Pre-assembled structural panels stacked in the plant

Level 2 — Pre-assembled

Pre-assembled structural panels: walls, floors and trusses

Q: Are NewCon Steel panels welded or bolted on site?

NewCon Steel panels are not welded on site: they are fastened with screws and bolts. This matters because of the coating: welding destroys the metallic coating in the heat-affected zone and forces a field repair that never matches the factory coating. Bolt and screw it instead, and the Zn-Al-Mg coating at 275 g/m² applied to the coil reaches the finished building intact.

Framing leaves the job site and moves into the plant: indoors, on a jig, against a shop drawing, under dimensional control.

NewCon Steel structural panels are walls, floor cassettes and roof trusses assembled in the plant from cold-formed LGS profiles under CNC dimensional control (±0.5 mm), delivered to site numbered and sequenced to the structural model and lifted straight into place, which removes piece-by-piece framing on the job site.

±0.5mmTolerance of the profile inside the panel

275g/m²Zn-Al-Mg coating

3typesWall, floor and truss

What it is

What a pre-assembled structural panel is

A structural panel is an assembly of LGS profiles already framed: a bearing wall with its studs, tracks and opening reinforcement; a floor cassette with its joists; a complete truss. NewCon Steel frames it in the plant, not on the job site.

The panel is framed on a jig, indoors, from pieces CNC-cut and punched to a ±0.5 mm tolerance, and checked against the shop drawing before it is bundled. It arrives on site numbered and sequenced to the structural model: the crew lifts, plumbs and fixes.

The material is the same LGS/CFS profile, 0.85 to 2.5 mm, with the same Zn-Al-Mg coating at 275 g/m². The steel is not what changes: what changes is where the framing work happens and under whose control.

Bearing walls and shear walls, with door and window openings already framed.
Floor cassettes and light gauge steel joists.
Trusses and roof structure.
Service penetrations for MEP, punched in the plant.

In the plant

Framed indoors, checked against the drawing

Framing in the plant is a control decision, not a cosmetic one. On a jig, square gets verified, torque gets repeated, and the wrong piece never reaches the wall: it is caught before the panel is closed. The panel is designed to AISI S240-20, the standard for cold-formed steel structural framing.

Every panel is identified by lot and by its position in the model, and that identification is what the crew reads on site. There is no drawing interpretation in the field: there is a label and a position.

Framing and dimensional verification happen at the Centro Industrial PEB plant, Las Mañanitas, Panama City, under the same ±0.5 mm dimensional control as the roll-forming line.

Square and frame dimensions checked against the shop drawing.
Numbering and sequencing by position in the structural model.
Bundling, lot identification and securing for transport.
Traceability from the panel to the pieces and to the originating steel coil.

Cold-formed steel structural panel pre-assembled in the plant, studs screwed into the tracks — Pre-assembled panel on the jig table.

On site

What the job site stops doing

A pre-assembled panel keeps the job site but lifts specific tasks off it: no more field cutting of profiles, no more laying out holes by hand, no more framing openings flat on the slab, no more touching up coating on edges cut with an angle grinder.

What is left is lift, plumb and fix. That is erection work, not fabrication work, and it changes the profile of the crew you need on site.

If you want the complete structure to land with the panels — connections, accessories and calculations — on a single purchase order, order the whole structure as a kit.

No field cutting of profiles.
No hand layout of service penetrations.
No field welding: the panel is fastened with screws and bolts.
No coating touch-up on field-cut edges.

NumberedSequencedReady to lift

Pre-assembled light-gauge steel structural panels with service punch-outs, stacked on a flatbed inside the plant — Pre-assembled structural panels with service punch-outs.

Specification

Panel specification

Profile: Cold-formed LGS/CFS profiles, 0.85 to 2.5 mm
Coating: Zn-Al-Mg 275 g/m² total, both sides — ZM275 (EN 10346) / ZMM275 (ASTM A1046 Type 1)
Panel types: Bearing wall, shear wall, floor cassette / joist, truss and roof structure
Penetrations: MEP service penetrations and connection holes punched in the plant

Framing: In the plant, on a jig, with dimensional verification against the shop drawing
Piece tolerance: ±0.5 mm (CNC cutting and punching)
Identification: Panel numbered and sequenced to the structural model
Plant: Centro Industrial PEB, Las Mañanitas, Panama City

Members: AISI S100-16 (R2020) with Supplement 3 (S3-22)
Framing, shear walls, diaphragms and trusses: AISI S240-20
Seismic design: AISI S400-20
Design loads: ASCE/SEI 7-22
Destination codes: REP-2021 (Panama) · NSR-10 (Colombia) · IBC / ASCE 7 (Caribbean and US)

Quoting unit: m² of panel
Delivery: Bundled, secured and shipped from the plant
Documentation: Shop drawing, mill certificate and Panamanian certificate of origin

Maximum panel dimensions depend on the transport and the lifting equipment available at the destination: they are set with you during take-off engineering, before anything is fabricated.

Sectors

Where panelizing pays

Panelization pays where there is repetition, where skilled labor is scarce, or where the job site is a long way from the plant.

Housing

Multifamily and repeat single-family

Repetitive walls and floors: the same panel gets made many times under the same control. Repetition is exactly what a plant does better than a job site.

Bearing walls

Institutional

Education and healthcare

Classrooms, clinics and expansions with hard deadlines and buildings that stay in operation, where cutting site work cuts interference with the running facility.

FloorsTrusses

Islands and remote sites

Caribbean and remote projects

Where flying in a skilled crew and cutting equipment costs more than shipping the panel already framed. The panel travels assembled; the skilled work stays in Panama.

IBC / ASCE 7

How to order

How to order a run of panels

Send the model or the drawings

Structural drawings or the project model, plus the destination country and port. From that we set the panel take-off and the size limits imposed by transport and lifting.

m²

Take-off and validation

We turn the structure into panels: walls, floors and trusses, numbered and sequenced. You sign off on the take-off before it enters production.

AISI S240-20

Formal quote

Quote by m² of panel, with scope, quantities, fabrication time and shipping terms, within 48 hours.

48 h

Fabrication, framing and shipment

CNC roll-forming and punching, framing on the jig, verification against the drawing, bundling and lot identification, and shipment with mill certificate and certificate of origin.

±0.5 mm

FAQ

Structural panels: field questions

What exactly shows up when you buy structural panels from NewCon Steel?

When you buy structural panels from NewCon Steel, what lands on site is walls, floor cassettes and trusses already framed in cold-formed LGS profiles, with openings framed and MEP service penetrations already punched. Every panel arrives numbered and sequenced to the structural model, bundled and identified by lot. The crew lifts, plumbs and fixes: it does not frame piece by piece on the slab.

Are NewCon Steel panels welded or bolted on site?

NewCon Steel panels are not welded on site: they are fastened with screws and bolts. This matters because of the coating: welding destroys the metallic coating in the heat-affected zone and forces a field repair that never matches the factory coating. Bolt and screw it instead, and the Zn-Al-Mg coating at 275 g/m² applied to the coil reaches the finished building intact.

How big can a NewCon Steel structural panel be?

The size of a NewCon Steel structural panel is not set by the plant: it is set by the transport and the lifting equipment available at the destination. That is why the panel take-off is defined with the client in up-front engineering — before fabrication — accounting for the transport mode, the port of entry and the lifting equipment on site. A panel you cannot unload at the site is a badly designed panel.

How much labor does panelizing with NewCon Steel actually save?

NewCon Steel does not publish a labor-savings percentage, because the real saving depends on the crew, the project and the site, and any generic number would be marketing, not engineering. What is verifiable is which tasks disappear from the job site: field cutting of profiles, hand layout of penetrations, framing openings flat on the slab, and touching up coating on cut edges. The work left on site is erection, not fabrication.

What is the difference between buying panels and buying a structural kit from NewCon Steel?

Buying panels from NewCon Steel means buying the framed elements — walls, floors and trusses — so your team completes the rest of the structure. Buying a structural kit means buying the building's entire structure on a single purchase order: panels, loose profiles, connections, accessories and the structural calculations signed by a licensed engineer for the code of the destination country.

Plant