METHOD FOR THE COSTS ESTIMATION OF STEEL STRUCTURE PRELIMINARY DESIGN SOLUTIONS IN AN OPTIMIZATION PROCESS

In steel construction, structure optimization during preliminary phase of design, when it’s

based on the overall structure cost criterion which integrate the costs of materials and

execution (fabrication and erection), it create the assessment problem of the global design

solutions costs after the estimation of their elementary costs. In this article, we present a new

model which highlights the elements constituting the global cost of a building structure that

accounts for steel structural members, the joints and the reinforced concrete foundations, and

we expose a method for the effective estimation of the elementary costs followed by the total

cost of the design solutions.

The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated following a site investigation carried out by

the authors. For this reason, necessary and useful remarks are presented.