Security Cages for a Custom Fabrication and Design-Build Shop: Texas Metal Equipment

A design-build shop is two operations sharing one floor

Texas Metal Equipment Company is a Texas design-build fabricator. Founded in the 1940s and operating from the Tomball area north of Houston, the company designs, fabricates and installs commercial foodservice equipment and custom stainless steel and laboratory fixtures — counters, tables, hoods, sinks, casework and the one-off pieces that architects specify and nobody stocks. In 2026 the company bought a wire mesh security enclosure from us for its Texas facility.

We are publishing the problem class, not the project. The deal record does not describe what goes inside the enclosure, and this page does not invent it: no contents, layout, dimensions, hardware or site detail from this customer appears below. What follows is what we see across custom fabrication and design-build shops generally, and how we specify enclosures for them.

The pattern is consistent. A shop like this runs two operations in one building: a fabrication operation that cuts, forms, welds and polishes, and a project operation that receives bought-out equipment, stages it by job and ships it to a construction site on a schedule someone else controls. Both need the same floor, the same forklift, the same dock. Neither wants to be responsible for the other. A welded wire security enclosure is how most shops finally draw the line — a locked room you can see into, built from panels instead of walls, that can move when the shop moves.

The reason mesh wins over a stud-and-drywall room is not price alone. A fabrication floor is a changing floor: a new press brake arrives, a weld cell moves, a job needs twice the staging space for six weeks. A bolted panel enclosure can be lengthened, shortened, relocated or taken down and rebuilt in another bay. Drywall cannot, and drywall also blocks the light, the sprinkler pattern and the line of sight that a supervisor relies on.

Visibility is a feature, not a compromise

Shops often ask whether a solid-panel room would be more secure. Occasionally, yes — but mesh buys something a solid room cannot: anyone walking the aisle can see whether the cage is in order, whether a job kit is complete and whether the door is actually latched. Most shrinkage in a fabrication shop is not a break-in. It is small quantities walking off over months, and the fix is a boundary that makes removal visible and deliberate rather than casual.

Job staging: the part most cages get wrong

A design-build shop does not ship products. It ships projects — a kitchen, a lab, a bar — and a project is complete or it is not. That makes staging, not storage, the real function of the enclosure. Parts arrive from a dozen vendors across several weeks, get checked against a submittal list, and then have to sit untouched until a truck is loaded in installation order.

“Untouched” is the hard part. On an open floor, a staged job is a parts department: someone needs a coupling for a different job, the staged one is right there, and the shortage is discovered on site three weeks later with a crew standing around. A caged staging zone converts that from a habit into a decision that leaves a record.

Give every job its own lane

Inside the enclosure, divide by job, not by part type. A lane, bay or pallet position per active project, labeled with the job number, lets anyone see at a glance what is short. Pair it with a simple rule — nothing leaves a job lane without the project manager moving it — and the cage starts doing paperwork for you. Shops that stage by part type instead end up picking from someone else’s job every week.

Plan for the peak, not the average. Staging volume is lumpy: two large jobs overlapping can double the space you need for a month. Modular panels make that survivable, because a bay can be added and later removed instead of designed around a worst case forever.

Two more practical details that decide whether a staging cage gets used. First, put a receiving table or bench immediately outside the door so deliveries get checked in before they go in — a cage full of unverified boxes is a cage full of assumptions. Second, allow room to load in reverse installation order. If the last item off the truck has to come out first, the aisle inside the enclosure has to allow it, and that usually means one full pallet-width lane kept open.

The last row matters in shops that are already tight. Instead of a freestanding room, mesh can close off selected bays of existing racking — see pallet rack security enclosures for how that is built and where it fails. It is not a substitute for a staging room, but it is an excellent way to secure slow-moving high-value stock without taking a square foot of floor.

Three site facts are worth measuring before anyone quotes: clear height to the lowest obstruction (not the roof deck), the actual swing or slide path of the door with a pallet on a jack, and the floor. A shop floor that has been cut, patched, sloped to a drain or covered in epoxy changes how panels are anchored and whether a base channel is needed.

Choosing the enclosure: panels, mesh and ceilings

Shop environments are harder on enclosures than warehouses are. Panels get hit by carts, leaned on, welded near and cleaned around. A few specification choices carry most of the durability.

Ceilings are where shop projects most often get revised after the fact. If the enclosure holds small high-value items and stands in an area people can reach from a mezzanine, ladder or rack, an open top is an open door. Our notes on wire mesh cage ceilings cover clear-span limits and how the top interacts with sprinkler coverage — read that before deciding to leave the top open to save panels.

Finish matters less than shops expect indoors: a standard powder coat is fine. Outdoors, in a wash-down area or near a coastal site, galvanized or stainless hardware becomes a real consideration.

Code, sprinklers and the constraints that are not negotiable

Enclosures inside an existing building touch several code areas. None of them are exotic, and all of them are cheaper to address on the drawing than after installation. The authority having jurisdiction — your local building and fire officials — makes the final call, and the specifics depend on your occupancy, sprinkler design and adopted code editions.

• Egress. An enclosure cannot obstruct a required exit, exit access or the path to it, and a room people occupy needs its own way out. Designing the cage around existing exit routes is routine; discovering the conflict at inspection is not.
• Sprinkler coverage and clearance. Solid decks, shelving and cage ceilings all affect spray patterns, and stock height relative to sprinkler heads is regulated. Share the sprinkler layout with your supplier before finalizing a ceiling.
• Lighting and ventilation. Closing an area often moves it out from under the existing light fixtures or an air supply, which is a working-condition problem as well as an inspection one.
• Anchoring and seismic design. Freestanding panel systems are anchored to the slab; anchor pattern and bracing depend on height, ceiling weight and the seismic design category for the site. Shops that skip anchoring get racking panels.
• Electrical clearance. Panels, disconnects and control cabinets need their working space kept clear — a mesh wall in front of a panel is a violation even though you can see through it.

For definitive requirements, read the codes themselves rather than a supplier’s summary: model code and standards text is published by the International Code Council and the National Fire Protection Association, and workplace requirements are published by OSHA. Then confirm interpretation locally.

Planning an enclosure for your own shop

Bring four things to the first conversation and most projects can be quoted accurately in one pass: a list of what is going inside, the space you think it occupies, the clear height and floor condition, and how material has to move in and out. From there the decisions are panel style, height, ceiling, door type and hardware.

Sizing tends to be the sticking point. Shops under-size staging and over-size storage. The cage sizing and configuration guide walks through measuring for pallet lanes, shelving and door clearances, and the security cage cost guide explains what drives price — panel count, ceiling, door type and installation conditions — so a budget number is not a guess.

We supply and install enclosures nationwide from our Salt Lake City headquarters, including across Texas. Every project starts with a layout, not a part number: send us a floor sketch and the list, and we will come back with a configuration, a drawing and a price. Start at the security cages and wire mesh partitions hub to compare enclosure types, or request a quote and talk it through with someone who has specified these in working shops.