Our company has experience with the design of multi-story cold-formed steel commercial buildings, residential structures, and exterior wall framing in commercial buildings. Our experience is with both traditional manufactured cold formed sections, and custom rolled steel such as fabricated with the Howick (www.howickltd.com) system.
The design of cold-formed steel using traditional manufactured systems requires not just calculations of the members for strength. It requires a knowledge of how the steel is erected and the different products that are available that can speed the erection of the buildings and lower costs.
We have worked with various brand names of systems, such as ClarkDietrich (www.clarkdietrich.com) and others that our clients prefer.
The original work we’ve done with the traditional manufactured systems has been on exterior walls for commercial and educational facilities (warehouses, schools, office buildings).
A simplified system is to custom fabricate members using Howick or other brand rolling machines. This system was developed in New Zealand and allows you to custom fabricate a building by sections.
Each piece is rolled and cut to size and is assembled with others into panels, trusses, or other structural members.
As a system, it generates much less waste than traditional cold-formed steel. It also allows shop fabrication of wall panels and trusses that can be delivered to the site and assembled.
This speeds up construction significantly and can save money and time.
