Standard sizes and specification

There is no single figure worth quoting. Steel is a traded commodity, so the raw material price moves constantly, and the cost per square metre of your building depends heavily on span, eaves height and how much cladding you specify — two buildings of identical floor area can differ enormously. That is why we quote per job rather than publish a price list. Send us the size and the intended use and we will cost it properly; the quote is free.

Span and height first — both add steel to every frame. Then cladding: an open structure is far cheaper than a fully clad and doored one. Then site conditions, since coastal and high-lying sites attract higher design wind loads. Then options — doors, insulation, ventilators, Chromadek. And finally whether we erect it or supply it delivery-only.

For large clear-span buildings, usually yes, and it is faster. A portal frame reaches a weatherproof shell in a fraction of the time masonry takes, needs no wet trades for the structure, and puts no loadbearing walls inside the floor area. For small buildings the gap narrows, and for anything where thermal mass matters the comparison is not really like for like.

It depends on the size, on how busy the factory is, and on your plan approval and foundations — which are usually the real constraint, not fabrication. We give a realistic programme with the quote rather than quoting a standard lead time we might not hold to.