Sustainable solutions for the Construction industry

Adaptable

Steel buildings are inherently adaptable and can be easily extended. Steel’s lightness, relative to alternative construction materials, enables new structures to be built as extensions to existing buildings without overloading their foundations. They can be unbolted, reconnected, modified, repaired, re-used and recycled. Existing buildings can be refurbished with modern steel roofing and cladding systems to bring them up to today’s high standards of performance.

Our tubular steel sections, available in a wide range of round, rectangular and square forms, give greater flexibility in use and higher strength to weight ratio than conventional sections, enhancing a building’s structural efficiency and reducing costs.

Fast and safe

Steel construction generates very little waste, and what there is can be fully recycled. Steel construction is dry, dust-free, comparatively quiet, and requires relatively small volumes of materials to be delivered to site. The offsite manufacture of steel construction products ensures high quality under controlled conditions. Factory manufacture is also safer, faster and more efficient than site working. In turn, it reduces site construction times, minimising the impact on surrounding communities.

Steel products fabricated offsite can minimise disruption to the public. We supplied the steelwork for a new footbridge spanning the M8 motorway in Scotland. The 90m bridge has a helical truss design using structural hollow sections. The bridge was pre-fabricated offsite and delivered in seven sections. The main 230-tonne span was erected in a single lift, limiting road closure to one evening. This significantly improved health and safety for the construction workers and lessened the impact on motorists using this section of Scotland’s busiest motorway.

Resource-efficient

Steel’s high strength-to-weight ratio can be exploited to create resource-efficient structures and buildings.

Emissions reducing

Most of the carbon dioxide (CO 2) generated by a building is a result of the energy consumed during its occupation. Steel cladding systems produce thermally efficient building envelopes. Twin-skin (built-up) and composite steel systems achieve high levels of thermal insulation and air-tightness. By providing designers and decision-makers such as architects with technical guidance on our products, we enable them to capitalise on the CO 2 savings that steel offers.

Confidex Sustain® offers a cradle-to-cradle carbon-neutral building envelope. This means that for every 1kg of CO 2 emitted by the pre-finished steel, cladding, fixings and insulation, Corus will offset 1kg in climate-friendly projects overseas through The CarbonNeutral Company.

Confidex Sustain® won the Chartered Institute of Waste Management’s award for sustainable product of the year 2008 and was runner-up in the innovation and technology category of the 2008 Building Sustainability Awards. To date, over 900,000 square metres of Confidex Sustain® pre-finished steel sheet has been installed, which equates to more than 22,500 tonnes of CO2 offset.

Innovative

Efficient use of thermal energy requires special low temperature distribution systems. Steel can make an important contribution to such systems, and our Construction Centre in the Netherlands is working on innovative solutions. A heating and cooling system, known as Comfort Vite, is now sold under licence by a company called Warmteplan.

The system uses the metal’s conductivity to radiate heat into the living space, from water contained in steel tubing within the walls or ceiling. Further advances are also being made by the Construction Centre through the development of a new ceiling system, EMC2, that takes advantage of the conductivity and shape of steel decking to allow heat to be buffered and exchanged, keeping fuel costs low and regulating the internal temperature of a building.

Secure

When world leaders met in London for the G20 summit in March 2009, they were protected by our Bi-Steel perimeter protection systems. Bi-Steel, a patented construction material with outstanding strength, is used to create blast protection structures and perimeter security barriers to protect against terrorist bomb attack. It is deployed in airports and around government buildings: in Whitehall, central London, it has even been clad in Portland stone to blend in with the surrounding historic buildings.

Looking to the future

The UK construction industry faces an unprecedented challenge to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions generated from the built environment. The objective is clear and the targets set, but there is a lack of reliable data to inform the technical decisions that need to be made.

In order to fill this gap, the British Constructional Steelwork Association – the representative organisation for steelwork contractors in the UK – and Corus have jointly commissioned engineering consultancy AECOM to lead a £1 million, (US$1.43m) three-year development project to generate fully detailed and costed solutions for five building types in order to meet the emissions reduction targets set by the UK government towards the ultimate aspiration of zero carbon by 2019.