Metal buildings for projects across Nebraska

Usually, though enforcement is what actually decides it. Nebraska has a state building code written into statute, and it applies statewide. But it is enforced locally, and a number of rural Nebraska counties have no building department to enforce it. In practice that means no permit process, even though a code technically applies.

Inside city limits, and anywhere in Douglas, Sarpy, or Lancaster County, expect a permit and expect real plan review. Call us with your address and we will tell you which situation you are in before you get attached to a design.

The state building code adopts the 2018 International Building Code and the 2018 International Residential Code by reference. Cities and counties may adopt their own as long as it generally conforms.

Omaha is a home rule city and adopts its own codes by ordinance rather than deferring to the state code. Omaha, Lincoln, Douglas County, and Sarpy County all carry extensive local amendments that change structural loads and foundation depths, so the state edition is a floor rather than an answer. We confirm the adopted edition and the local amendments with your building department before drawings are produced.

Snow is the load that drives the engineering here, and it is the main reason a building quoted for Missouri does not price the same in Nebraska. Ground snow load through eastern and central Nebraska runs twenty-five to thirty pounds per square foot, and which end you land on follows the code edition your jurisdiction has adopted more than it follows where you are standing. The older standard puts it at twenty-five. The current one puts it at thirty.

Several jurisdictions were already at thirty by local amendment well before the standard moved. Omaha, Lincoln and Lancaster County, and Sarpy County are all at thirty today.

Watch for a jurisdiction that sets a minimum roof snow load rather than a ground snow load. Grand Island requires thirty pounds per square foot at the roof, which is a heavier requirement than thirty pounds on the ground, because roof load is normally figured down from the ground number rather than equal to it. A building priced off the ground figure comes up short there.

Design wind speed generally runs one hundred ten to one hundred twenty miles per hour as a three-second gust for a Risk Category II building.

Heavier snow means heavier purlins, tighter frame spacing, or both. It is not a surcharge added at the end. It changes the frame. We run the ASCE 7 hazard tool against your actual project address, confirm which edition your jurisdiction is enforcing, and design to whichever governs.

Because those are two different measuring conventions, and they can describe the very same building. Older editions of the design standard published nominal wind speeds. Current editions publish ultimate speeds. Ninety miles per hour nominal works out to roughly one hundred fifteen ultimate. Same wind, two numbers.

Sarpy County’s adopted criteria still read ninety miles per hour, three-second gust, Exposure C. That is not a lighter requirement than a neighboring county at one hundred fifteen. It is the same requirement written on the older basis.

So a quote showing a lower wind rating is not automatically a weaker building, and a higher number on a competing quote does not automatically mean more steel. Ask which edition the number came from.

For agricultural and utility structures in rural counties, generic Risk Category I engineering is usually accepted. Saunders County is one example, and it is what keeps tubular cost-effective out there. Our generic packages are wet-sealed.

Any building regularly occupied by people is Risk Category II and requires site-specific engineering wherever it sits, and so does anything going through real plan review in the metros. The cost difference is worth knowing early: site-specific engineering runs roughly two dollars per square foot on a tubular building against about seventy-five cents on cold-formed. On a snow-governed Nebraska frame, that is often enough to change which system we recommend.

Most of what we supply here is shops, machine sheds, equipment storage, hay barns, and acreage garages, plus commercial work around the Omaha and Lincoln metros. What it costs depends on the structural system, how finished you want it, and whether you are counting concrete and installation in the number.

We publish real per-square-foot ranges rather than a teaser price. See what a steel building costs, or call Brent Epp at 417-318-9217 and we will put an actual number on your building.