For most people this stays just a pipe dream because they get the wrong people in for a quote. Builders don’t know the ins and outs of designing a stair, so they up the price so they can get a specialist to supply them. Carpenters design and build you a timber stair but are lost when it comes to glass and steel. Steelworkers will put you in a nice stair and balustrade, but it will look industrial with an industrial price tag. All these trades will quote high, and that’s what puts most people off.

But  all’s not lost. The key is simply to manage the project yourself. Get the best people in for each component part. That way they remain happy doing what they do best, and are not spooked into overpricing. All you need to have to achieve this is a superb drawing done by someone who’s lived and breathed staircase design. And that’s where I come in!

Send me an email with your questions or send details of your pipe dreams to quotes at design-in-steel.co.uk and I’ll see what I can do.

What’s of further concern to those working within the steel industries is their statement that “it may take 10 years before trade is back to 2009 levels”.

See the full story here.

Raw materials are an indicator of general industry health

If Corus is suffering; it’s only because we are. In the steel industry we have the unique priviledge of having only one major UK steel supplier. That means we can easily see how well we’re doing, based on how well Corus is doing. In other industries that’s more difficult to see because we have to collate data from lots of suppliers. What these job cuts mean for us is that production is down in a major way. And for every steel worker there are probably two or three workers elsewhere in the industry who will be let go too. Just think about how much steel just one steel-plant worker produces, and how many other people that steel affects: Transporters, Stockists, Fabricators, Draughtsmen, Engineers, Erectors, Support staff… and that’s just within the Structural Steel fabrication business.

Statistics of doom

Other statistics have been pointing to this for some time. Going by the UK Steel Key Statistics 2009 report, steel deliveries to UK stockholders halved between the beginning and end of 2008.

Is there a solution for the steel industry?

So the big question is: what do we do about this? Do we just wait for half of our jobs to just disappear? There seems to be no easy answer. The difficult answer is that we all have to tighten our belts. If there is half as much work around, there is half as much money around, which either means half as many jobs, or we all have to take cuts in pay or work less hours to spread the money across more people.

There’s an AEC industry report due out on 1st July which hopes to set out the way forward. Hopefully it includes a word for the steel industry. You can register your interest in the report here: Thriving in the downturn report.

09 Jun 2009 Birmingham
14 Sep 2009 London
18 Nov 2009 Wilmslow

See the website for details

Below is a table showing which Eurocode documents will replace BS 5950:1 which covers the majority of general steelwork design. As you can see, the one BS document is replaced by four Eurocodes. And that’s not the only curious difference. For each Eurocode there’s also a National Annex which converts the general European code back into a UK code again. So UK engineers will have to buy a document to convert our way of working into European; and then another document to convert it back to British.

And what do we have to pay for the priviledge of such a convoluted way of working? Over three times as much as before, as you can see from the following graph. The graph shows the cost for BSI members, and guess what? Non members get to pay double.

An unnecessary evil?

The SCI in February brought out the results of their member survey on the adoption of the Eurocodes. Over 75% of respondents said they would only move to Eurocodes “if forced to do so” or never! That’s a very significant majority indeed. And when we consider that the membership of the SCI includes just about every large consultant or contractor involved with steel, it just about amounts to a full scale mutiny against the Eurocodes.

Steelcase saves time and money with Google SketchUp

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