BCSA News and Insights
President's Column May 2019
13/05/2019
Category: President's Column
This magazine provides engineers, architects, main contractors and clients with an enormous amount of information, technical guidance, news and case studies every month. It also showcases structural steelwork and shows the industry the range of benefits that designing and building in steel can bring.
Steel's high strength-to weight ratio delivers the most efficient designs and allows for the design of longer, flexible internal column-free spaces. It also delivers spectacular buildings and structures with ease. Steel buildings are highly adaptable and flexible, offering future-proofed design solutions.
Steel is the most cost-effective framing material for buildings and structures of all types. Cost savings in steel buildings start at the foundations, where the loads imposed by a steel frame are up to 50% less than those of a concrete alternative.AECOM's most recent cost study shows that on a typical city centre office building, the frame and upper floors cost of the cellular steel composite beam and slab option was 7% lower than the concrete alternative.
Steel construction is also fast. It gives the earliest start on-site and earliest possible pay back on investment, with time related savings amounting to between 3% and 5% of the overall project value. Accurate offsite fabrication eliminates time-wasting, quality issues and reworking on-site, making way for other critical path operations. And just-in-time deliveries are sequenced with the overall construction programme.
Quality assurance runs throughout the steel construction supply chain, delivering high-quality finished buildings. Steel sections are tested, certified, and CE Marked before delivery, and fabrication processes are quality assured and fully CE Marked. 3D BIM models combined with automatic fabrication systems then deliver precision-engineered components to tight tolerances.
More is understood about the behaviour of steel in fire than any other construction material, and it is well known that steel performs well in fire. Advanced design and analysis techniques avoid over-specification of fire protection requirements.
Steel is the world's most recycled material and 99% of structural steel used in the UK is either re-used or recycled. In fact, steel is multicycled, meaning that it can be used again and again without any loss of quality. In addition, studies show that almost all steel-framed buildings can provide optimal thermal mass.
And then there are the individual project-by-project benefits that using a BCSA steelwork contractor brings to clients and main contractors. BCSA members are pre-assessed across many different aspects which means that clients and contractors can be assured they have the specialist experience and qualifications for the job.
Tom Outteridge, BCSA President
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08/04/2019
President's Column April 2019
Most of us already know that the government wants construction and infrastructure projects to incorporate greater levels of offsite manufacturing. But more recently, government has said that it also wants to take a more standardised approach to design, including componentisation. They refer to this as a platforms approach.With the majority of the value add for structural steel already occurring offsite - in some cases up to 90% the structural steelwork sector is well placed to be an early...
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23/05/2019
British Steel Statement
It has been announced that British Steel has gone into compulsory liquidation. The company continues with business as usual while the Official Receiver looks for a buyer. The appointment of the Official Receiver creates a period of stability while a new buyer is sought for the trading business. BCSA's first thoughts are with British Steel employees. We are hopeful that this key part of the UK's proud industrial heritage can be saved.The UK structural steelwork sector is in good shape. Demand...