A design team is midway through schematic design on a five-story residential building. The architect prefers wood framing for cost, the developer is concerned about combustibility and long-term movement,...
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 developer breaking ground on a five story wood frame residential building over a concrete parking and retail podium has already made the hardest decision: the building type. What...
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...
A homeowner in a 40-year-old house notices that the doors on one side of the hallway no longer latch. A stair-step crack has opened in the brick veneer, and...
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...
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...
Picture a building during a strong earthquake or a windstorm. The walls and columns get most of the attention, but the floors and the roof are doing quiet, critical...
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...