Working with the best partners to provide quality solutions
Each partner we work with has been carefully selected to add value, knowledge and expertise to our product and service range.
Working with U-Roof: who we partner with
U-Roof does not build. We manufacture the galvanised light gauge steel frames that other people build with — which means almost every project we supply involves working alongside somebody else. Over more than a decade of supplying steel frame kits across the UK we have developed working relationships with architects, main contractors, developers, self-build clients, garden room installers and specialist sub-contractors.
This page sets out how we work with each of them, and what you can expect from us as a supply partner.
Architects and designers
If you are designing in light gauge steel for the first time, the sections behave differently from timber and very differently from hot-rolled steel. We will review your drawings at concept stage and tell you what is achievable before you commit a client to a form that will not work economically.
- Indicative section sizes and spans so you can set structural depths on your sections
- Advice on where a steel frame buys you headroom against a height restriction — often 80 to 100mm over the timber equivalent
- Guidance on thermal bridging and the warm-frame build-up needed to hit your target U-values
- Confirmation of what is required for a Building Regulations submission
- Budget costings for the frame package to support your cost plan
Main contractors and builders
Our frames arrive pre-fabricated, numbered and drilled, with a panel layout drawing, a fixings schedule and an installation manual. There is no cutting on site and no interpretation required. For a contractor that means a predictable programme and a trade that does not depend on finding a skilled carpenter.
We supply everything structural — wall panels, roof trusses or rafters, floor cassettes and all structural fixings, including the 5.5 x 25mm hex head Tek screws. See our construction drawings page for the full drawing set.
Developers and housebuilders
For repeat unit types, light gauge steel gives you a manufactured product with identical tolerances across every plot. Nothing shrinks, nothing twists, and the tenth unit is dimensionally the same as the first — which matters when you are ordering windows, doors and kitchens in bulk.
We work on new build housing, multi-occupancy residential schemes and new homes, and we can phase manufacture and delivery against your build programme rather than dropping the whole scheme on site at once.
Garden room and outbuilding installers
A large part of our business is supplying frames to installers who fit out and finish garden buildings. If you install garden rooms, offices, gyms or annexes, we can supply frames engineered to each client’s dimensions rather than restricting you to three catalogue sizes.
That gives you a genuinely bespoke offer with none of the manufacturing risk. Browse the ranges we supply most often: bespoke garden rooms, annexes, garages and A-frames.
Self-builders
Self-builders are often the clients who benefit most from a manufactured frame, because the frame is the part of the build where a mistake is hardest to recover from. Panels arrive labelled and the drawings show every fixing position, so a competent two-person team can erect the structure without specialist trades.
We will talk you through the sequence before you start, and we are on the end of the phone while you are building.
Specialist sub-contractors
We work regularly with ground screw installers, cladding contractors, glazing suppliers and M&E sub-contractors. Because our frames are punched with service holes during manufacture, first-fix electrical and plumbing runs inside the wall build-up rather than being surface-mounted afterwards — something worth telling your M&E contractor at tender stage.
See ground screw foundations and our cladding guide.
What we ask of our partners
- Tell us the constraint early. Height limits, boundary distances, span requirements and heavy fixings all change the frame design. They are cheap to accommodate at drawing stage and expensive afterwards.
- Sign the drawings off properly. Once approved, the geometry drives the roll-forming line directly. Changes after that mean re-manufacture.
- Build the thermal detail correctly. A steel frame needs continuous external insulation, not insulation only between the studs. We will tell you what is required; please do not value-engineer it out.
Become a U-Roof supply partner
If you install, specify or build with steel frame and want a UK manufacturer who will engineer to your drawings rather than sell you a catalogue, we would like to hear from you.
Get in touch with U-Roof, or see completed work in our case studies and gallery.