Building Systems: Steel Frame, Engineered Panels and Site Assembly

Modular building systems come down to two parts here: a steel frame, and manufactured panels for the walls and the roof. Everything else arrives as material and is screwed together where the building stands.

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A01 · Abstract title-block sheet

The page · 01

There are only two parts to this, and one of them is the frame

The structure is steel, cut and welded to the drawing before anything reaches your ground. Walls, roof and cladding are manufactured panels. Glazing, screens, fins, fixings and the interior fit-out are supplied as material. All of it is then assembled and screwed together where the building stands. That sentence is the entire system, and this page is what follows from it.

It follows first that nothing habitable travels. Framing arrives as steel, panels arrive stacked flat, glazing arrives crated. What gets lifted into position on a site is a panel or a frame bay, at the scale of a component; a finished, furnished box set down on a base is a different product from a different market, and the difference matters at this level of building.

It follows second that the building is set out from a drawing rather than measured off what is already there. The base is set out first because everything stands on it, then the frame goes up, then the panels close it, then the roof build-up, the glazing and the screens, then the fit-out. The order is the same building to building, which is why it can be drawn in advance.

The page · 02

How a surface is made is the rule; what it looks like is free

There are prefabricated panel systems manufactured to look like almost anything, and the appearance of a building here is not restricted. A wall may read as fair-faced concrete, as stone, as brick, as terracotta, as sand or as metal. Each of those looks is a manufactured panel or a coating on one, and each is a specifiable, orderable product rather than a finish invented for a photograph.

So a concrete-grey wall on one of these buildings is correct, and a warm brick-coloured one is correct, and neither says anything about how the building was put together. What is not free is the method behind the surface. The look is a choice made late, from a fixed list of families; the method was settled before the first line was drawn.

The page · 03

The five methods these buildings never use

Concrete cast in place — slab, beam, column, wall or roof — is not our method, because it is poured on your ground. Brick laid course by course in mortar is not, because it is laid on your ground. Coursed stone and rubble walling are not, for the same reason. Nor is cement render, plaster or a mortar joint, because all three are applied wet.

Board-marked and shuttered concrete is excluded twice over: the marks themselves are the proof that it was cast where it stands. None of this is a judgement on those trades, which build most of the country and build it well. It is a statement of what this system is, so that a client comparing quotations knows which two things are being compared.

The page · 04

What a photograph can and cannot tell you about a wall

Nobody judges a wall’s material from a picture. You judge it by putting a hand on it, or by being an expert standing in front of it, and any company claiming a photograph proves its construction is overstating what a photograph does. So the images on this site are not offered as evidence of the method, and none of them is described as a completed or delivered building.

What a photograph can be checked for is the absence of a wet-trade tell: no shutter marks, no tie holes, no mortar lines, no trowelled render. Beyond that, the evidence is the drawing set, where the wall, roof and base build-ups are drawn as sections with each layer named. The drawing is the proof; the photograph is only the persuasion.

The page · 05

Where this system stops and your consultant starts

Reinforcement and structural sizing are not ours to produce. Neither are load calculations, foundations, a fire strategy, the services and drainage layouts, or any dimension that has to be certified. All of it is the work of the professional your project engages, and each sheet we issue says on its face that it is design intent awaiting that signature.

That boundary is also why nothing here is published as our own value for structure, fire, thermal behaviour, acoustics, energy or seismic performance. A published standard is named where one governs, and nothing further is inferred from it. The number that ends up against your building is one your engineer has modelled and put his name to.

Questions

Questions to settle around system choices matched to building intent.

Is a finished unit delivered whole?

No. Nothing habitable travels. What reaches the plot is steel framing, flat panels, the roof build-up, glazing units and the interior fit-out, stacked and labelled to the order in which they go up. The building itself comes into existence on your ground, over days of assembly, and never on a road.

What are the walls actually made of?

Manufactured panels on a steel frame, in one of eight finish families, each family named on the materials page as a real panel or coating system. Which panel a particular design uses is named as that design is drawn, along with its roof panel and its cladding, so it can be read rather than guessed at from a picture.

Can I have a concrete or a stone-looking building?

Yes to the look, no to the trade. A fair-faced concrete appearance and a stone appearance are both available as manufactured panels with the pattern or the texture made in. What is not available is concrete poured on your site or stone coursed on it, because that is a different way of building and it is not what this company does.

Does the steel frame limit the plan?

It shapes it. These are grid buildings, and the grid runs through the plan, the elevations and the sections in the same positions, which is what makes the system a system rather than a series of one-off buildings. Room sizes, openings and the arrangement move within that discipline, and the sheets show where the discipline sits.

What has to be ready on my site before delivery?

A route a flat-bed load can travel, room to work alongside the footprint, and a finished base to your engineer’s design with the services already run up to it. Where the design is drawn, its site plan shows the approach and the working zone. What the ground beneath must bear is your engineer’s call from your survey.

Who signs off the building at the end?

The licensed professional engaged for your project, working from the construction drawings redrawn from our design intent. That routing is not a caution added to a website. It is how the business runs, it applies to every project without exception, and it is printed on every sheet you will be sent.

Read the build-ups before you read anything else

Ask for a design’s sheets and read the wall, roof and base details first; they say more about the system than any page can.

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