"Architecture is about trying to make the world a little bit more like our dreams."
--Danish architect Bjarke Ingels

Steel is the low-cost structural leader because of its speed of design and construction.

Steel is fabricated offsite during preliminary site preparation and foundation work, reducing on-site labor and construction cycle time and waste--resulting in earlier occupancies and lower financing costs.

Steel has benefits onsite, too. Say goodbye (and good riddance) to RFIs that fix misaligned embed plates in concrete and other trades cooling their heels while waiting for the structural system to cure.

To make your dream a reality, you need a structural material that is fast, low-cost, high-quality, and sustainable. Only steel can deliver all four.

SpeedCore: A Game Changer

Your steel structure may stand for a century--but the industry is changing the rules today. Innovations like SpeedCore make steel the gold standard for rapid erection.

This building went up 40% faster because the design team chose steel--a savings of 10 months, in this case. That’s 10 more months of revenue from the whole building, and that adds up fast. Learn more at aisc.org/rainiersquare.

The Savings Add Up

A structure’s frame is only about 12% of its total cost, but savings there could have an outsized impact on the whole project’s cost.

Innovative Materials

Domestic mills produce the latest high-strength steels. Maximize your project’s weight and efficiency with cutting-edge materials--and save money on foundation costs, too.

Learn more about how using steel reduces construction costs.

Innovative Technology

Steel also lends itself particularly well to innovative technology and modeling used with integrated project delivery, which can reduce the cost of a steel package by 10% to 20% by eliminating time spent in traditional shop drawing review and cut RFIs.

Good Old-Fashioned Collaboration

Bring in a steel fabricator early in the design phase for expert advice to design and fabricate steel members and assemblies as efficiently as possible. Around 70% of the cost of a steel package comes from fabrication and erection, so this early collaboration can pay off in a big way!

Making Connections

That’s where AISC can help you stay within your budget and reduce RFIs. We are here to connect designers, owners, and contractors with over 1,000 AISC member fabricators and other industry partners for real-time cost and schedule data.

Raw Material Costs are Only a Small Factor

Do the Math

Because material is less than one-third of the cost of the building’s framing system (fabrication and erection represent more than two-thirds), and the frame is around 12% of the project cost, a 5% increase in the price of steel represents less than one-fifth of 1% of the total project cost.

Example:
Project cost: $50 million
Frame (12%): $50 million (0.12) = $6 m
Material (33%): $6 million (0.33) = $1.98 m
If the price of material increases 5%: $1,980,000 (0.05) = $99,000 Impact: $99,000 / $50 million = 0.2%

That means that a 5% increase in material price only impacts the total project cost by 0.2%. And you can fully optimize your design and reduce costs by working with an AISC member fabricator before finalizing your project.

Insurance Rates Favor Steel Structures

Steel keeps costs down long after construction is over.

Take a look at a typical commercial building--for example, a five-story office building--in an average city in the U.S.--for example, Indianapolis, which doesn't have seismic threats or issues with hurricanes or wildfires. Insurance rates for concrete structures are typically 50% more than for steel construction, and insurance rates for wood construction are typically 150% more than for steel construction.

This means if you pay $1,000 per $1 million of coverage for a steel building, you'll be paying $1,500 for a concrete building and $2,500 for a wood structure. The difference represents the relative resiliency of the different types of construction based on insurance companies' actual loss experience with different types of construction.

Find out more about the unmatched resilience of steel structures.

Did You Know?

Steel’s extraordinary value runs right through to the end of a structure’s working life--many demolition contractors pay the owner to demolish a steel-framed building and sell the old steel to a recycler. Visit aisc.org/sustainability to find out how scrap from a project becomes brand-new structural steel.