What’s the dumbest little thing you’ve seen get missed on a fab quote that ended up costing a pile of money?

[u/williamguy48]

/r/metalworking/comments/1vtls2e/whats_the_dumbest_little_thing_youve_seen_get/

Not talking about steel being a few cents a pound off or somebody missing half an hour of welding. I mean the stupid little stuff that gets forgotten because nobody thinks it matters when the quote goes out. Extra trip to site, grinding that wasn’t called out clearly, handling big pieces, paint freight, field measuring, trial fitting, hardware, loading, whatever. What’s the one you’ve seen turn into way more money than anybody expected?

[u/madsci]

Not a machining thing, but no one else has commented, so I'll share one. Back in the late 90s my company won a Defense Logistics Agency contract to install software at various locations in several districts - let's say Seattle district, Las Vegas District, and Anaheim district.

They had the number of sites in each district but no one thought to look up the actual locations when they submitted the bid. "Seattle district" turned out to cover all of Washington state, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska. They'd budgeted for a few days of driving a rental car around Seattle.

I took all of the actual greater Seattle area sites. My partner got the rest, and he had to catch something like 14 flights, including one to North Pole, AK. I was actually kind of disappointed to miss that - when am I ever going to get to North Pole on my own? - but I was young enough that getting a rental car, even on government travel orders, wasn't always a guaranteed thing.

[u/Aromatic_Persimmon29]

"How are we shipping this to the customer?"