As multiple nor’easters bore down on the East Coast in the last 10 weeks, architects and engineers worried about more than the physical impact to their projects.
Permanent floating bridges are essentially boutique structures that only make sense for certain rare kinds of sites: unusually deep bodies of water and/or bodies of water with very soft bottoms, where piers are impractical.
If structural engineers have their way, building codes will take a historic leap forward in the next few years to allow higher-strength 80-ksi reinforcing steel, instead of 60 ksi, in reinforced concrete shear walls.
Projects sited in areas with the worst soil—in high-risk seismic zones and subject to liquefaction—would require more than one geotechnical engineer on the peer-review team.
The city and county Dept. of Building Inspection issued interim guidelines and procedures for structural, geotechnical and seismic-hazard engineering design review for new buildings 240 ft or taller.
Based on 2016 tests of a composite cross-laminated timber-and-concrete floor system, architect-engineer Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has released guidance on how to analyze composite timber floors and predict their behavior in wood frames.
Earlier this month, just over two years after Los Angeles passed a law requiring seismic retrofits of older, nonductile concrete buildings, the city’s Dept. of Building and Safety began sending compliance orders to owners.