111 Sutter Street, San Francisco

When retrofitting buildings for improved seismic safety we strive to minimize construction cost and time, maximize benefits through performance-based design, and preserve historic appearance and fabric as appropriate. Context-sensitive solutions require both experience and innovation, using existing systems with new structural materials. Our experience includes buildings spanning 150 years, from adobe and unreinforced masonry to reinforced concrete and structural steel. Our innovation has led to such solutions as mass reduction to lower demand on existing structure, concealed strengthening behind historic finishes, visible supplementary diaphragms and internal frames, external concrete buttresses, and new steel framed building expansions bracing old construction.

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Sun Microsystems Building, Palo Alto

For owners and government agencies we evaluate existing facilities for pre-purchase due diligence, planned renovations or voluntary upgrades. We have performed seismic evaluations on more than 500 buildings within the past decade. Wood shear walls, unreinforced and reinforced masonry, tilt up, shear wall and moment frame concrete systems, light metal building frames, steel moment and braced frames, dual systems and combinations are studied using current evaluation technologies. A detailed report to the owner presents criteria used, observations, tests, evaluation methods, findings, deficiencies in performance objectives (collapse prevention, life safety or continuous operation) and retrofit concepts prioritized by hazard level.

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