Ed Ponko is a guy who would look natural on a construction crew. Built like a former linebacker, Ponko wouldn’t appear out of place with a tool belt strapped at his waist.
But although Ponko, president of Dietrich Metal Framing, might show up from time to time on a jobsite, it’s not to hammer together structural framing. These days, he’s leading the effort at Dietrich Metal Framing, a 2,000-employee steel processing company that is part of $2 billion Worthington Industries of Columbus, Ohio, to accomplish a little less than a sea change in the residential construction industry.
Why? The steel products industry, facing competition from other materials, including plastics and aluminum, needs to identify new opportunities if it’s going to grow.
"We decided that we had to create new products and find new markets," says Ponko, a Brown University grad who started his career with the company two decades ago as a sales representative.
Dietrich Metal Framing’s decision to boost steel distribution by creating products for the burgeoning residential construction market may seem like an obvious one, but replacing wood with steel isn’t simply a matter of swapping one material for another. The change requires modifications in the very basic ways that homebuilders work.
Dietrich is attempting to coax homebuilders to make a fundamental shift in the way they build homes by persuading residential contractors to use steel instead of wood to build the framing of homes. To accomplish that, it must overcome tradition, long-accepted building techniques and the powerful wood products industry, which in recent years has produced product innovations that are stronger and more durable than traditional lumber. That industry is not about to give in easily to a challenger.
While steel is used for framing in only 2 percent to 5 percent of new homes, the use of steel framing has increased 300 percent in the past four years, according to the Steel Framing Alliance, a trade group comprised of producers, builders, tool manufacturers and others interested in promoting steel in construction. Shipments of steel framing for residential construction grew by 51 percent from 1999 to 2000, according to the trade group.
Using steel framing in construction is by no means a new idea. Contractors have been using steel for years for framing commercial buildings, and steel framing members have been used for some applications in residential construction since at least the 1930s.
Widespread use of steel framing in residential construction has been limited, but some builders are beginning to embrace its use with enthusiasm. Steel has obvious advantages in locations where termite infestation and mold can pose problems. For those reasons, it has become a popular option in Hawaii and Louisiana.
"The quality is important because we can build with greater precision," says Jeff Prostor, president of Brookfield Homes, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based builder of semi-custom and tract homes that has used steel framing for the past eight years. "We don’t worry about fires, we don’t worry about termites, we don’t worry about mold."
The traditional method of framing residential structures has been stick framing, in which wood members are used to form the skeleton of a house. That method has prevailed because wood is plentiful, renewable, durable and relatively inexpensive.
Carpenters have been trained for decades in the use of tools for cutting and joining wood frames. And other building trades professionals — plumbers, electricians, heating and air conditioning contractors and dry wall installers — are accustomed to working with wood frame structures.
It is relatively easy to drill a hole for plumbing or electrical wiring or to cut an opening for ductwork in wood. Working with steel, on the other hand, requires different tools, skills and techniques.
Openings in studs and joists must be carefully planned and completed in the steel fabrication step to accommodate pipes, wiring and ductwork because creating them on the jobsite isn’t practical.
The cost of steel has remained relatively level over the long term, according to the Steel Framing Alliance, a trade group formed in the late 1990s to promote the use of steel as a substitute for wood framing. Where the cost difference becomes more apparent is with the labor component, a factor that Dietrich Metal Framing is working on to improve performance.
Advocates for the use of steel and wood in homes argue their respective cases on the basis of the suitability of their respective products for the application, environmental responsibility and durability. In the end, however, the marketplace will be the arbiter of success.
"We’ll have to do it for the same cost," says Chris Singleton, manager of market development for Dietrich Metal Framing.
