Most of what happens on a custom commercial steel package is invisible by the time the building opens. The structural steel is hidden behind cladding, the architectural welds are finished smooth and painted, and the months of shop drawings, coordination RFIs, and sequenced fabrication disappear into a clean final product. Herman Church is a project where a lot of that work stayed visible — the structural steel is exposed as part of the architectural language, which meant everything our shop did had to perform structurally and read as finished detail to anyone sitting in the sanctuary. Here’s a walkthrough of how that project actually came together.
Why the project was different
Most commercial structural steel in Metro Vancouver is designed to be covered up. Beams get sprayed with fireproofing, columns get wrapped in drywall, connections get hidden behind ceiling tiles. The shop drawings focus on structural performance; the finish standard is whatever the paint or coating spec says, and nobody sees the weld beads in the finished building.
Church and worship-space architecture tends to flip that. Exposed structural steel is often part of the design language — beams, trusses, bracing, and connection plates are visible throughout the sanctuary as architectural elements. That changes the fabrication approach in specific ways:
- Weld appearance matters — exposed welds have to be ground smooth and finished to a higher appearance standard than concealed structural work
- Tolerances tighten on visible connection plates — bolt patterns, plate edges, and gusset geometry become part of the visual composition
- Finish coordination intensifies — the paint system has to match architectural intent, not just meet corrosion requirements
- Fit-up is less forgiving — there’s no room for shims or field modifications on connections the congregation will see from 10 feet away
For Herman Church, that meant every piece of exposed steel that left our Burnaby shop went through a Level 4 appearance standard check before finish — weld spatter ground, heat tint removed, edges cleaned, and surfaces prepped for the specified coating.
Shop drawings and coordination
Structural steel shop drawings start from the structural engineer’s design package and get detailed by the fabricator (or a dedicated steel detailer). On Herman Church, the detailing scope included every beam, column, connection, bracing element, and architectural steel component, all cross-referenced against the engineer’s drawings and the architect’s visual intent.
The coordination challenges on a visible-steel church project usually show up in three places:
- Where structural steel meets the glazing system — the beams and columns supporting a tall glazed wall have to align with the mullion grid, leaving no visual conflicts from the sanctuary floor
- Where steel trusses meet wood framing — an exposed steel truss bearing on glulam or dimensional wood needs a bearing detail that’s clean both structurally and visually
- Where mechanical and electrical routing has to pass through structural members — visible steel with visible penetrations reads differently than hidden steel with the same penetrations
Every one of these gets resolved during the shop drawing phase, with RFIs flowing back to the engineer of record and the architect. On Herman Church, the shop drawing phase took several weeks of iteration before any stock steel was cut.
Fabrication under CSA W47.1
All structural welding on the Herman Church project was done under documented CSA W47.1 procedures at our Burnaby shop. The C.W.B. certification requires:
- Qualified welders tested on the specific positions and thicknesses being welded
- Qualified welding procedures (WPS) documenting filler metal, voltage, amperage, travel speed, and pre-heat requirements
- Inspection including visual inspection on every weld and non-destructive testing (ultrasonic or magnetic particle) on critical connections
- Traceability from steel mill certificate through welding consumable lot numbers
For the primary structural welds, we used flux-cored arc welding (FCAW) with E71T-1 filler metal, which gives excellent penetration on heavier sections and handles the geometry of beam-to-column moment connections well. For architectural connections where weld appearance was visible, we switched to GMAW (MIG) with careful control of travel speed and heat input to produce cleaner bead profiles before grinding and finishing.
Every exposed weld on the project was ground and finished by hand. A skilled grinder can make the difference between an exposed structural connection that looks intentional and one that looks like leftover fabrication — and on a visible-steel building, that distinction is the difference between architectural integrity and a visible mistake.
Finishing and delivery sequence
Structural steel on a commercial Metro Vancouver project gets delivered to site in phases matched to the construction sequence. On Herman Church, the sequence roughly:
- Foundation embed plates and anchor bolts delivered early, cast into concrete footings
- Primary columns and beams delivered as concrete cured, erected by the steel erector
- Secondary framing and bracing delivered alongside primary members
- Exposed architectural trusses and visible elements delivered later in the sequence, after primary frame was stable and protected from construction damage
- Miscellaneous metals and architectural details — railings, guards, stair nosings — delivered near the end of the project
Each delivery was coordinated with the GC’s schedule through the site superintendent. Any slippage in our shop schedule would have rippled into the next trade, so we kept a 2-week buffer on critical path items where possible.
The finish sequence was shop-primed for protected steel and duplex-coated (galvanized plus colour topcoat) for exposed exterior elements that needed long-term corrosion protection. See our galvanizing vs. powder coating for coastal Vancouver article for the logic behind duplex systems.
Lessons we took into the next project
Every major commercial project changes how we approach the next one. Herman Church reinforced three things that now show up in every quote we put out of our Burnaby shop:
Get visible-weld appearance requirements in writing. “Architectural exposed steel” means different things to different designers. We now ask for explicit appearance classification (AESS 1, 2, 3, or 4 under the Canadian standards, or a Level 4 visual acceptance on the contract drawings) before we quote.
Build more float into shop drawing review. The engineer of record and the architect both have to see exposed-steel shop drawings, and the review cycle is slower than concealed structural work. We now budget an extra 2–3 weeks in our schedule for exposed-steel projects during shop drawings.
Coordinate finish samples earlier. Colour, gloss level, and protective coating appearance should be reviewed on sample pieces before production finishing begins. On visible architectural steel, the finish is half the product.
How this applies to other Metro Vancouver projects
The Herman Church scope — custom structural steel with exposed architectural elements, delivered on a commercial construction schedule, coordinated with multiple trades — is representative of the commercial work our shop handles across Metro Vancouver. We’ve taken similar approaches on projects from Burnaby industrial builds to Vancouver downtown office and institutional work, and the fundamentals stay the same: C.W.B. certified welding, sealed shop drawings, coordinated delivery, finished appearance where required.
For more on how custom structural steel works in BC, see our guide to structural steel in BC and the earthquake-resistant steel in BC overview for seismic considerations. If you’re an architect or GC working on a similar project in Metro Vancouver and want to walk through a steel scope with us before bidding, the Burnaby shop is open to pre-construction conversations — the earlier we see the design, the cleaner the fabrication downstream.
