The cost of prefabricated steel structure warehouse

The steel structure warehouse design needs to safeguard the company’s investment by providing a safe space for short- and long-term storage of materials and goods. prefabricated warehouses must consider hard, soft, long-term and financial costs.

Choose the best materials when building your warehouse

When designing and building a new warehouse, business owners must consider material choices thoughtfully. Material selection can significantly impact long-term costs. Builders today often use steel structures to build warehouses.

prefabricated steel structure warehouse

Cost of Prefab Steel Structure Warehouse

When determining the overall cost of a prefabricated warehouse, businesses must consider several expenses: soft costs, hard costs, long-term costs, and financial costs.

  • Hard costs (physical costs) include labor, materials, construction equipment, grounds, landscaping, utilities, life safety systems, HVAC systems, paving, grading, LEED certification, and more.
  • Soft costs include licensing, insurance, architectural design, engineering, taxes, legal fees, removable furniture and equipment, and other expenses not related to physical costs.
  • Long-term costs include utilities, maintenance, indoor environmental quality features, and other daily, weekly, and monthly expenses.
  • Finance costs include borrowing costs associated with obtaining construction loans.

In recent years, more and more enterprise manufacturers choose low-cost steel structure warehouses. However, businesses should consider the total capital cost and long-term expenses before choosing steel as the material choice for a new warehouse. It is worth noting that most steel buildings only provide external structure. They require separate cladding and insulation, fire protection measures and anti-corrosion methods to obtain a complete enclosure – all of which add to the cost.

steel structure

The base cost to build a steel structure warehouse ranges from $7.50 to $40.00 per square foot. The range depends on concrete floor options, structural complexity and unique finishes. Other factors that affect the price of steel structures include natural disasters, the world economy and the political climate. Worryingly, worldsteel expects global demand to continue to grow.

When designing a steel construction warehouse, several factors affect the total cost: building type, fittings, and customization. For example, framing, insulation, and basic fittings cost about $4 per square foot, and concrete slab foundations cost about $6 per square foot. Overall, fittings and customization tend to account for 15 to 20 percent of a building’s base cost.