We know that sustainability is a key factor in construction decision-making but we also know that the performance of the structures we create is equally important.
Thanks to the latest development of , we are pleased to show that you can now have both for long-life, maintenance-free structures using hot-finished structural hollow sections.
Sustainability is about much more than just the environmental impact of manufacture. At Tata Steel, we have developed a model for the sustainability of materials which we use to assess all of our products.
Nick Coleman, Principle Sustainability Specialist at Tata Steel explains:
“We judge the sustainability performance of a product based on a number of issues including energy, resource usage, social and economic factors, but also over the full life-cycle from manufacture through to use and end-of-life.”
Nick continues “We also need to judge any product against the next best alternative, for example, when we developed Celsius Weathering Grade we assessed the new product against our existing hot-finished structural hollow sections.” The result of this assessment shows that Celsius Weathering Grade has multiple benefits as a sustainable product. In fact, this holistic sustainability assessment shows that this product is one of the highest-ranking sustainable products we make.
Nick explains some of the detail:
“As with many new and different products, there is some change in manufacturing process. In the case of Celsius Weathering Grade, we have to add some extra alloying elements to give the weathering properties. The proportion of these elements is very small, less than 1%, but the effect is massive, since weathering grade steel doesn’t need galvanising or painting and for long-life structures, this effect is multiplied by the avoidance of ongoing maintenance, such as re-painting.
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We are seeing an increasing trend towards specification of weathering grade steel for long-life structures, particularly where ongoing maintenance is difficult and this assessment shows that this really is a sustainable approach.
Until now, though, hot-finished hollow sections using [weathering grade steel] have not been widely available and this has been an obstacle on some projects. By introducing Celsius Weathering Grade, we are filling this gap and helping the market to adopt more sustainable design principles.
In addition to the specific sustainability benefits of the weathering grade, like all our hollow section products, Celsius Weathering Grade is accredited to BES 6001 for Responsible Sourcing and we offer a fully 3rd-party accredited EPD to fulfil the requirements of increasingly stringent sustainability certification schemes.
To find out more about this product visit our Celsius® Weathering Grade page where you can find key product features, technical data and brochure downloads.