Recovery-Based Design

Whether designing to mitigate an individual hazard, like earthquake ground shaking or drought, or considering multiple hazards over similar return periods, we look beyond baseline code requirements to identify resilience strategies that consider potential changes and climate-related threats over a building’s service life. Our multidisciplinary approach considers structural, façade, architectural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, vertical transportation, civil, landscape and geotechnical components. 

Here's How

Bouncing Back

Climate hazards affect building components and the operational condition of building systems. While applying building codes helps prevent collapse and preserve life safety, we recognize that business continuity is also essential for many owners, so we develop resilience strategies that meet performance targets tailored to each project. For example:

• Functional recovery of a building with enhanced safety and minimized downtime during design-level events (high-impact, low probability)
• Continuous operation of a building during a service-level event (medium impact, high probability)

Service-Life Considerations

When identifying strategies to decrease a building’s recovery time after a hazardous event, we consider the fragility of the building system, the expected service life and the intensity of the hazard. And when applicable codes and standards are insufficient to meet your performance objectives, we can augment them with high-fidelity engineering studies that enable us to find the investments that yield the highest reductions in future losses. 

Qualifications

Our performance-based capabilities include:

• Climate change adaptive design
• Flood resilience design
• Performance-based fire engineering
• Performance-based seismic design
• Performance-based wind design
• Protective design and security
• Slope and foundation stability
• Stormwater management