Before the Steel Arrives: Getting the Site Right

What we look for when we walk your site

Every project starts on foot. We walk the ground where the building will sit and look at the things that decide how the job goes. Where does water go when it rains. How much slope is there across the pad area. What is growing on it, and what has to come out. Where can a concrete truck and a steel trailer get in and turn around. Where are the property lines, the existing utilities, and the things you plan to add later. None of this is complicated. It just has to be done before anything else, because every answer changes the dirt work.

Drainage and access: the two things that stop jobs

Water and access cause more delays than anything else on a building site. The pad needs to sit above the surrounding grade so water sheds away from the slab instead of pooling against it. Swales and finish grading route runoff around the building, not through it.

Access matters just as much. Concrete trucks are heavy and steel trailers are long, and both need a firm path to the pad in whatever weather delivery day brings. We plan the route and the drainage at the start, because fixing either one after the slab is poured is slow and expensive.

Clearing, grading, and building the pad

Topsoil is good for grass and bad for buildings. Organic material never compacts reliably, so we strip it off the building footprint and get down to soil that will carry a load. From there the site is cut and filled to design grade. Fill goes in thin lifts, each one compacted before the next, so the pad is uniform from bottom to top.

Before concrete, the pad gets proof-rolled: a loaded truck runs across it, and any soft spot that pumps or ruts gets dug out and rebuilt. A pad that passes that test will hold a slab flat for the life of the building.

Why the foundation is engineered from the actual building reactions

A pre-engineered frame does not push on the ground the way a stick-framed wall does. Loads concentrate at the column bases, and each base sees its own combination of download, uplift, and horizontal thrust. The building manufacturer publishes those reaction loads for your specific building.

We design the foundation from those numbers: footing sizes, reinforcing, and embedment matched to the actual frame at the actual column locations. A generic foundation detail is a guess. In Oklahoma wind, uplift is not something to guess about.

Anchor bolts: surveyed and verified before the steel arrives

The steel is fabricated before it ships, and it is fabricated to match the anchor bolt plan. The bolts are set in wet concrete, and once the pour cures, they are where they are. A bolt group that is off by even a little turns into field modifications, delays, and arguments on erection day.

So we survey the anchor bolt layout before the pour and verify it again before the steel arrives. When the crane picks the first column, it drops onto its bolts and the nuts run down by hand. That is the whole point of the checking.

One contractor from dirt work to dried-in

Sitton Building Group delivers the shell under one local contract: site preparation and dirt work, an engineered foundation, anchor bolts surveyed and verified, red-iron erection, purlins, wall and roof panels, trim, gutters, and overhead doors, delivered weathertight.

We do not do electrical, plumbing, HVAC, or interior finish. Those come after delivery, handled by licensed trade contractors you choose, under their own permits. Keeping our scope tight is why the schedule holds and the price is clear. We are glad to coordinate ahead of the pour, like placing conduit sleeves in the slab so your electrician is not cutting concrete later. We build across the Tulsa area, from Broken Arrow and Owasso to rural land in the surrounding counties.