Steel erection subcontractor in Orange County
Steel erection is the day a building stops being drawings. Columns go up, beams go across, and the load path the engineer drew becomes something you can lean on. On a house that usually means a handful of members. On a light commercial shell it can be a few dozen. The work is the same either way: set it where the plan says, get it plumb, connect it, and leave it ready for the inspector.
We work off the structural sheets and the shop drawings. Before anything gets lifted we check the anchor bolts and the base plate elevations against the plan, because a column set on a base that is a half inch low is a problem that gets more expensive every hour it stays hidden. The AISC Code of Standard Practice puts the placement tolerance between anchor rods in a group at plus or minus an eighth of an inch. Past that, something has to be corrected before the steel lands, and we would rather find it with a tape than with a column.
Small steel is the part most erectors do not want. A two column frame in a remodel, a ridge beam that has to come in through a window opening, a post and beam replacing a bearing wall. That is a normal week here. Two people with a rig on the truck can work in a driveway on a hillside street where a crane and a six man crew cannot.
What that includes.
- Columns, beams, headers, and posts set from the structural drawings
- Anchor bolt and base plate check before anything is lifted
- Plumbing, shimming, and grouting of base plates
- Bolted and welded connections made in the field
- Timed around the special inspector so the connection gets seen before it is buried
- Touch up primer on field welds and burned coating
Questions we get on this one.
Do you self-perform erection?
Yes. Erection, field welding, and fabrication are all in-house, done by the two people who own the company. Nothing on the structural side goes to a second-tier sub. The things we coordinate rather than perform are crane and rigging, engineering and detailing, galvanizing, and the special inspector.
Do you erect steel somebody else fabricated?
Yes. Most of the time that is exactly the job. Send the shop drawings and the fabricator's delivery date and we will price the erection on its own.
How small a job will you take?
On the structural side, any of them. One frame or one dropped beam is a normal call. If it is genuinely a two hour job we will say that on the phone instead of selling you a day.
Do you need a crane?
Depends on the member. Plenty of residential steel goes in with a telehandler, a gantry, or by hand with rollers and a chain fall. When a crane is the right answer we will say so, coordinate it, and tell you which side of the house it has to sit on.
What holds up an erection day?
Almost never the steel. It is whether the concrete is cured, whether the anchor bolts are where the drawing put them, and whether there is a path to the opening. Those three get checked before we schedule.
This is licensed work. OC Mobile Welding LLC holds CSLB C-51 #1157116, C-51 Structural Steel, current and active. Working out of San Clemente, CA.