Steel construction market in Bangladesh

The history of steel structures in Bangladesh is not very old. A country with limited mineral resources could not afford to construct a lot of steel buildings. However, the scenario is drastically changing, thanks to rapid growth of garments industry which demands faster production output to meet the ever increasing demand of Bangladeshi cloths.
Initially some multinational companies like Jamil Steel, Kirby started steel building business in Bangladesh. However, they conducted their engineering designs from Indian offices and the materials were also supplied from Indian steel re-rolling factories. For the last 15 years, new native companies started in this sector and eventually overtook the foreign companies. Buildtrade Group, Bangladesh Building Systems (BBS) and Sarker Steels are now leading the steel building construction sectors in Bangladesh. There are some finest groups of engineers in the each companies who are able to meet the design code standards especially Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC 2006). In addition to local building codes, Bangladeshi engineers also deploy AISC, ASD, LRFD and MBMA codes, if necessary for complex projects. Nowadays, Bangladeshi companies began to supply steel building materials India’s northern remote districts.
The construction process in Bangladesh is still mostly manual. They are still using pulley and levers to erect steel frames. The cheap labor market is the main factor behind this. The modern construction apparatuses are only used in high profile and big projects where especially enforced by the reputed clients. Countrywide zigzag and narrow roads also affect the transportation longer spanned members which exerts few design vulnerabilities also.
Although Bangladesh’s steel construction industry is growing forward at a decent pace, they are still unable to use Universal sections like W-sections because of infrastructural limitations. However, the design capability of built-up steel members are not lagging behind the rest of the world. The sustainability of already built buildings stands as a proof.