News Archives


News Main

Two of the most challenging obstacles to preparing shop detail drawings are inadequately prepared engineering design drawings, and timeliness of connection designs. In the first instance, we have tried to encourage consulting engineers to employ the steel detailer early in the design process, before fabrication is awarded. This procedure enables the detailer to discover discrepancies in the design drawings, which assists the steel detail detailing process and minimizes revisions after fabrication of the project has been awarded.

Connection design is usually handled by the steel fabricator but periodically the task is passed to the steel detailer. On a few occasions, the General Contractor will hire a connection designer, as was the case on the Denver Art Museum that we recently completed. The contractor, M.A. Mortenson Company, retained Structural Consultants Incorporated of Denver, CO., to prepare the connection designs. Although many of the connections were challenging, Structural Consultants did an excellent job in keeping the project on track by providing timely solutions to the connections. Structural Consultants are registered in over thirty states and provide a natural fit for Dowco when we are required to provide connection design.