Schedule: where steel really wins

For a 5,000–10,000 m² industrial building, steel typically beats concrete by 3–5×. While a concrete contractor is still pouring columns, our crew is already lifting roof trusses. For projects with revenue tied to start date — automotive, food, pharma — this difference is often the entire decision.

Material cost: concrete is cheaper, but…

Concrete usually has 15–30% lower base material cost. But you pay for it in schedule, foundation size (concrete buildings are heavier), and future flexibility. Total project cost is often closer than the spreadsheet suggests once you include site overheads, financing during construction, and earlier revenue from a faster building.

Spans and column-free space

Concrete struggles past 12–15 m clear span without prestressing. Steel routinely clears 30, 40, 60 m — important for modern logistics warehouses with 13.5 m wide aisles, hangars that need to fit aircraft, and factories with overhead cranes.

Fire performance

Concrete inherently performs better in fire. Steel needs passive fire protection (intumescent paint, sprayed cementitious coating, encasement) to achieve R60–R120 ratings. This adds cost — typically €8–25/m² depending on rating — but is well-understood and routinely specified.

Seismic behaviour

Turkey is seismic. Steel's ductility makes it inherently good in earthquakes — it absorbs energy through plastic deformation rather than brittle failure. Concrete needs careful detailing to behave well; many older concrete industrial buildings fail this test.

Lifetime, demolition, sustainability

  • Lifetime: Both can last 50+ years if maintained.
  • Maintenance: Steel needs periodic coating refresh in corrosive environments; concrete needs crack/joint maintenance.
  • End of life: Steel is unbolted, cut up and recycled at scrap value (often a positive number). Concrete is demolished and sent to landfill (cost).
  • Carbon: A square metre of steel building has roughly comparable embodied carbon to concrete; recycled-content steel and lower-carbon cements are narrowing this further.

When concrete still wins

Bunkers, cold-storage rooms with very heavy walls, hydroelectric infrastructure, low-rise office blocks under 15 m span, and projects where steel logistics are difficult (very remote sites). For everything else industrial, steel almost always wins on time-to-revenue.

The honest summary

If your span is over 18 m, your schedule is tight, you may need to expand or relocate, and you're in a seismic zone — steel. If you have unlimited time, very heavy loads, no spans over 12 m, and stable long-term use — concrete may still be cheaper. We're happy to look at your case specifically.