Today, in this articles we shall talk about the complexities of steel detailing services, what is required to meet quality expectations and turnaround time.
Lot of countries use steel as the primary component of construction. Building steel structures is extremely complex and precarious. Lot of aspects needs to be taken into account while constructing steel buildings. Firstly it is important to hire a structural engineer to design and calculate the structural side of building construction. Determining the load that the building structure can bear, sizes of members, total steel required for construction and finally developing the structural drawings is what the structural Engineer is expected to do. Aesthetic sense of the Engineer, his experience and skills majorly affect the building construction. Once the design drawings are completed and the calculations are approved and stamped, structural detailing starts.
Structural detailers should process excellent speed, technical vision, drafting abilities and Engineering skills to trouble shoot design glitches. Working knowhow on how the fabrication process takes place is an added advantage. Structural detailing consists of two type of drawing sets Erection drawings and Shop drawings. Today, there are software that make steel detailing simpler than before. Software like Tekla, Revit, SDS etc. help develop a parametric model and extract drawings which can be used for fabrication. Also, steel detailing standards that are applicable to an individual location/building type is equally important. These standards determine the way the structures are constructed, the way the members are placed and typical size of building. Standards include AISC, Canadian Standards, Australian steel detailing standards etc. Drawings should be compliant with standards developed by various establishments of this field.
Apart from all the above mentioned the steel detailing staff is extremely niche and important. This trade offers very limited man power and technicians. Moreover they are very expensive and can prove to be highly non profitable to hire them in house, especially when the work flow is intermittent. Lot of fabricators today have switched over to outsource structural detailing. Very few companies have in-house staff owing to this draw back. Companies in countries like India offer steel detailing services at lower pricing combined with high quality. Apart from quality, quick turnaround time and accuracy is also equally important for steel detailing projects. Usage of software also play an important role today. Steel detail drawings were previously developed using AutoCAD while today parametric 3d modeling software have replaced AutoCAD.