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My Project is in a Flood Zone… What Do I Do?

Business Practice Tips for the Structural Engineer

Long before Cheryl’s “she-shed” was struck by lightning… my shed was destroyed by a rotted oak tree blown over during Hurricane Irene. My home and office were without power for several days. All the while, calls were coming in from clients to evaluate the damage to their buildings. Although I had been engineering structures in flood zones for many years by then, when you are personally and professionally affected by storm damage, it makes a lasting impact. …

Jul, 2020 By Kevin H. Chamberlain, P.E. In CASE Business Practices Comments 0

The Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator Tool (EC3)

Why Now and How Do You Use It?

The building and construction sectors play a vital role in minimizing our future carbon footprint. Each year, the built environment contributes almost 40% of global greenhouse (GHG) emissions. The industry’s focus on operational carbon reductions – the energy used to heat, cool, and power our buildings – has led to many successes. However, the attention to embodied carbon, the emissions associated with material production and construction processes, has been lagging. …

Jul, 2020 By Donald Davies, P.E., S.E. and Kestner, P.E., LEED AP BD+C In Technology Comments 0

The January 2020 Puerto Rico Earthquake

The Reality Not Covered in the Media

Ponce is a beautiful coastal city that was once the capital of colonial Puerto Rico. Its magnificent houses and historic buildings, often exceeding 10,000 square feet, survived for centuries but were damaged by the January 2020 magnitude-6.4 earthquake. In some locations, ground acceleration exceeded 50 percent of gravity – something we expect in highly seismic regions like the Western U.S. – and many buildings are now red-tagged, labeled too dangerous to enter. The island’s economy has suffered from depopulation for decades, with an estimated one million people leaving in the last decade alone. Hurricane Maria in 2017 accelerated this trend, so many of the buildings impacted by the earthquake were not occupied nor maintained. …

Jul, 2020 By H. Kit Miyamoto, Ph.D., S.E. In InSights Comments 0

Iconic Global Structures – what did we learn?

The last great international conference … that I attended

During the last two days of September 2019, a group of internationally renowned structural engineers, along with their architectural (or other-related-industry) cohorts, assembled in Dubai to share experiences in building some of the world’s most iconic structures. …

Jun, 2020 By Derek Skolnik, P.E., Ph.D., M.ASCE In Editorial Comments 0

The Evolution of Fire Safety in Supertall Buildings

As structural engineers, our approach to structural fire safety in supertall buildings has evolved along with overall fire and life safety goals. Structural systems have progressed from the early steel frame towers of the 1970s to current practice incorporating concrete and composite steel/concrete structural elements. This article looks at the relationship between structural engineering practices for tall buildings and how these practices have influenced fire safety strategies for passive and active protection systems in tall buildings over the last 50 years. …

Jun, 2020 By James Antell, AIA, P.E. In Structural Performance Comments 1

The Future of Structural Round Timber

The Original Mass Timber

As Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) decision-makers continue to explore new applications for mass timber products. Forest product innovators are applying decades of existing research toward the scaled commercialization of structural round timber (SRT). The authors of this article predict that rising demand for mass timber products is an enormous opportunity for accelerating the use of SRT columns, spanning members, and trusses. …

Jun, 2020 By Amelia Baxter and Michaela Harms In Building Blocks Comments 1

Performance-Based Wind Design

The Next Frontier

With the release of the ASCE/SEI Prestandard for Performance-Based Wind Design (PBWD) in August 2019, the industry has taken an initial step toward implementing a structural engineering technique similar to well-established Performance-Based Seismic Design (PBSD) for the other most common building environmental hazard, wind. …

Jun, 2020 By Sean Clifton, P.E., S.E, Russell Larsen, P.E., S.E. and Kevin Aswegan, P.E. In Structural Design Comments 1

Fuzzy Wood and Coastal Piles

It is common in Florida to elevate homes on wood piles in coastal zones A and V. Many of those homes are adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, bays, estuaries, and other bodies containing saltwater. Most of the piles are sheltered under habitable space. Reacting to its environment, the wood has a fuzzy appearance. Why would a wood pile, driven on land or near a body of water, deteriorate at the protected and dry top and not at ground level or the waterline? To understand the cause of “fuzzy wood” and to provide an appropriate repair, we need go back to high school biology and chemistry classes. …

Jun, 2020 By Richard S. Barrow, P.E., S.I. In Structural Rehabilitation Comments 1

Managing the Risks of Subconsultant Relationships

Engineers have a responsibility not only for their actions or errors but also for the actions/errors of those subconsultants or subcontractors who work under their direction. While there is much focus on managing an engineering firm’s own risk, all too often there is not sufficient attention paid to its potential vicarious liability, or so-called inherited risk, attendant to utilizing subconsultants. Developing and sticking to a process to manage subconsultant/subcontractor relationships can help minimize this risk and further enhance a firm’s success. …

Jun, 2020 By Dan Knise In Legal Perspectives Comments 0

Coordination and Completeness in a BIM Dominated World

In earlier times, when computers were neither available or essential, one objective of the structural design process was to discover a computational method which was elegant, simple, and appropriately accurate. When such a process was identified, it was recorded as an expedient approach to solving a recurring structural design problem. Thus, quick “Rules of Thumb” became essential resources for the structural engineer. As computer software has proliferated, become more comprehensive, and been made very user friendly, the importance of Rules of Thumb and approximate methods has been diminished. It has been argued that, with computational speed and ease of application of computer methods, the need for approximations and Rules of Thumb no longer exists. However, equally imposing arguments can be made for the value of these quick approaches, such as: …

Jun, 2020 By David Ruby, P.E., S.E., SECB, F.ASCE In CASE Business Practices Comments 1

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