Steel fabricators serving Lowestoft and north Suffolk
Structural steel fabrication for Lowestoft: workshop and store frames for the port and PowerPark, boatyard sheds at Oulton Broad, mezzanines for industrial units and beams for Suffolk builders. Fabricated from your engineer's drawings and brought over from Norwich.
Lowestoft: some 27 miles from our workshop by the A146.
Working buildings on an exposed coast
Britain's most easterly town takes the weather first, so the steel in its sheds and workshops has to be made and finished with that in mind.
Swift Fabrication Services Ltd makes structural steel in Norwich and sends it down the A146, through Beccles, to Lowestoft. The work here follows the town's trades: buildings and platforms for offshore wind operations and maintenance around the port and PowerPark, sheds for the marine firms at Oulton Broad, and units on South Lowestoft Industrial Estate.
Every piece is fabricated from a structural engineer's drawing. Designing or certifying the building is outside what we do, and the calculations are your engineer's. What we bring is the making: accurate cutting and drilling, sound welds, and sensible suggestions on how a frame breaks down for transport, coating and erection. Our own erectors can put it up as well.
Our Lowestoft steel fabrication
Building frames and mezzanines
A free estimate and an agreed price
A146 from Norwich via Beccles
Made for Lowestoft
From a lean-to on a boatyard shed to a complete portal frame, these are the structural jobs we expect from the Lowestoft area, each one fabricated to the engineer's detail.
Steel portal frames for workshops, stores and boat sheds: columns, rafters, haunches, purlins, cladding rails and bracing, plus goalposts for tall doors that a boat on its trailer can pass under. Frames leave us in pieces sized for the road and bolt together on your foundations.
Older sheds around the harbour and Oulton Broad get altered more often than replaced. We make mezzanine floors, lean-to extensions, trimming steel for wider doors, and new sections to replace column feet and rails that the salt has eaten, all as your engineer specifies.
Steel beams for extensions and knock-throughs in Pakefield, Carlton Colville and Kessingland. UB and UC sections with end plates and cleats, box frames for open plan ground floors, columns on baseplates, and steel split into carryable lengths when the garden is the only way in.
It begins with the engineer's drawings by email and a free estimate from us. When the price is settled we go through every dimension. For new steel meeting an old shed we drive over and measure the building ourselves, since old frames are seldom where the original drawings say.
Fabrication is done in Norwich. Steel is normally primed. For anything exposed to sea air, galvanising or a paint system chosen by your engineer can be arranged before it leaves, and you should allow time for that. Delivery is about 27 miles by road, with a HIAB lorry to offload heavier pieces, and erection by our team if you want the whole job done by one firm.
Let us know which side of Lake Lothing you are on, how a lorry gets into the yard and what the ground is like where steel will be set down.
Think ahead
A frame only goes up once the foundations are cast and the holding down bolts sit in the right place, so steel and groundworks need planning together. Share your programme when you enquire. We will give you a fabrication slot and a delivery date that suit the concrete.
We will want the drawings, the Lowestoft site address, the finish and your key dates. Work for energy and port clients sometimes names a welding standard or asks for coded welders. Put that in the enquiry and you will hear what we can supply. Nothing is ordered until you confirm.
Request your steel estimateUseful extras
Beyond the drawings, a few things help. Photographs of the plot or the existing building. The bolt setting out plan if foundations are already in. How exposed the spot is, and whether the steel ends up indoors or outdoors. The gate width, and whether a lorry has room to turn. A sketch will do for a first talk.
We deliver structural steel to Lowestoft, Oulton Broad, Carlton Colville, Pakefield and Kessingland, and to Beccles and the Waveney valley on the road in. Great Yarmouth, a few miles up the coast, and the wider counties of Suffolk and Norfolk are covered too.
The checklist for fabrication quotesLowestoft answers
On distance, sea air, old sheds, single beams and who puts the frame up.
Read every fabrication FAQNo. It is about 27 miles from our Norwich workshop on the A146, which is an ordinary delivery for us. We will come and measure when steel has to fit a standing building, and we plan visits and deliveries together so the travel is put to good use.
We can make and fit the steel for it: lean-to frames, extra bays, wider door openings and mezzanines. An engineer needs to check the existing frame and draw the new work, because older sheds vary a lot. After that we survey the building and fabricate to suit.
That is set by your engineer or specifier, and for exposed steel on this coast it usually means hot dip galvanising, a marine grade paint system, or both. We arrange the finish after fabrication. Steel kept dry inside a building is often fine in primer.
How a job runs, step by stepYes. A single RSJ with its end plates is a normal order. Send the engineer's section size and length, and say whether you want it dropped at site or fitted by us.
We can. Our erectors install the steel we make, across Lowestoft and north Suffolk, with a telehandler or hired crane to suit the lift. Connections are bolted, then the frame is lined and levelled. RAMS are issued beforehand, and we talk to your groundworker about bolts and levels.
Steel erection in LowestoftThe engineer's frame drawings, including connections and base details, plus the site address, the finish and your dates. If cladding rails and purlins are in our scope, say so. The checklist has the full list.
View the quote checklistRelated work
Swift Fabrication Services
Send your drawings, the site address in or near Lowestoft and the dates you are working to. We reply with a free estimate, and nothing is cut until you agree the price.
