Between September 2025 and September 2026, the government’s price index for fabricated structural steel in non-industrial buildings rose 35 percent. A price index tracks how the price of a fixed set of goods changes over time. Over the same year, the index for brick and structural clay tile rose 1 percent, and the index for cement fell. These numbers come from Bureau of Labor Statistics tables that the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) compiled in October 2026. They describe construction material prices better than any headline about inflation.

Building costs are not rising evenly. Metals are rising fastest, and almost everything else is rising slowly. If you are planning a church, a hotel, or a commercial building in the next two years, this split matters more than the average. The materials you choose during design now carry a cost risk that they did not carry three years ago.

Where construction material prices are actually rising

The metal lines in the September 2026 tables all show the same pattern. Over those twelve months, steel mill products rose 27.6 percent, and aluminum mill shapes rose 25.2 percent. Copper and brass mill shapes rose 30.0 percent, and so did steel bar joists and rebar. Prefabricated metal buildings rose 9.0 percent, and sheet metal products rose 6.7 percent. These metals are in the structural frame, the roof deck, the storefront system, the wire in the walls, and the ductwork above the ceiling.

Now compare the other materials in the same tables. Ready-mixed concrete rose 2.3 percent, and concrete block and brick rose 3.6 percent. Flat glass rose 3.1 percent, and insulation rose 2.7 percent. Gypsum building materials, the drywall in almost every interior wall, fell 0.4 percent, and cement fell 1.2 percent. Some non-metal materials rose more: lumber and plywood rose 9.6 percent, and precast concrete products rose 10.5 percent. But no non-metal material came near the 25 to 35 percent range of the main metal lines. Diesel fuel was the one input that rose faster than the metals, because its price more than doubled over the same period, and diesel affects every delivery to every site.

Trade policy is a large part of the cause. In June 2025, a presidential proclamation doubled the Section 232 tariff on imported steel and aluminum, from 25 percent to 50 percent. (Section 232 is the trade law that lets the president set tariffs for national security.) In August 2025, a 50 percent tariff on semi-finished copper products followed. In April 2026, the administration changed these tariffs again, and it has adjusted them more since then. Articles made entirely or almost entirely of these metals now carry a 50 percent tariff on their full value, and many derivative products carry 25 percent.

Domestic producers set their prices against imports. So a tariff on foreign steel also raises the price of American steel. AGC’s economists have tracked this all year, and their opinion is direct.

The gap between what contractors pay and what they charge

The same report has a second comparison that is important for owners. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks two price measures for nonresidential construction. The first measure shows what contractors pay for the materials, fuel, and services that they buy. It does not include the wages of their own crews. The second measure shows what contractors charge for a finished building. It includes labor, overhead, and profit.

From September 2025 to September 2026, the first measure increased 11.9 percent. The second measure increased 5.4 percent. Thus, the cost of the ingredients increased about two times as fast as the price of the finished meal. Two things explain the difference. First, the cost of labor and overhead increased more slowly than the cost of materials. Second, many contractors paid part of the cost increase themselves to win work, because many owners delayed their projects.

We would not treat this gap as good news for the owner. When a contractor’s margin gets smaller, it usually recovers later. It usually recovers in the next round of bids, in stricter escalation terms (contract clauses that let the price rise when costs rise), or in shorter periods during which a contractor will hold a price. A budget number that your contractor gave you in the spring may already be out of date. A bid this winter that is close to that number may include less contingency than bids used to.

For a broader view of what the overall construction market is doing, read our separate post on timing. This post makes a narrower point. The materials list in your drawings is now one of the main places where that risk lives.

What this changes in design

The first change is simple: know where the metal is in your building. In a typical church or small commercial building in our region, metal is in the structural frame and roof joists, the metal roof deck, and often the roof panels. It is also in the aluminum storefront and curtain wall at the entry and in the hollow metal door frames. Copper wire runs through the whole building, the piping is copper or steel, and the ductwork is galvanized. A pre-engineered metal building is mostly metal from the slab up, as the name says.

None of this is wrong. Congregations often choose steel framing and metal buildings for good reasons, such as long clear spans for a worship room and fast erection. But an owner should know that these line items have the largest price changes this year.

The second change is to test structural system decisions earlier and more honestly. Take a one-story fellowship hall or education wing. Load-bearing concrete masonry, wood trusses on masonry walls, or masonry walls with a lighter steel roof structure may now compare differently against a full steel frame than they did in 2023. The building code decides whether these options are available at all. Construction type, occupancy, area, and fire separation limits decide which materials are allowed, long before cost enters the discussion. An assembly space with a large worship room has less freedom than a small office.

When the code allows the options, price them side by side during schematic design (the first phase of design). At that stage, a change costs only a few sketches. That is better than finding the difference on bid day.

The third change is in how the construction documents are written. When the price of a material changes quickly, drawings that allow only one product give the owner no room to move when bids arrive. Bid alternates solve this problem. A bid alternate asks the contractor to price a second option next to the base design. For example, the contractor can price a metal roof against an asphalt shingle or membrane roof, or an aluminum storefront against a different entry system. The owner then chooses with real numbers.

Performance specifications also help. A performance specification describes what a system must do, not which product to use. This gives the contractor room to offer an option with less price risk that still meets the design intent. Both tools take more coordination from the design team, because every alternate must work with the structure, the details, and the code analysis. But they change a single price risk into a choice.

The fourth change is the timing of purchases. On larger projects, and on projects that hire a contractor early under construction manager at risk or design-build, it is now common to release the structural steel or joist package before the rest of the drawings are complete. This lets the contractor place the mill order and fix the price. This can be the right decision. But it commits money before the full project is bid. It also fixes the frame design earlier than the rest of the building.

The same logic applies to electrical equipment. Long lead times already push owners to order it early, as we described in our post on why buildings end up waiting on transformers. Early buying is a tool for one specific risk, not a habit. The owner should understand both sides of the trade before signing for it.

The case against chasing the index

All of this comes with a strong caution. The worst response to a price spike is to redesign a building around it. Material prices reverse, sometimes quickly. In the same AGC tables, steel mill product prices averaged more than 90 percent higher in 2021 than in 2020. Then they fell 16.2 percent in 2023 and another 8.8 percent in 2024. Lumber rose 41.1 percent in 2021 and fell 23.1 percent in 2023.

Imagine an owner who dropped a steel frame at the 2021 peak, or a wood roof at the lumber peak. That owner would have paid for a redesign, then watched the reason for it disappear before construction started. Tariff policy has also changed several times in eighteen months. There is no reason to assume that the current tariffs are permanent.

A substitution also has costs that a price index does not show. Masonry needs a lot of labor, and skilled masons are hard to find right now. So a material with a steady price on a table may cost more to install or take longer to schedule. A change to the structural system after design development means you pay the architect and engineers to redo work. It can also delay the permit.

Some choices are right for the building at any price. One example is a long-span steel structure over a large worship room, where interior columns would ruin the sightlines. Our honest position is this: metal prices are a factor to weigh, not a verdict. Weigh them early, before the design is fixed and before a change of mind costs more.

Some owners have less freedom than others, and they should know this from the start. A franchise operator or a hotel owner who builds to a brand prototype usually inherits the storefront system, the metal canopy, the facade panels, and sometimes the structural approach from the franchisor’s standards. A substitution can need formal approval, and that approval can take longer than the price advantage is worth. In these cases, the useful work is to manage timing and terms, not materials. That means confirming early which elements the brand will let you change, and asking the franchisor if approved alternates already exist. It also means making sure the construction contract says who carries the risk if metal prices change after the bid. A church or an independent business owner usually has much more freedom, which is one more reason to use it while the design is still on paper.

One approach makes sense in almost every case: keep options open while they are cheap to keep open. During schematic design, ask which systems have the most price risk. Then price a credible alternative for the two or three largest metal packages, and write the documents so that the bids can show the difference. Agree in advance how to handle escalation if prices change between bid and purchase. None of these steps commits the owner to build with anything other than steel. They make sure that if the wind keeps blowing, the project can use it rather than be blown out by it.

That is how we approach material price changes at UNITE. In more than 25 years and over 1,000 church projects, we have designed through lumber spikes, steel spikes, and the long calm periods between them. The lesson is always the same. The owners who come through a volatile market in good shape are the ones whose architect raised the question during schematic design, not after bids.

We bring the structural options. We bring the code analysis that tells you which options are allowed. We write documents so that the contractor can price real alternatives. And we will tell you plainly when the best answer is to leave the design alone. If you are planning a project and want to know how this year’s metal prices affect it, we would be glad to talk with you about it.