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The Vulcan Steel Structures, Inc. leadership team (from left): Executive Vice President Ryan Peck, President and CEO Steve Browning, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Joel Voelkert and Executive Vice President Jeff Spradley.

The Kearney Center in Tallahassee, FL, features curved rafters with a hip roof tie-in using a 16-inch vertical leg standing seam roof.

In a small town in southern Georgia, there’s a company that’s making a huge impact on the steel building industry. Vulcan Steel Structures, Inc. (Vulcan Steel) has grown from a local metal building fabricator/contractor to the largest steel building manufacturer in Georgia, with 125 employees.

As one of the largest privately owned steel building manufacturers in the country, Vulcan Steel designs, manufactures and ships more than 1,000 buildings a year across the globe. While the company has delivered over 27,000 buildings worldwide, the state of Georgia remains one of its most important markets. That’s because Vulcan Steel’s success story began in the Peach State.

Local Roots

The company was founded by Billy Browning, a native of Adel, who played a key role in establishing Georgia as a metal building frontrunner. In the 1970s, Billy became a metal building dealer for Cuckler Steel Buildings, a national manufacturer in Monticello, Iowa. Strict design limitations and long lead times motivated Billy, in 1973, to open his own metal building manufacturing plant, Browning Steel, Inc. At that time, it was the first small fabricator in that area to compete with industry giants like Cuckler, Stran and Butler and the first of many steel companies to later form in Adel—including Vulcan Steel.

Today, Vulcan Steel is led by Billy’s son, Steve Browning, President and CEO, who grew up in and around the business. “My first job was cleaning the shop when I was about 10 years old,” Steve says. “I worked many summers and Christmas breaks in this business while I was in school.”

Steve joined the business full time in 1988 after graduating from college and then playing professional baseball for the Baltimore Orioles organization. His early experience has helped transform the company into a worldwide leader in metal building fabrication.

“When we first started out, Vulcan Steel was a small company focused on metal buildings, but we also performed as a contractor and provided a number of other services,” Steve recalls. “We had the ability to design the building and manufacture the rigid frames. We would design and detail the complete building, but we’d outsource the roof, wall panels, purlins and girts. We also poured the concrete foundation, erected buildings, and sometimes handled the electrical and interior finish work. I actually set the anchor bolts for my customer on the first building that I sold, a 6,000-square-foot structure for Bluestone Fiberglass Fabrication Corporation in Danielsville, Georgia, over 30 years ago. We had a good business, but we were limited in our ability to grow the company due to the vast array of services we were managing,” he says.

As Steve gained experience in the industry, he steered the company toward a more specialized approach in the mid-1990s—that of becoming a building systems manufacturer and provider of engineered steel buildings to commercial contractors. When Billy Browning died unexpectedly in 2000, Steve took over the company’s leadership and continued to drive the vision of moving the company away from the general construction business to being a full-fledged manufacturer of steel building systems.

“As we narrowed our scope, it allowed us to concentrate on designing and manufacturing the building products themselves, and we focused on being a building system supplier to other contractors. That’s when we really grew as a company. In making the change, our growth would then only be restricted to our manufacturing capacity, and that provided a tremendous opportunity,” Steve recalls.

The relatively local business, working within a 200-mile radius, soon grew to a firm shipping around 100 buildings a month worldwide. The company specializes in unique, custom building solutions and has carved a niche in designing and manufacturing complex steel structures.

A Strong Choice

Vulcan Steel’s buildings are used for commercial and industrial facilities, airplane hangars, houses of worship and agriculture, to name a few. “Steel has certain qualities that no other building material has, including its strength and the ability to span great distances,” Steve says. “If you need a warehouse or have a manufacturing space that requires large column-free spans, there is no other product that can do the job better. The strength of steel supports heavy cranes and equipment. It’s the best choice for large industrial construction. It’s a very cost-effective method of construction, too.”

At its 215,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and headquarters in Adel, Vulcan Steel produces buildings ranging in size from 30 by 40 feet to several hundred thousand square feet. The vast majority of its customers are commercial contractors, although the company also sells direct to the end user.

Vulcan Steel’s engineering team designs and details steel buildings based on customer specifications. The steel is sized depending on various factors, including the span and height of the building, wind and snow loads, or other collateral loads, such as a crane to support. Buildings are fabricated from raw mill steel and shipped unassembled to the customer, who receives a set of drawings that the erector uses to build the system.

“Each piece is marked or stamped and our detailed drawings and plans indicate where each one will go. Our background in the erection business has served us well, as we know the importance of manufacturing a high-quality building that bolts together properly,” says Jeff Spradley, Executive Vice President. Jeff has been a key member of the company’s management team for over 20 years. “We have multiple quality control checkpoints throughout the process to ensure we deliver the best building possible.” Vulcan Steel is an IAS AC472-accredited manufacturer. The AC472 accreditation program audits the integrity of design engineering and manufacturing processes in metal building manufacturing facilities and is based on the requirements in Chapter 17 of the International Building Code.

Vulcan Steel’s work in Georgia is indicative of the variety of buildings it can provide to meet a range of needs.

In Savannah, Georgia, Vulcan Steel manufactured a 27,460-square-foot building for Southern Motors Acura. The full-service auto dealership features several connected buildings, including a showroom, office and sales areas, service bays and a car wash.

The Epps Aviation building, constructed on the site of the original U.S. Naval Air Station Atlanta, was designed to match the existing barrel roof of the older hangars on-site.

A 75,000-square-foot indoor practice facility for Colquitt County High School in Norman Park, Georgia, is another example of its capabilities. The building, used for indoor football practice, features a standing seam roof and Kynar ShadowRib wall panels.

Vulcan Steel recently delivered its largest job to date: a metal building system for the expansion of Domtar’s Engineered Absorbent Materials (EAM) subsidiary in Jesup, Georgia. The firm is a developer and manufacturer of absorbent core solutions for many of the world’s largest consumer product manufacturers. The $60 million expansion will add an additional large-scale production line to the EAM facility that will supply both domestic and global customers, increasing its exports through the Port of Savannah by 60% and adding approximately 500 containers to annual exports. Vulcan Steel provided 65 truckloads of fabricated steel for the manufacturing campus’s 200,000-square-foot expansion.

“We strive to give our customers the best experience we possibly can. I’ve always believed that if you work hard and treat your customer right, success is not a difficult formula.” Steve Browning, President and CEO, Vulcan Steel Structures, Inc.

Quality Customer Service

Vulcan Steel’s involvement doesn’t stop with delivery. “Our district sales managers go to construction sites each week; in addition, if there are any issues or questions as the building is being erected, our customers can call and talk to them or to one of our customer service people,” says Joel Voelkert, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, who leads a team of eight inside salespeople and five outside salespeople located in Florida, Alabama and Georgia. “We deliver our buildings in a timely fashion, and the quality and the ease of building our products are our primary selling points,” he notes.

A case in point: When Shinhwa Group, a Korean auto parts manufacturer, needed a fast turnaround on a metal building system for a new manufacturing facility in Auburn, Alabama, rather than telling them when it could be delivered, Steve asked their executives, “When do you want it?” The 60 truckloads of fabricated steel parts were delivered on time, as requested, and Vulcan Steel received the contract to fabricate an expansion for the building project from just over 170,000 square feet to about 300,000 square feet. The facility stands 56 feet tall and supports two 25-ton overhead cranes.

“The personal service we provide our customers is hard to find today,” Steve says. “Our attention to detail is also a differentiator. We want even the smallest things to go right. We strive to give our customers the best experience we possibly can. I’ve always believed that if you work hard and treat your customer right, success is not a difficult formula,” he adds.

Advancing the Industry

Following in his father’s pioneering footsteps in the metal building industry, Steve is active in the Metal Building Manufacturers Association (MBMA). He has served as a director and is a past chairman of its board of directors. “The MBMA sets the standard for our industry and helps educate others about the use of metal buildings. I feel it’s important to donate my time to enhance the industry and help set its direction for its future,” he says.

Steve also serves as the organization’s liaison to the Metal Building Contractors & Erectors Association (MBCEA), helping to strengthen the bond between the two associations. “The MBCEA promotes AC478, an international accreditation program for metal building contractors and erectors,” Steve notes. “We’re on the leading edge of what the future will hold, and having a quality accreditation program for erectors improves the quality of our industry’s buildings.”

While making an impact nationally for the industry and serving a worldwide marketplace, Vulcan Steel still maintains the values of a small-town company. Each day, Steve and his executive management team have a working lunch to discuss what’s going on in the business.

The firm recently completed an expansion of its existing plant, adding four new standing seam lines and doubling its framing capacity. “By increasing our manufacturing capability, we can shorten the lead times for new orders,” Steve says.

The company also recently added a new member to its leadership team, Executive Vice President Ryan Peck, who joined the company in November 2020. “I am excited to be part of a company that shares my values of product quality, service to the customer and relationships with its business partners,” Ryan notes. “It is a great feeling knowing I am joining a leadership team where we each have over 25 years of experience in the metal building industry.”

Family Values

A third generation of Brownings has now joined the company. Ben Browning, Steve’s oldest son, became part of the inside sales team in 2020 after graduating from Auburn University. “Ben’s being trained the same way that Billy trained Steve, with hands-on experience,” Ryan says.

It’s not surprising that Vulcan Steel has a family culture, with many employees who have been with the company for over 20 years. “I think, at the end of the day, people stay with the company because they feel like they are contributing,” Steve says. “When you take the talent a person brings and you listen and apply their talent and ideas to the organization, it makes a difference in how they feel about their job. Employees can contribute and feel their voices are heard here at Vulcan.”

Joel says the firm doesn’t have multiple layers of management, which enables people to get their jobs done efficiently. “When a customer calls, he or she talks to a coordinator who takes care of everything from the time the order comes in to the time it goes to the shop,” Joel says. “We’ve cut layers of processing out, so it minimizes the chance of error when we manufacture our buildings. People do multiple tasks to make sure the job is done right.”

And while the company continues to grow to serve a worldwide market, Georgia still plays a key role in the firm’s future. “We are a Georgia company doing business in Georgia,” Steve says. “This is our backyard, and we want to be the dominant player here as a supplier of metal buildings.”