Pre-Engineered Buildings
A steel warehouse is a large open building made from a row of identical steel frames, covered with metal roof and wall sheeting. Masas designs, fabricates and erects them as pre-engineered steel buildings for storage and distribution.
Drawings or a written scope is enough to price it.
For warehouse construction in Qatar, Masas designs the frame, fabricates it in its Al Wukair workshop and erects it with the roof and wall cladding. The projects below range from single stores to sites that combine warehouses with labour accommodation or a showroom. What they share is a regular, repeating frame, which is the condition a pre-engineered building is designed for.
4
Warehouse projects on this page
Named, or described by scope where the client asked
2 + 2
Warehouses and accommodation blocks on one site
Dar Al-Anwar Trading Co., under way
Pre-Engineered Warehouses & Stores
It is a steel building designed as a system rather than as a one-off structure. Identical steel frames, called portal frames, stand at regular intervals along the building. Lighter steel members run between them to carry the roof and wall sheeting that keeps the weather out.
Because every frame is the same, the workshop makes the same parts and joints many times over, and the site crew repeats the same erection sequence. That repetition, more than the size of the building, is what saves cost and time.
It suits a rectangular building with its load spread evenly across the roof. A building that carries heavy equipment, changes shape along its length or has an irregular plan is usually better in conventional structural steel. Masas builds both, so the advice follows the building.
Storage and distribution warehouses
Stores with a mezzanine floor inside
Warehouses beside accommodation or a showroom
Roof and wall cladding in the same package
Plain terms
A few technical words decide what you are actually buying. This is what they mean.
The space between two neighbouring frames. It sets how far apart the columns stand along the side walls, and therefore where doors and racking can go.
The width a frame crosses with no column in the way. A wider clear span gives a more open floor, but every frame needs heavier steel to achieve it.
The usable height inside, measured to the lowest point of the steel rather than to the top of the roof. It decides how high racking can go and which vehicles fit.
The lighter steel pieces running between the main frames. Purlins hold the roof sheeting and girts hold the wall sheeting. If they are not straight, the cladding will not sit straight.
Before you decide
Four decisions set most of a warehouse design. Settling them before the drawings start gives a firmer price and fewer changes on site.
The racking layout, the aisle widths and the forklifts working between them decide where columns can stand. When the layout is fixed first, the frame is designed around it, which usually needs less steel than designing for a round number.
Every extra metre of clear span adds steel to every frame, and the cost rises faster than the width. If a line of internal columns can stand along a rack run or a partition, the frames can be much lighter.
The largest truck that has to come inside sets the size of the door and the clear height. Doors are framed into the steel structure, so their sizes and positions need to be known before design starts.
A pre-engineered frame is designed closely to its loads and has little spare strength. A hoist, a mezzanine or a heavy services run added after fabrication often means reworking the frame, so mention it at the start.
Each stage is documented and checked by your consultant before the next one starts.
01
You send drawings and requirements. Masas confirms the scope in writing, including what is and is not in the price, before it issues a quotation.
02
Shop drawings, which show every piece of steel, go to your consultant with a method statement, an inspection and test plan and a risk assessment, for approval against QCS 2014, Qatar’s construction specification.
03
Steel is cut, welded to AWS standards and given its protective coating in the Masas workshop in Al Wukair, and checked against the approved plan before it leaves.
04
Frames and cladding go up in the sequence agreed with the main contractor. The job closes with snagging, as-built drawings and the certificates your consultant needs.
For a quotation
The building footprint and where it sits on the plot. Access for delivery trucks and cranes affects how the steel is erected.
The height you need under the steel and the size of each door, based on your tallest racking and largest vehicle.
Racking, a mezzanine, a crane or hoist, solar panels or equipment hanging from the roof. These loads decide the size of the frame.
Whether you need design, supply, erection or all three, and whether the roof and wall cladding are part of it.
Record
Contract values are not published. Scale is stated in area and clear span.
Design, fabrication, supply and installation of the steel building for two warehouses and two labour accommodation buildings. Prequalification was approved by the consultant against QCS 2014, subject to shop drawings, method statement, ITP and risk assessment.
View projectEngineering, fabrication and erection of a warehouse alongside labour accommodation — two different occupancies, and two different sets of fire and life-safety requirements, on one site.
View projectDesign, fabrication and erection supervision of a combined warehouse and showroom — the largest single design-and-build package in the completed record.
View projectEngineering, fabrication and erection of a ground-plus-mezzanine steel store. The mezzanine level carries its own framing and access steel.
View projectThe other parts of this service, each on its own page with its own evidence.
Send drawings or a scope and we will come back with a quotation.
