Structural steel: industry-wide and trade-specific

The topic of structural steel—as it relates to structural engineers—is vast and varied. To learn more about what aspects of the industry practitioners and industry experts are most concerned with, Structural Engineer hosted a roundtable discussion during the American Institute of Steel Construction’s 2007 NASCC—The Steel Conference, in New Orleans on April, 18, 2007. To balance the dialogue, several experts participated—including several practicing structural engineers, building materials suppliers, and others allied to the industry. (See "The Panel" below for a list of participants.)

The group debated many topics from industry-wide concerns to trade-specific trends; excerpts from the discussion are contained in this article.

Industry-wide concerns

WEST: I actually did do a little preparation, and I was casting around for a single word to convey my message, and I got that word this morning at breakfast, which is "collaboration." I’ve been observing the industry, as you can tell, for almost 40 years, and in the last six or eight years there’s been a lack of comity in the industry. There’s been friction among the participants. I think that is bad for the community individually, and it is bad for the community at large. We need to resolve that, and engineers, architects, suppliers, fabricators, erectors, and general contractors all need to figure out ways to work collaboratively. We have the knowledge, we have the skills, we have the abilities and so forth, and I think that we just need to mobilize that by working together. That’s the message that I brought pursuant to your invitation.

VENABLE: I’m especially appreciative of Mike’s comment on collaboration because we’re in the midstream of the flow. We’ve got people upstream from us—the architects, the engineers of record, the structural steel supplier, and of course I work for a secondary structural supplier—and downstream from us—the contractor, the erector, and the owner, who get the finished product. We have to collaborate with both upstream and downstream people to make sure we understand the engineer of record’s intent on his drawings and also to make sure the project is constructible.

The biggest hurdle for all joist suppliers is getting complete drawings that are correct from the engineer of record. Oftentimes we’re working off of a 60-percent set of drawings, just so the team can hold its slot in the schedule. Additionally, a lot of engineers specify secondary structural members for applications that really don’t fit. Many times there are better products, such as castellated beams, to do what the engineer is intending. A huge opportunity for collaboration lies in educating the engineers about the different products that they’re specifying.

GLAMANN: Those are very good points, especially Gerald’s last comment about getting the engineers educated. Our company has made strong efforts to visit several engineering firms at their offices and educate them on how to efficiently use our products. The more the engineer knows about the component, the better they can specify it. Of course, we need the accurate loads, what type of loads, and how they’re applied to the joists so that we can provide what the engineer specifies. We can supply the standard component 24K6, but we can also do a lot more. It just needs to be properly conveyed from the engineer to the supplier.

GOUPIL: So both of your organizations do a lot of education for engineers specifically on your products and how they should be properly used?

GLAMANN: Yes.

VENABLE: (Nods head affirmatively.)

GOUPIL: I have heard that same sentiment from many, many suppliers.

GLAMANN: If we can improve the teamwork, or the collaboration effort, it would put us all on the same side of the table trying to solve the problem—as opposed to being on opposite sides of the table with some friction trying to figure out what each other really needs.

VENABLE: That’s a great buzzword for this roundtable, collaboration.

WEST: To be fair, I didn’t think of it. I hailed down Don Engler from BDS Steel Detailers, Inc., at breakfast and got the word from him. So getting the word collaboration resulted from collaboration.

The whole community needs to understand the relationship of the various parties and also what they’re doing, why they’re asking these questions, why they need to be answered, and why timeliness is important.

RUBY: Another issue I have is the completeness of documents. Engineers have to really fight these days for the fee that is needed to do the job right. Because we’re a service industry and it’s a competitive market, every time I give a fee, someone else does, too, and their number may be ridiculously low. Well, I can’t provide the level of service that I want to provide for that price. So they get the job and then they issue incomplete drawings. That leads to questions.

I always like to refer to the old Fram oil filter TV commercial: "You can pay me now or you can pay me later." The point of the advertising slogan was to convince the customer that it is wise to "pay me now" by buying a new oil filter for a modest price so that that same customer doesn’t have to pay a large sum later to repair a damaged engine. Of course, what that corresponds to for us is convincing the owner to spend the time and relatively small amount of money on the engineering now in order to make good decisions and provide good details on completed drawings so that when he gets out in the field—where he’s really spending a lot of money—everything is correct and coordinated. Correct and coordinated drawings minimize requests for information (RFIs) and minimize coordination issues. But as an engineering industry, we have to educate owners and educate general contractors that it’s much cheaper to have the engineer spend a little bit more time and money to get these things right and to work these things out now, before anything is built. And this leads to building information modeling (BIM) where we can collaborate with other consultants; we can use a 3-D viewer such as Navisworks to perform clash detection and "see" where things are going wrong before any steel is up in the air. It’s much cheaper to figure that out in the office, before anything gets out in the field, where it costs a lot to fix.

There just seems to be this impression across the board: Engineers need to be efficient and cost-effective, which means lower fees. Well, those really don’t go hand-in-hand. So that’s a real struggle, I think, in the industry.

CARTER: There’s been a lot of work in the area of drawing completeness from organizations such as the Council of American Structural Engineers (CASE). In fact, CASE published A Guideline Addressing Coordination and Completeness of Structural Construction Documents.

We’ve talked a lot about collaboration. It seems to be the way things have to go if many of these issues are going to be solved, because any one player can create a problem. The owner can decide to make changes after everything has been designed, detailed, fabricated, and sometimes erected. The architect can be unaware of—shockingly unaware of—the impact of simple changes on cost and schedule. People may be playing games on the construction side. This is a problem that only gets solved when everybody works toward the outcome that works for everyone as a team. The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) is trying to encourage progress in this area through the formation of "steel teams." The theory is to approach the project as a team, rather than adversaries. And it has been shown to work very well if people want to do it. The drawback there is somebody has to take a leap of faith to negotiate the work. It is a leap of faith to understand that a better product and a better price can result.

VENABLE: From experience, we’ve taken that approach with a few customers, and it’s worked really well. Customers take a leap of faith on what they’re going to pay per ton for the joist and girder systems, and of course we can remain competitive because the headaches have just gone down tremendously. And it’s also helped with the education. I feel like one of the wood engineers from your earlier roundtable because that whole article focused on education (click here to see "Structural Engineer’s Roundtable: Wood frame construction: Challenges and opportunities," in the February 2007 issue of Structural Engineer), but education really has helped the structural steel people understand joists better. When we participate as part of the team, it’s been a big help.

WEST: Bouncing off Charlie’s comment about a leap of faith, the other leap of faith for all the people in this process is that their actions will pay off in the long run even though they may not be paying off in the short run. You have to take a really long horizon on some of this. You do something extra. As an engineer you make an extra drawing, or as a contractor you substitute a piece of material or whatever, and you don’t necessarily get a monetary payoff right then, but in the long run, these collaborative actions and the relationships among the parties have to pay off in the long run. People don’t forget positive collaboration experiences.

KULKARNI: One concern I have is that of education. Students learn design codes, but most of them don’t understand the building code because most of them are not exposed to it. This is important because the building code has a significant impact on how one designs a building.

It is also very important that a complete global perspective is taught to students. Many are afraid that Chinese and Indian markets are going to gobble up all of the construction materials, and that actually is happening. And what that means is that over the years we are going to depend on imports, and we don’t have any control over that situation. We cannot change the global market as structural engineers, but we can use that to our advantage if we know how to combine the materials efficiently into a composite system. There are a lot of opportunities for new technologies and building systems, but we are not being forced in that direction because resources are still relatively plentiful. So the problem with the education is the lack of understanding of the global market. However, I ultimately believe that rising to the challenges of the global market is what is going to keep us in business as structural engineers. How efficiently can we design our structures? There are so many ways.

GOUPIL: I like that point—that our challenge as designers is to think outside the box or the traditional systems to really leverage the strength of the materials so that we can come up with more efficient systems.

WEST: Hence, all the systems in the final occupied building have to be efficiently chosen and arranged, and it may be that one system in isolation may not look particularly effective, but in the overall completed project, it may. That means working across disciplines, working with MEP, working with the architectural designers, owners, et cetera, so that when all is said and done, the building is efficient.

One of the problems that we have as engineers is we don’t know all the costs, and we don’t know the costs of labor-intensive activities. We know how much steel costs: the raw product. We know how much pieces and parts cost, but we don’t have a really good handle on the labor costs of bringing systems together during the construction activity.

My comments pertain to the constructability discussion, and it is completely relative to understanding costs. The more information we as engineers can learn about that from the contractors, fabricators, and erectors, the bigger the improvement to our work.

Trade-specific trends

GOUPIL: What are the advancements, new steel technologies, or design processes that you’ve been privy to, involved in, or have been using recently that we should discuss?

CARTER: There are a lot being discussed and presented at this conference, including steel plate shear wall systems. This system is an alternative to a braced frame. There are also some advances in braced frame systems themselves, specifically with buckling-restrained braced frames (BRBF). Several manufacturers are finding success with BRBF brace devices that provide the same strength in compression as in tension. A confined core section provides the strength.

Another advancement in technology is a residential construction system that brings together steel framing elements with precast concrete floor elements. The manufacturer of these integral, proprietary systems has been selling the heck out of them. What is exciting, also, is that the manufacturer is continuing to innovate. They have engineers in the steel plate shear wall session wondering, "How could we integrate that into our system?" There are many of this kind of advancements where the market has called for it. Steel has always been strong in many markets, now we see steel making inroads into others, too, such as multi-story residential.

GLAMANN: Some of the new things include mixing different group types together. For example, The Steel Joist Institute has expanded some girder tables, and they are working on some expanded long-span tables where we can provide longer, deeper, heavier joists today than we used to. Also, there’s a special joist that combines a couple of things we’re talking about here called a composite joist. It’s been supplied in the past, but now the Steel Joist Institute is coming out with a specification. It’s been written and it’s in the final stages of being tweaked, so it should be out soon. The advantage is that you’re getting the composite action, but there’s no shoring needed. That’s another situation where some collaboration is going to be a whole lot cheaper in the end. We just need to get together on the same team and talk about this stuff up front.

Conclusion

VENABLE: Sticking with Mike’s collaboration theme, I think collaboration efforts can pollinate good relationships, and good relationships can foster efficiency, quality, and knowledge.

GLAMANN: I agree with that. For the engineer to provide excellent customer service to owners, we need to educate them and convince them that spending the time and money up front is going to pay off in the long run. That coupled with each person in the group, from the owner down to the erector, doing their part to take the leap of faith to build this stronger team, and a better project.

VENABLE: I like Jay’s reminder of the Fram oil filter. That was pretty good.

RUBY: Yes, it comes up a lot. It is kind of a repeating theme.

WEST: I’d just like to reiterate and remind everyone that as a community we have the skills, we have the education, we have the equipment, and we just need to bring that to bear and build great buildings.

RUBY: Another thing that we say in our office is that our work product is not our computer model, it’s not our structural analysis, and it’s not our drawings. It’s a constructed, serviceable, economical building delivered to the owner. Because by and large, most owners aren’t in the business of building buildings, they’re in the business of having a facility so that they can run their business. That’s the way we look at it: Yes, we issue drawings, do analysis, and work with fabricators and erectors to help them do their job; but, ultimately our work product has to be the completed, built, constructed facility. And as long as we keep our eye focused there, we’ll have successful projects. To make that happen, it has to be collaborative; it has to be team-oriented.

CARTER: My thought is that Mike gave us a good start with the word collaboration, and I’d like to suggest another important consideration—something Mike told me many years ago. He may remember. When we first started talking about all the problems with incomplete information, he said the solution is clear—just don’t bid those projects. And the lament that would immediately follow was, "but I still have to make money to eat." But the construction industry is so busy right now. You can’t find anyone to hire because everybody has so much work.

Therefore, it seems like this is the time where someone could actually test out that. Don’t bid on bad projects. Don’t work for people that don’t treat you the way you’re supposed to be treated, that don’t respect you for your talents. Focus in on the good clients—all those that don’t want to do it right can take their lumps right now. If you can collaborate and form those alliances now, for everyone’s mutual benefit, then it seems to me we will have the solution to all of the problems we’ve been talking about. Don’t bid bad jobs, just as Mike said.

WEST: Thank you, Mr. Carter.

KULKARNI: My final comment is that structural engineers are preoccupied with liability. That makes us much less inventive, but also we tend to document everything that goes through the office, which slows the process and could delay projects.

Collaboration is important, and it is based upon cooperation and communication. Think about the paperwork involved with an RFI. It needs to be documented, faxed to the architect, logged in, sent over to the engineer, responded to, faxed back to the architect, and then sent back out to the field. There must be a better system.

Everybody wants to circumvent all this paperwork, and how do we do that? There is a technology called a phone system. Cell phones are the best ones. You can document later on after you made the decision, but the decision has to be made quicker, and supplement that with whatever documentation is required. I think that’s the key to moving the project.

However, the team needs to be in agreement at the onset of the project. For example, call me, then I will document our decision. Whatever the process, it needs to be acceptable to everyone and agreed upon at the start of the job. Additionally, knowing that we are not going to get hung with a liability suit because we answered questions quickly is very important. Communication and cooperation are very important. They are the foundation for good collaboration.

THE PANEL

Photo credit for all photos: George Long Photography

Charles J. Carter, S.E., P.E., is the chief structural engineer at the American Institute of Steel Construction. He is located in Chicago and can be reached at 312-670-5414 or carter@aisc.org.

Jim Glamann, P.E., is engineering manager at Canam in Chesterfield, Mo. He can be reached at 314-275-7580 or jim.glamann@canam.ws

Subhash Kulkarni, P.E., is president of Kulkarni Consultants Civil and Structural Engineers headquartered in Metairie, La. He can be reached at 504-887-3100 or kcapc@aol.com.

Jay Ruby, P.E., is associate and director of business development at Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Ruby+Associates. He can be reached at 248-865-8855 or jruby@rubyusa.com.

Gerald Venable, P.E., is engineering manager for CMC Joist & Deck at the Northwest Arkansas Engineering Center located in Rogers, Ark. He can be reached at 479-633-0479 or gerald.venable@cmc.com.

Michael A. West, P.E., is vice president at Computerized Structural Design headquartered in Milwaukee. He can be reached at 414-351-5588 or mwest@csd-eng.com.

HOST
Jennifer Goupil, P.E., is a structural engineer and the editor of Structural Engineer magazine. She can be reached at jgoupil@zweigwhite.com.