Fast, buildable CFS structural engineering — as delegated engineer or engineer-of-record, sealed in your project’s state, with turnaround that protects the construction schedule.
Cold-formed steel is sheet steel shaped into structural members at room temperature — galvanized coils roll-formed into C-studs, U-track, joists, and specialty profiles rather than hot-rolled like conventional I-beams. The result is a framing system with wood-like constructability and steel’s consistency: dimensionally identical members that don’t burn, rot, warp, or feed termites, engineered under AISI S100 and ideally suited to shop-panelized construction. For mid-rise multifamily, hospitality, and mixed-use buildings — and for any project where fabrication schedule drives the critical path — CFS is frequently the system that wins on both cost and speed.
TCE engineers load-bearing cold-formed steel for single & multi-family, mid-rise multifamily & mixed-use, hospitality, commercial, and modular/prefab buildings. Designs are economical and constructible — drawn the way fabricators actually build.
Service areas: North Carolina · Florida · Georgia · Michigan · Alabama — CFS engineering in each of our priority states.
Trillas Consulting Engineers provides project-specific cold-formed steel engineering from single-family homes to multi-family and mid-rise buildings — as Engineer of Record (EOR) or as the delegated specialty engineer — covering the complete framing system:
Load-bearing and non-load-bearing walls, floor joists, roof framing, trusses, headers, and wall panels — designed for the project-specific axial, flexural, and lateral loads, spans, geometry, and support conditions.
Full structural engineering and sealed construction documents for the cold-formed steel system, carrying engineer-of-record responsibility for the CFS design within the project.
Detailed design of the CFS system to the criteria and performance requirements established by the Engineer of Record in the project documents, delivered as sealed calculations and design drawings.
CFS engineering built for panelized and prefabricated framing. Beyond sealed design, we produce the machine files that drive the roll-forming equipment — including Howick, Scottsdale (Vertex/SCS), and FrameCAD — so your design goes straight from engineering to the factory floor, with the framing data ready to run production.
Member-to-member connections and attachment of the CFS system to structural steel, concrete, masonry, and other supporting construction, including fastening, welding, and anchorage design.
Evaluation of how gravity, lateral, and other applicable loads move through the CFS framing and connections into the supporting structure, maintaining a complete and continuous load path.
Sealed calculations, framing layouts, and details to support fabrication-level shop drawings and the submittal packages required for permitting, fabrication, and construction.
Coordination of the CFS framing with the primary structure, architectural requirements, openings, transitions, deflection and movement joints, and other project-specific conditions.
As Engineer of Record for the cold-formed steel structure, Trillas Consulting Engineers takes design responsibility for the CFS framing system shown in the construction documents — establishing the loads, framing, lateral system, and connection design, and sealing the drawings and calculations for permitting and construction. This is the right fit when the CFS framing is the primary structural system and the project needs a single engineer accountable for its design.
In the delegated (specialty engineering) model, the project documents establish the design criteria and performance requirements, and the detailed engineering of the cold-formed steel system is completed and sealed by a specialty engineer.
Trillas Consulting Engineers develops the delegated design for the defined CFS scope — framing members, connections, load paths, support conditions, and project-specific details — and seals the supporting calculations and drawings. We coordinate with architects, engineers-of-record, fabricators, and contractors — including fabricators running Howick, Scottsdale, and FrameCAD equipment — to produce engineering that integrates with the overall building design and is practical to fabricate and construct. And because we generate the machine files that run those systems directly, we close the gap between engineering and fabrication — delivering production-ready framing data, not just drawings.
Cold-formed steel is sheet steel shaped into structural members at room temperature. Coils of galvanized sheet steel run through roll-forming machines that bend flat steel into C-shaped studs and joists, U-shaped track, and specialty profiles through a series of rollers — no heat involved. That's the difference from hot-rolled steel (“red iron” I-beams), which is formed at the mill at over 1,600°F.
Counterintuitively, cold-forming makes the steel stronger at the bends: the work-hardening of the forming process raises the yield strength exactly where the profile needs stiffness.
A CFS building is framed much like wood — studs in walls, joists in floors, trusses in roofs — but with engineered steel members:
Member sizes follow an industry designator: a “600S162-43” is a 6-inch deep Stud with 1-5/8″ flanges in 43-mil (18-gauge) steel. Gauge thickness in structural CFS typically runs 33 to 97 mils (20 to 12 gauge), in 33 and 50 ksi grades.
Cold-formed steel structural design follows applicable building codes and industry standards, including AISI S100 for structural member design, AISI S240 for cold-formed steel structural framing, and ASTM A1003 for steel sheet material requirements.
The AISI Cold-Formed Steel Design Manual provides technical guidance and design examples supporting the application of these standards. Trillas Consulting Engineers incorporates the applicable requirements into project-specific framing systems, connections, load paths, and sealed engineering documents.
Licensed in 33 states, with active CFS and design work concentrated in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Alabama — one engineering partner across your whole pipeline.
Ready to talk delegated design? Start on our CFS delegated engineering page, or see completed work in the portfolio.
Tell us about it. If we’re a fit, you’ll have a scoped proposal in days — and if we’re not, we’ll tell you that too.