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RE: "Commercial" Buildings

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Assuming your "General" is the same "General Steel Buildings" here is some info...
 
I personally don't know much about General Steel Buildings other than what I am told from our people.  From what they say General Steel is a broker and not an actual manufacturer and is involved in questionable practices.  Here are 2 articles about them on the web.
 
MBMA was founded in 1956 and as a whole is good for standardizing practices amongst the industry.  As Dennis points out not all manufacturers are created equal.  Some are easier to work with than others.  My natural bias would be to order buildings from Butler Manufacturing Company but I also would not hesitate with a VP building as I have worked for each manufacturer and trust the quality of the work from both manufacturers.  AISC/MBMA audits help to standardize the industry practices also but with the high degree of customization in systems being used, parts being used, plant capabilities, and product differences I would guess that there will not be a point in my lifetime where all metal building manufacturers are equivalent and standardized.  Just like I assume designs would vary between engineers, offices, or different companies.
 
HTH,
Greg Effland, P.E.
KC, MO USA
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Wish [mailto:dennis.wish(--nospam--at)verizon.net]
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 5:31 PM
To: seaint(--nospam--at)seaint.org
Subject: RE: "Commercial" Buildings

I don’t think this is the case here. General is the name of the Metal Building manufacturer. We see a lot of these buildings going up in the desert by various companies and many of them coming from Florida into California. They are promoting metal buildings as being cheaper to construct and durable – yet I have had some complaint or problem with every one that I have had to design a foundation for.

 

One company sold a building to one of the larger Golf Courses in the desert who used the building for about two years then disassembled it and sold it to another man who wanted to reconstruct it on another site. The new site was actually better than the first (lower wind loads and better soil conditions) but the county would not accept the original calculations. I probably would not have accepted them either as there is no way to tell if there had been any damaged created to the connections when the building was disassembled or if materials were overstressed at any stage. Rather than tell the new owner that he probably would never get a permit issued and that he just lost $30,000.00 (what he paid for the 60 x 100 foot building) he asked for my help in dealing with the manufacturer. The manufacturer wanted nothing to do with the building. As I predicted, the original mfg. wanted nothing to do with the relocated building and the man was out $30K.

 

One thing that I have found out is that the County of Riverside where a lot of these buildings are being erected (I did two for private oversized garages and workshops and one for commercial golf cart storage) does a very thorough job of checking the building design. If they don’t understand the calculation package, they throw it back to the manufacturer and make them verify the calculations. My only complaint is that I have to do a lot of digging into the projects to retrieve the reactions at the base of the columns so that I can design the foundations. The presentation is not always that good and in some cases the numbers in the package don’t match those shown on the drawings. Also in some cases, the base plates are stock products with the company but their product literature does not clearly dimension and size the thickness of the plates nor do their calculations.

 

In most cases, I am designing for potential uplift due to wind loads on the columns and need to oversize my foundations by 50% to act as a dead-man footing. Again, the manufacturer is supposed to provide the information but some are better than others.

 

Finally, there is an organization for Metal Building Manufacture’s Association at http://www.mbma.com/ .  Hopefully they are organizing to provide more standardization in the construction of these buildings. I am not very happy with them, but my potential liability is restricted to the foundation and I make sure I am conservative (which is the case as most of these buildings are constructed in a flood zone area where the foundations must go much deeper and the excess capacity is there for me to use).

 

Dennis

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Caldwell, Stan [mailto:scaldwell(--nospam--at)halff.com]
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 8:33 AM
To: seaint(--nospam--at)seaint.org
Subject: RE: "Commercial" Buildings

 

Gerard:

 

It appears to be a national campaign.  In Dallas, we are getting barraged by their ads both on television and radio.  It is really annoying, sort of like the "Hire an AIA Architect" campaign that invaded our airspace last year.

 

Stan R. Caldwell, P.E. 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerard Madden, SE [mailto:gmadden(--nospam--at)maddengine.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 4:31 PM
To: seaint(--nospam--at)seaint.org
Subject: "Commercial" Buildings

I was watching Cable TV the other night and I came across a commercial.

 

It said “Call the General”

 

“The General” is a metal building manufacturer. It was advertising different size buildings for different prices.

 

I wonder when the ads for the foundation design for these building will follow.

 

Anyway, I thought it was funny to see on TV.

 

-gm

 


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