A steel beam can pass every strength check on paper and still perform poorly in the field. The cause is often not the size of the section but the...
A homeowner reading a structural calculation package for the first time will often notice what looks like a contradiction. One page adds the dead load and live load directly....
A contractor submits a permit set for a two-story addition. A few weeks later, the plan checker returns a comment: “Provide structural calculations supporting the framing shown on the...
A plumber runs a new drain line through a row of floor joists. An electrician bores a path for a circuit. An HVAC contractor notches the top plate to...
Walk into a modern mixed-use building and you will often find wide open retail space at the ground floor with several stories of apartments stacked above. The columns and...
Most projects arrive at our office with the structural material already decided, and about a third of the time the decision was made for the wrong reason. A developer...
You have a set of structural drawings in front of you. The sheets are covered with grids, abbreviations, callouts, and dimensions, and none of it looks like the tidy...
A shipping container looks like the perfect shortcut. It arrives as a sealed steel box, it stacks nine high on a cargo ship, and it survives ocean storms for...
On May 16, 1968, a small gas explosion in a kitchen on the 18th floor of Ronan Point, a 22-story precast concrete apartment block in London, blew out a...
Many homeowners and even some first-time developers assume that the drawings their architect produces are the only plans a project needs. Then the permit application stalls, and the building...