Steel has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any construction material. Moreover, with new construction methods, steel buildings remain a popular choice for office and multifamily developers. Use of girder slab, staggered truss, and castellated beam construction enables lower floor-to-floor heights than typically expected in structural steel buildings. Looking for long spans of column-free space? Steel delivers. Steel can accomplish extremely long spans in structures and very open-bay footprints without intermediate columns. It’s a very flexible material in terms of different ways to address design requirements.

Concrete buildings are taking shape – many different shapes – everywhere. Remember, concrete seeks the form. You can shape anything out of concrete. In addition to the unique aesthetics achieved with concrete construction, these buildings offer some very real space advantages.

Public and private developers should also realize that using cast-in-place reinforced concrete to frame a high-rise office building would yield more rentable space because of lower floor-to-floor heights. RCC is a revolutionary material for the construction of most simple to complex structures.

With significant improvements in the quality of cement and steel, RCC will continue to find new applications and wide spread use in the 21st century.