Pre-engineered steel building designed for multistorey, commercial and institutional facilities.
Pre-engineered steel buildings are designed with precision, and the building components are fully fabricated at the factory, before delivering to site to be bolted together.
An efficiently designed pre-engineered steel building can be lighter than conventional steel designed buildings by as much as 30%, which means less steel will be used and hence, potential price savings in structural framework.
By virtue of the pre-engineered building (PEB) concept, modular units that can be easily replicated in design, production and erection will bring about greater price savings and construction efficiency.
However, there is a common misconception that pre-engineered steel buildings are limited to “box” building designs simply because it is the most efficient type of building design to deploy. In southeast Asia, pre-engineered steel buildings are commonly seen in the industrial sector, such as warehouses, factories and other processing or storage facilities.
Whereas in other parts of the world, the PEB concept is widely leveraged for building applications such as commercial and institutional buildings with no limitation to the architectural aesthetic. While such building designs may sometimes be less steel efficient than the industrial box, a pre-engineered steel building remains the more sustainable way to build, in addition to other advantages such as easy expansion of facility, construction efficiency, safety, and earlier revenue generation.
This article provides food for thought for applying the PEB building concept to a variety of other building types which are often passed due to misperception on the limitations.
