Western’s Hybrid Steel Building

The main differences between PEMBs and Conventional Steel Structures are how they’re engineered and installed. PEMBs components are pre-engineered using a three-plate design through production. Each steel component is cut and pre-drilled at the factory, ensuring a quick and easy assembly without onsite drilling or welding – PEMBs are essentially a bolt-together building system. PEMBs exclusively utilize I-beams as primary members, where Conventional Steel Buildings typically utilize open web steel joists as primary members. One of the benefits of Structural Steel Buildings is that can be completely customized. I-beams are utilized as secondary structural components, along with steel plates, channels and hollow beams. These components are then cut, welded and drilled in the field. Conventional Steel Buildings are ideal for more complex structures because of their architectural design flexibility, but this construction method involves higher labor costs and uses more material than needed since fabrication takes place on the job site.

PEMBs tend to be more cost-effective because of the precise level of steel fabrication done at the factory. There is very little wasted material since each member is cut to spec and the overall production time in the factory can be much faster. Because PEMBs require minimal field fabrication as a bolt together building system, it expedites the installation process. PEMBs are not as adaptable to complicated architectural designs than a Conventional Steel Building.

At Western Steel, we took a SolutionCentric™ approach to achieve a steel building system that combined the two methods. Our Western Steel Hybrid Building utilizes Conventional Steel primary members and PEMB secondary members, bringing the versatility of open web steel joists and the pre-engineered efficiency of PEMBs together.