site during your window is worth more than one who is cheaper next month, and the only way to know is to state the window in the enquiry and ask for a commitment against it.
How the AI agent matches suppliers
The agent reads your requirement rather than your keywords. It searches the FlowMarket network and connected industrial directories together, scores every candidate on how well it answers what you described — material group and process, qualification and certification, site versus workshop capability, NDT arrangements, region and response time — and drops anything that does not clear the bar. Each match comes back with a plain-language reason, so a general fabricator and a coded pipe-welding contractor never arrive looking the same.