Anyone thinking about a building project is faced with a lot of decisions, and the most basic is this: what should it be made of? Sure, the world is full of concrete buildings, and in some areas, brick is popular. Very occasionally, you will come across a wooden building, but again, that is usually in a location where timber construction is a local feature. In most areas, no, wood has had its day. But what about a material that, you could say, has not had its day yet, one that has not been used to its full potential? We’re talking about prefabricated steel buildings.
That word, prefabricated, has certain connotations from a time several decades ago when it meant a method of building designed to enable bulk housing to be put up in a hurry and on a low budget. The idea was sound enough, but the reality was poor quality made of inferior materials. But that is not the case anymore: not when we’re talking about pre-engineered steel structures. This is a different animal altogether. This is high-quality construction with the potential to serve any purpose from industrial and commercial to agricultural, social, and residential.
What is Traditional Construction Anyway?
Tradition is what has been going on for a long but unspecified time. Concrete has been around since Roman times, and other civilizations used it too, but it didn’t really catch on, and in most parts of the world, stone and wood became the usual materials. Concrete in the modern understanding of the word has been the standard building material since the early 20th century, largely due to its use in high-rise buildings. Even then, steel played an important role in the structures, but concrete was on the outside and so hogged the spotlight.
All traditions have a limited life, and they can unfairly obscure other methods and practices.
Examples of Traditional Construction
The Colosseum in Rome is an outstanding example of what might be termed a traditional building because it features a lot of concrete. While such iconic structures may be fondly regarded, they are beautiful ruins. Equally, there is a stylistic phenomenon called Brutalist architecture, which is concrete at its most ugly in many people’s opinion. The South Bank development in London, England, is a classic example of this, being the kind of “art” that most of us see nothing attractive in. But you could call it traditional.
Traditional Construction Advantages and Disadvantages
You know what traditional building sites are like: they’re noisy, dusty, dangerous, and they seem to go on forever. When is that concrete mixer going to shut up for good? How long does it take to build a few walls? When is that ugly scaffolding going to be taken away? When can this neighborhood get back to being a pleasant place again?
People build with concrete blocks because it’s what has been going on for decades now, and the thinking is that if it was good enough for previous generations, it’s good enough for us. And it’s true, there are a lot of success stories around, even if concrete is now being pushed out of the picture by glass in a lot of buildings. Concrete blocks are solid, dependable, and immovable: you know where you are with traditional construction.
But it is also expensive and slow, and the two feed off each other: the expense is ramped up by the length of time it takes for a “traditional” building to emerge from that scaffolding cage (which in itself is expensive, so the sooner you can dispense with it, the better).
Prefab vs Traditional Construction Cost
We’ve looked at the interminable hurly burly of the traditional building site. Now imagine you’re making a prefabricated steel structure. There is an element of modular construction here, which means making parts in advance, somewhere else, and bringing them to the site to be assembled quickly and simply (although with a lot of skill involved). The girders and beams that will make the frame are cut to size at the factory and delivered to the site to be bolted together — and swiftly, you have the frame. Then the interlocking panels are put together to make walls and the roof in an incredibly short time, and before you know it, you have your shell, your basic building. The construction crew has done their part and doesn’t have to be there anymore, so their part in the overall cost is over.
Time is money and if you can get the builders done and paid relatively quickly, you can get on with the rest of the project, the part that turns it into your own tailor-made building.
