Steel dominates the commercial buildings market

Accompanying this issue of New Steel Construction is a brochure providing an overview of the commercial buildings market and how structural steelwork continues to be the preferred framing solution.

Steel Construction: Commercial Buildings is the latest in a series of publications from the steel sector that keeps construction professionals abreast of developments that will help them in design and construction of steel-framed buildings.

Steel frames are selected for around 70% of multi-storey commercial buildings in the UK and steel has proven for many years to be the most popular material for architects to express their visions.

Many of the most iconic structures in our urban landscape would not have been possible using any other framing material.

Case studies of real projects that are under construction illustrate many of the reasons why steel frames are consistently the preferred market choice for multi-storey buildings. The cost advantages of steel buildings are explained using up-to-date cost data from model studies of the sort of buildings that are actually being constructed in the UK.

The case studies also show why steel’s inherent advantages as a construction material consistently deliver savings on construction programmes. Steel has been described as the ultimate sustainable construction material and its many sustainability advantages are explained.

Steel construction is an exemplar modern method of construction thanks largely to just in time delivery of offsite fabricated steel, which the recent Farmer Review highlighted as a key to the construction industry’s survival.

Constructional steelwork has always been fabricated in factory controlled workshop conditions and brought to site when needed for safe erection.

More sophisticated use of developing techniques like Building Information Modelling (BIM) will be another key to a successful future and the steel sector was an early adopter of computer numerically controlled fabrication techniques whose software has been BIM ready for years. Seamless transition to BIM has been achieved by design and construction teams on steel-framed buildings.

The brochure can also be downloaded at: www.steelconstruction.info/Steel_construction_news

Principal Place in central London, like most commercial developments, requires large column-free floorplates