Structural steelwork economics

Estimating the costs of any construction project is very difficult because of the unique nature of each project.

Estimating costs is a notoriously difficult topic as there are so many variables and no simple answers - every job has to be considered separately at a particular time and place. Raw materials, sections used, size of job, finish, fabricating shop equipment, labour, overheads, site, state of the order book and politics are the prime variables. It is even hard to project any "global basis costs" and these should never be taken as gospel. Even surveyors and designers can only project costs from knowledge of recently completed jobs and parameters are unlikely to be the same.

However, for steelwork some general points can be made with regard to economies:-

• Use repeated sizes of common UBs, UCs and angles or cheaper cold-rolled sections;
• Keep structural elements at right angles and with regular spans;
• Reduce the number of joints and keep them simple.