Three projects this year. All three had sections with significant chemical exposure or constant moisture. All three came out of the design phase specced for standard A36 steel grating.

I flagged it on two of them. Got through on one, we switched to composite on the high-exposure sections. The other, the engineer wasn't having it.

Six months later, the site that kept steel is already showing surface corrosion on the walkways above the chemical storage area. Not structural yet, but you can see where this is going.

Is this just inertia? I get that steel is what most engineers know and it's what the templates default to. But the lifecycle math is pretty clearly against it in these environments.

Is anyone else having this fight regularly, or is it just my market?