Editorial standards

Content here is planning research. It is not engineering advice, it is not a stamped design, and it is not a code determination for any jurisdiction. A building that gets built needs an engineered design from the manufacturer or a licensed engineer, and a permit review by the authority having jurisdiction.

Pages carry the label “Reviewed under the Find Steel Buildings editorial methodology”. That means the page was reviewed against the rules on this page. It does not mean a licensed engineer reviewed it. Where a named expert has reviewed a page, the page says so with that person’s name and credentials. The platform does not publish invented author bylines or fictitious review credentials.

• Page structure is defined per page family by a content contract, so a size page, a component page and a reference page are researched against different requirements rather than one article template.
• Production is AI-assisted. Every page is generated against its contract and then reviewed by an editor against the provenance rules below before it can move to editorial approval. Nothing publishes automatically.
• An automated claim linter flags popularity claims, cost claims, prescriptive code language and numeric engineering statements that have no provenance record. High-severity flags block approval for publication.

Geometry — square footage, perimeter, wall area, roof area at the stated pitch, slab volume, frame bay layout — is computed from the nominal width, length, eave height and pitch stored for that footprint. Those values are arithmetic on stored dimensions and are labelled Platform calculation. They are not estimates, and they are not a substitute for a manufacturer’s engineered drawing set.

Statements that describe a workable arrangement rather than a computed fact are labelled Planning guidance, Typical configuration, Engineering-required or Jurisdiction-specific.

• Any price, cost range or cost comparison.
• Any code or regulatory requirement, including fire separation and opening protection.
• Any structural capacity, allowable span, spacing requirement, gauge range or load figure.
• Any popularity, market-share or “most common” statement.
• Any quantitative comparison between products, systems or regions.

Where the verified dataset does not exist, the page states the absence instead of estimating. Cost and state-code pages remain unpublished for exactly this reason.

• TIER 1: code authority, standards body, primary dataset or manufacturer engineering
• TIER 2: recognized industry organization or engineering publication
• TIER 3: trade publication or supplier documentation
• TIER 4: general informational source

Code, structural and engineering claims require Tier 1 or Tier 2 evidence. General blogs and content-marketing pages are not used to support structural or code claims at any tier.

• Find Steel Buildings dimensional records

  Find Steel Buildings · Primary platform dataset · TIER 1

  Stored nominal width, length, eave height and roof pitch, and every value computed from them.

• Find Steel Buildings keyword demand dataset

  Find Steel Buildings · First-party research dataset (imported search-demand master) · TIER 1

  Relative search-demand statements, stated as demand within the dataset rather than as market share.

• North American Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members (AISI S100)

  American Iron and Steel Institute · Standards body specification · TIER 1

  The design basis for cold-formed purlins and girts; the authority that governs section capacity.

• ASCE/SEI 7, Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures

  American Society of Civil Engineers · Standards body load standard · TIER 1

  The authority for design wind, snow and load-combination criteria referenced by the adopted code.

• International Building Code and International Residential Code

  International Code Council · Model code · TIER 1

  The model codes that jurisdictions adopt and amend; cited as the framework, never as a local requirement.

• Metal Building Systems Manual

  Metal Building Manufacturers Association · Industry technical manual · TIER 2

  Terminology and system conventions for pre-engineered metal building components.

• Manufacturer engineering and load tables (building-specific)

  Building manufacturer · Manufacturer engineering documentation · TIER 1

  Allowable spans, spacing, gauge and capacity for a specific product. Not reproduced on this platform.

• Supplier profiles carry evidence-backed facts only. A field that could not be established from an available source is shown as unknown.
• Unknown is never converted into a negative claim. “We could not verify X” does not become “the company does not do X”.
• “Manufacturer” is assigned only where evidence indicates the company produces buildings or components rather than reselling them. Where the evidence does not establish that, the company is described by what the evidence supports.
• Review pages do not publish star ratings, scores or rankings, because the platform has no verified, comparable dataset that would justify one.

Companies can request a factual review of a profile at contact. A request is evaluated on evidence; it does not buy a change of conclusion.

Comparison pages compare decisions, not brands: they set out the attributes on which two options genuinely differ, state which of those differences are established by sources, and mark the rest as project-dependent. Where a difference depends on jurisdiction, site conditions or an engineered design, the page says so instead of declaring a winner.

Cost is the easiest thing on the internet to publish and the hardest to publish honestly. Every cost figure here must carry a source or an explicit basis label, and figures without one are not published. A cost figure is planning information, not a quotation: real pricing depends on specification, site, region, freight, erection scope and market conditions at the time of purchase.

Find Steel Buildings does not operate a real-time automated matching engine and does not guarantee that you will receive any quote, a particular number of quotes, a particular price, or a response from any supplier.

Find Steel Buildings may receive compensation from suppliers, providers, advertisers and other commercial partners, including compensation connected to estimate requests and referrals. Compensation does not determine the conclusions of supplier reviews, comparison pages or editorial research. The full statement is on the advertising and commercial disclosure page.

Each page shows a last-updated date reflecting the last reviewed change to its content or its underlying record. Where an external source has its own publication or edition date, that date is shown with the source rather than merged into the page date.

Corrections are handled as content changes with a new review pass, not as silent edits: the claim is re-classified, its provenance record is updated, and the page’s updated date changes. If you can show that a figure or statement here is wrong, that is a correction we want.

Send the page URL, the statement in question and the supporting source to info@findsteelbuildings.com.