On October 24th, Chris, Melissa, and Nicole took a field trip to High Steel Structures in Lancaster PA to take part in Steel Day 2025. This year’s presentation was particularly special because it was given by Ronnie Metlock, P.E., who won the coveted AISC T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award for 2025. His lecture, entitled “Achieving Excellence in Structural Steel” emphasized that the role of each person involved in the steel process is to support the quality of the built product. From the design engineer, to the fabricator, to the inspector, to the installer, and everyone in between, we must work together and trust one another’s expertise and integrity, to facilitate a great project.
After the presentation came some excellent tours in small groups through all of High Steel’s fabrication plants and yards. As building engineers, we are used to seeing standard wide flange beams and hollow structural sections as the primary building materials. For the standard floor spans of a building, the larger pieces may be around three feet tall. However, this plant primarily fabricates parts for bridges, where the spans are significantly longer and primary structural materials are plate girders and other built up pieces that measure tens of feet tall. The HFA team admired the laydown area for a future bridge truss, which is scheduled for shipment soon. Perhaps you have seen a street sign up close and thought to yourself about how much bigger it seems compared to seeing it on a highway at 60-miles per hour. Well, the same is true of bridge parts!
Spectators of the fabrication process included students, engineers, transportation administrators, general contractors, and architects. While we all know that constructability is a key consideration, seeing the process helps us all to improve our designs, and that is what Steel Day is all about. Keep an eye on https://www.aisc.org/steelday/ for next year’s events. Maybe we will see you there!
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