If you feel that you’re expenses for welding services are consuming an unusually large amount of your project’s budget, then perhaps your partner welding company might not be making a conscious effort on optimising their processes and minimising costs. To verify, observe if your welding partner is doing the following:

They should advise on eliminating unnecessary designs. A good example is trading off welded handles for slit handles in a box -that’s less welding and metal resources.
Providers of general welding services should be able to streamline their job to the other processes. Welding must be accounted for in the design – understanding that welding may greatly adjust and distort the product.
A good welding company understands the science behind welding. That is, heating metal may shrink, move and distort parts of the product. In fact, suppliers may deliberately assemble parts with errors knowing that welding will compensate for this.
Welding equipment downtimes must be minimised, otherwise this can result in unproductive time costs for both you and your fabrication partners. To effectively reduce downtimes welding companies should use the appropriate filler metal packages and schedule maintenance.

Your welding contractor should make your budget goals and quality of work its priority. Start searching for the best welding partner who can do both general welding or the more specialised pipe welding jobs. Ask them further about how they can help you lessen welding costs.