The designer should also avoid over-specification, a trivial example being that corrosion protection is not needed when steel components are used in many internal environments. Keeping fabrication and construction in mind from the start will lead to the best possible solution.

Some basic choices may have a significant impact on the ease, time and cost of both the fabrication and construction of a steel framed multi-storey building. It is therefore important that the designer follows a logical sequence, as going back and revisiting earlier design decisions, once other parties involved have moved on to designing other parts of the building or manufacturing components, can be disproportionately expensive. An implication of this, however, is that the design must be substantially complete before steelwork fabrication can begin.

A characteristic of steel framed construction is that the constituent parts of the structure are manufactured off-site, with all the quality and speed-on-site benefits that are associated with such a form of construction. Many of these stages include aspects of engineering design. Information for construction - Drawings, specifications.Detailed design - Of the various components and elements.Scheme design - Looking at and developing options.Assembling the data and developing the brief - Understanding the site and context.Project formulation - What it’s for, why is it being proposed, where is it, etc.The stages of a construction project are presented in ISE publication ‘Structural design – the engineer’s role’ which may be broadly summarised as follows: 3.1 Step 1: Initial design considerations.

Concrete building construction process