Why employ an Engineer? Or “How much?”
Posted on 7th January 2025 at 19:28
Recently we were employed by a client who approached us to design a single storey building for them in light gauge steel.
The client had budgeted £10k for material and £3k to cover our costs with trusses and studs at 400mm c/c for both. We managed to save £5,300 in material costs alone.
With some judicious engineering and good old Yorkshire Value for Money (along with a little Christmas sparkle) we managed to open the truss centres out to 1200mm and the wall studs to 600mm by accurately calculating the wind load for the location using MESS Breve software, the MESS Light Gauge Steel plug in for #Tedds and some of our 20+ years of engineering skill.
This resulted in a reduction from 13.5kg/m² of steel for the roof to 4.5kg/m² – a reduction factor of three in the weight, and a carbon saving of 37.8kg/m² down to 12.6kg/m², again a reduction factor of 3 in the embodied carbon.
In terms of the walls, we saved 50% - 15.4kg/m of steel down to 23.1kg/m of steel and 11.25kg/m of embodied carbon per metre of wall down to 7.5kg/m!
We didn’t design the foundations on this project, but they would have been reduced also due to the reduced self weight, and the erection will now take significantly less time, as will the manufacturing so the profit’s just keep going up and up.
To clarify, we reduced the overall weight of steel required to 47% of the original figure, so a saving of £5,300, for a £2,000 fee thus saving the client £3,300 or our fee plus around 50%.
Next time you consider employing an Engineer and baulk at the fee’s proffered think about the value we bring to the design team.
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