Why Use Pre-Engineered Steel for Buildings? Part 1 - Michael Homes Inc. Skip to content

Why Use Pre-Engineered Steel for Buildings? Part 1

Why Use Pre-Engineered Steel for Buildings? Part 1

Compared to conventional structures, custom metal building systems offer many clear advantages.

For starters, pre-engineered steel buildings are made with custom sized beams, in thickness and shape to match the specific needs of your building. Traditional steel buildings use standard-sized I-beams, and If the next size down is too small, and the next size up is too big, you’ll end up with a bunch of expensive extra steel that provides absolutely no benefit to your building.

Pre-engineered steel buildings are much faster to erect, as a pre-engineered building frame is essentially pre-fabricated and ready to go together. That’s simply not the case with traditional steel building materials. Traditional Steel buildings also typically end up with flat roofs, which are both expensive to build, and costly down the road as maintenance costs pile up.

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Why choose steel for your next building project?

Steel has many design advantages in addition to economic, environmental and health benefits.

Design: Not only does steel work well on its own, it works well in combination with other materials such as glass, brick, stone and concrete, providing a wide variety of aesthetic design options. Steel building systems are designed to meet the seismic, snow and wind loads required by your specific building code. Steel building components are manufactured to precise and uniform shapes with consistent quality and exacting tolerances.

Environmental: Steel has green building advantages. It is virtually 100 percent recyclable with high scrap value so it does not usually end up in a landfill like other construction materials. Depending on the nature of the project, metal buildings will contain between 25 percent and 60 percent recycled steel by weight.

Economic: Steel has one of the highest strength to weight ratios of all building materials, which means that steel frames can span wider distances thus creating larger open spaces for layout flexibility. Wider spans in steel buildings reduce the number of footings and labor required, which can reduce construction costs. To help reduce energy consumption and lower operating costs, the interlocking design of insulated metal panels eliminates thermal breaks and creates an integrated system providing strength, thermal efficiency and attractiveness.