From 5 suppliers per RFQ to 180 — without chaos.

Steeline fabricates structural steel for infrastructure projects. Program deadlines are contractual, and the project procurement team historically sourced each package from five or six known fabricators — a pool small enough that a single capacity crunch put the schedule at risk.

Expanding the pool manually meant weeks of calls, site visits, and capability guesswork the schedule could not absorb.

The team started running discovery per package on Sourceby — matching on process, capacity band, certification, and geography instead of personal networks. Each RFQ went to a matched set that had already been filtered for capability, not to everyone with a website.

• Discovery runs per package, not per relationship
• Matched shortlists arrive with a reason for each supplier
• The event workspace keeps responses comparable as the bidder count grows

Structural fabrication RFQs that once reached 5 suppliers now reach an average of 180 matched manufacturers. Average quoted price fell 24% on packages opened to the wider pool, and cycle time held at 12 days — because the structured event absorbed the added volume instead of the team's inboxes.

Widen the pool one package type at a time, and keep the invitation criteria explicit — process, capacity, certs — so the shortlist stays defensible. The value is not bidder count for its own sake; it is seeing quotes from capable shops you would never have called.