Following the successful completion of the Grandstand project within Dubai’s Autodrome, Bone Steel – Scotland’s leading structural steel company – has set its sights firmly on the fast-growing regional markets where it is looking to expand its operations.

“A review of Bone Steel’s export strategy has led towards an expansion of its operations in this region,” comments Colin Bone, deputy managing director.
The company has recently established a new Middle East office in Dubai, through which Bone Steel intends to increase its market penetration in the other GCC countries, including Bahrain, Qatar and Oman.
“We intend to establish a strong presence throughout the Middle East and discussions are under way for further major projects in the region. The successful completion of the £3 million ($5.67 million) Autodrome project has helped provide a strong foothold in the regional market,” he adds.
For the Autodrome, Bone Steel had the concept frame redesigned by its design partners URS Corporation – widely recognised as one of the world’s leading stadium designers.
This redesign provided Union Properties with a lighter structure, which was within the design concept.
“With input from the construction team at Bone Steel, a structure was developed which was easier to erect,” says Bone.
At the second stage, fire protection was effectively designed out of the structure in collaboration with Safe Consulting (fire and risk engineers), an acknowledged specialist in its field.
The principles used by Safe for the work were simple and back to basics, Bone advises.
“Since the structure is ‘open’ and composed of steel and concrete, there is limited opportunity for a fire to start, and even in the event of fire, under no circumstances would the heat be maintained at a level that could seriously compromise the structural integrity of the steel frame. Following computer modelling of the structure by Safe, the Dubai Municipality also agreed with the principles,” he says.
“The extremely tight construction deadlines for the project dictated that the steel work for both the Marketing Building and the Grandstand – which came close to 3,000 tonnes, had to be fabricated and shipped from the UK.
Elaborating on the company’s operations in the region and the services it offers, Bone says: “Often our customers ask how we are able to make our systems and solutions work in the region?
“The answer is simple. Bone Steel offers customised solutions that suit the needs of each customer. We study each project in meticulous detail and the innovative techniques developed by our engineers and project teams together with the specialised skills of our partners help provide us with what is required to make it work,” he explains.
“We look upon every project as a unique challenge on which we can develop innovative solutions using our many years of experience. Bone Steel continues to improve performance by constantly upgrading its knowledge, skills and technology. This is the platform from which our philosophy and our focus on sustained growth are based.”
Bone Steel was established in 1938 by Alex Bone and has, over the decades, grown to become one of the largest steel construction companies in the UK.
Bone Steel has been involved in several high-profile contracts throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East and was recently involved in the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre at London’s Docklands.
The company has assisted its many clients in construction projects overseas, and has so far worked in 96 countries.
“With our new office in Dubai, this number is set to increase,” Bone explains.
 Elaborating on the services offered, he says: “One of the services available to our partners is the provision of value engineering on selected projects where we utilise the experience and skills in our engineering and technical departments to reduce the weight of structures and the experience in our construction department to make each structure as ‘buildable’ as possible.
Partnering, however, is not only for clients and the company has established, partnerships with a number of preferred sub-contractors and key suppliers.
“These include a long-term relationship with Corus for the supply of steel. A unique benefit of the Corus Partnership is that four full-time Corus managers are based within our head office with computer links to the various Corus mills and steel stockists.
Working closely with Corus, we have developed a just-in-time raw steel delivery system to our works, which has been in operation since 1998,” he explains.
He continues: “A number of concerns were identified during early 1990s regarding on-site application of intumescent coatings including disruption, isolation of areas, overspray, sensitivity to weather conditions and increased timescales to contract programmes. A study on how to overcome the various problems led to the invention of a process for applying intumescent coatings to steel within a highly controlled, off-site factory environment.”
“This development prompted Bone Steel to establish Enob Fire as a division of the company. Now Enob Fire is a market leading company in its own right and the management team continues to harness the potential, further develop the process and markets their skills and expertise in fire coating technology and fire engineering.”
“The off-site application process of intumescent coatings is currently growing annually by over 20 per cent worldwide.”
“We do not compete with steel fabricators,” he points out. “Bone Steel is recognised as a steel construction company and not simply as a fabricator, or erector, of structural steelwork. The difference is that we don’t simply provide trailer loads of steel that we can then erect – but instead provide a comprehensive building package,” he concludes.