A majority of the buildings I design are primarily composed of wood structural elements. So when this article was published in Structural Engineer magazine it immediately had my attention. The following are a few of the more interesting/truthful quotes from the article entitled “Structural Engineers roundtable: Wood frame construction: Challenges and opportunities”.

In some ways wood design is a lot more complicated than steel and concrete design. This is because often steel and concrete projects basically line up all the way up and down; yet with wood projects every single floor could be different. You have to trace loads and find load paths and so forth. And in a lot of cases the engineering is just a lot more complicated.

Brian Lampe, P.E.

There is a disconnect between the liability that we take on and the quality of the construction. So we’re not getting the fees we need in order to put together good drawings or to be in the field to ensure they are building it correctly. In fact, there are times when we don’t even want to go out to a wood project because we know it’s been completely butchered.

Bryan Collons, P.E., S.E.

…currently there are several committees trying to rationalize the IRC and to rewrite it. They are striving to base it on engineering. So, in the future, when you use the IRC on a project and I engineer the same project, there won’t be this difference of factor-of-safety of three in performance. But, this is a huge challenge.

To complicate matters a bit, more engineers are getting more involved in designing portions of the building. Because builders are finally realizing that if they have a part of a house that doesn’t meet the IRC, they have to have that portion designed by an engineer.

So all of sudden, some structures are partially engineered. It confuses the building officials. That’s a real issue.

Edward L. Keith, P.E.

These quotes are some of the exact thoughts I’ve been having in the last year or so. I’m just glad someone else feels the same way. I believe there will have to be major changes in the building code if any of these issues are going to be resolved anytime soon.