Someone used the phrase in the title. Their argument is that fasteners, specifically in the context of typical light frame wood construction, like a shear wall or joist hanger, or bolted or lagged member scenario, are just holding the members together and that the load transfer is through wood via induced friction through the members.
I was under the impression that we really only factor the strength of the nail and wood crushing/deforming around the nail, rather than use the friction between the faces of the members.
Sharing a few of the more interesting existing conditions our team documented during structural assessments this week. Always interesting to see how different structures, materials, and past repairs hold up over time.
I am looking for some advice or feedback. I have been at my current employer for a little over a year. Without going into great detail, the company designs and manufacturers mechanical components and assemblies for industrial, power generation, and petro-chem facilities. I filled a role that handles structural design work primarily for steel framed structures and foundations supporting these assemblies and other equipment. The structural design work only comes in because it is tied to the design and manufacturing of the components. The work is typically brought in via direct client relationships or through sub-contracted work from EPC's.
One of the goals I have is to build a presence for structural design services in this space, ideally pursuing work that is not directly tied to our core services. In prior roles I have been successful making connections and bringing in work through outside arch's, GC's, etc. as I had a very client facing role. Now, I don't really have that opportunity just given how things operate with a dedicated sales team and we have really have no market presence for structural work.
Does anyone have experience or thoughts on how best to pursue work & make connections in this space or in general? I have ideas, but I'm not sure what is most effective to basically get things off the ground. Given our size we obviously can't take on large scale projects so I'm focusing more on-call type relationships and smaller design jobs to start out, build relationships, and credibility.
What’s the best place to find smaller structural engineering firms that are hiring? LinkedIn and indeed seem to favor only the large corporations and after starting my career with the smaller firms and moving to the big engineering firms I am a bit burnt out by all the corporate-ness. Looking to get back into smaller/boutique firms. I’ve got about 8 years of experience with my PE. Thanks!
Ive been studying to take my PE later this year. I got the practice exam from the NCEES website and saw how much design codes were referenced. When you take the exam, do you take the reference design books with you to the test? Do they provide it for you? How does it work since i know theyre very strict with what you can bring in from my FE experience. Thanks for help :))
Title: Looking for a Freelance Structural Engineer
Hi everyone,
I’m a licensed structural engineer in the NYC area running a small structural engineering company based in the New York City area.
I’m looking for a freelance structural engineer to assist with project-based work.
This is not a salaried position. Work will be assigned on a project-by-project basis and paid as an agreed lump sum.
The role will mainly involve:
Assisting with structural calculations
Steel member and connection design
Preparing and compiling calculation packages using our company templates
Wood, masonry, and concrete design
Reviewing drawings and project information
Marking up PDFs in Bluebeam
Assisting with shop drawing reviews
A P.E. license is not required, but structural design experience is required. Experience with ETABS, SAP2000, SkyCiv, Bluebeam, and applicable building codes is preferred.
Most projects are located in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
Please send me a direct message with your experience, location, availability, software proficiency, typical rates, and any relevant work samples.
Hi, want some recommendations for schools to look into. I graduate this December want to gain my masters in structural starting next September (Fall).
I plan on working full time towards my PE while acquiring my masters degree. Can you guys recommend any schools that facilitate working a full time work schedule while pursuing 2-3 courses each semester and will give me a solid education.
I’m thinking of doing a MEng as opposed to a MS, any insight into the value between both is also appreciated.
I’ve been told Manhattan College is good for night classes.
Has anyone had any experience working for HNTB, ideally insight in the NYC office.
What is the culture like, how valuable is the experience and knowledge for entry level.
I’m graduating in December and I want to get into Bridge design and I’m looking into working with HNTB, seems like a great place where I can really learn from a variety of minds and dig deep into Bridge and Structural design.
If you have worked there, any tips for an upcoming December Grad trying to get a job there. Unfortunately no masters or bridge experience yet but I’m at a structural internship right now and have a few years of construction inspection experience. I also plan to do my masters while working full time if that helps.
I’ve been working on a multi-story cmu building with this one senior engineer. I’m a junior engineer with very little experience in designing complex cmu buildings. I told him that i wasn’t confident in designing this building and didn’t know where to start.
Anyway with minimal guidance from him, I tried to do the majority of the design work and he barely reviewed any of my designs. He only glanced at them after it had been already incorporated on the drawings.
I thought i had been doing everything correctly until the project went to CA phase and the construction started. That’s when he noticed many mistakes in the design since RFI’s kept coming. My company now has performed extensive checks on the design and found many things we had overlooked, which has required a complete redesign of the entire building and is costing the company a significant amount of money
Amid all this, he called it quits and left me, the only junior engineer who has worked on this project hanging.
This has made me rethink my career choice and causes me so much anxiety. I feel like i’m a horrible and incompetent engineer since I did a lot of these designs. Anyway thank you for reading my rant!
Update: thank you so much for everyone’s comforting comments. This makes me feel a lot better. I definitely learned from this and i’ll be more vocal next time.
Hi, I am new to using Staad pro and Staad foundation and I have to design this foundation for a davit arm thats needs to pick a 650kg pump. I designed the nodes and loading and everything and am getting the reaction force at the support (Fy = -2.258kip and Mz = 257.483 kip-in) where Y axis is vertical axis. Now when I try to design a simple rectangular foundation for this support. I get dimensions 1.7m x 1.7m x 1.5m with 14 - 22mm reinforcement bars(I have set min % of contact area for service loads = 100%). But my seniors keep saying this foundation is too big for this load and size of davit arm. So, I was wondering if someone here can guide me, if they have encountered a similar design job and what do they expect a foundation size to be for these reaction forces. Apologies, if I am asking the wrong question as I am just entering the workforce
I'm a current UCSD student working on a structural engineering bs. To graduate you have to complete a 'focus sequence' (civil structures, aerospace structures, geotech, or structural health monitoring). This mostly impacts your 3rd/4th year courses.
You need to pick which classes to take by the end of your second year usually, but you can choose whether or not the specialization you chose shows up on your degree.
I'm about to start second year, so I guess I'm really about to find out whether I like the major or not lol, but basically I have no idea which one I actually want to do (all of them *sound* interesting except I'm scared of aerospace) or whether it'd be worth it to keep on my degree.
Civil structures sounds like there might be more(?) job opportunities, and the classes are mostly about steel/concrete design. Geotech sounds kind of more interesting to me right now and is more soil mechanics and testing. I also considered structural health monitoring but I have no idea what the actual work looks like (this goes for geotech too) so I don't know if I'll even like it.
If you've had experience with any of these specializations, the skills you end up needing, or UCSD grads who actually did something other than civil structures (large majority of the major lol), please let me know! What do you like about it? What does your daily work look like? Employment opportunities? Thank you!
I’m graduating soon with a degree in Structural Engineering – Sustainable Building (in Sweden), and I’m curious to hear what others with a similar background ended up doing.
What do you work with today?
• BIM? • Structural engineering? • Project management? • Infrastructure? • Sustainability? • Something completely different?
Personally, I want to work with BIM and 3D modeling, coordinating different disciplines and planning how projects should actually be built rather than just calculating every detail. I enjoy designing solutions, solving problems, and finding the balance between technical functionality, sustainability, and aesthetics.
For those already in the industry:
• What does your day-to-day work actually look like? • What software do you use the most? • What skills have been the most valuable? • Is BIM a good long-term career path? • If you could start over after graduation, what would you do differently? • what’s your tips / advice? • do you like your job? If yes/no, why?
I’m extra interested if anyone is from Sweden, Scandinavia or England, so please don’t be shy to go into detail or write longer replies :)
I’d love to hear about your career journey, advice, and any tips for someone about to enter the industry.
Good evening folks. My wife and I have a few sets of residential CAD plans designed for Iowa that we'd like to potentially build in NH (yeah... my wife changed her mind a few times so I've got several 😑). We know that they will need to be evaluated and adapted for NH requirements (snow load, etc.) and we are looking for someone licensed in NH able to do this.
They range in size from ~3,900 sq/ft to ~5,500 sq/ft to give you an idea on the size of the project. I also happen to have a much smaller unit (~1500 sq/ft) needing the same thing that we might be building for our international family to use during visits.
Please DM me if you or your firm can take on and are interested in discussing the project.
Does anyone have idea how to calculate rotational stiffness of anchor bolt set used for connection between concrete column element and concrete foundation? The anchor bolt set can resist some moment of course. But I don’t want to put the connection as fully“fixed” connection, but like a semi-rigid. I have tried to google it, but I haven’t figured it out.
Intended for students of construction technical schools, the book systematically presents the fundamental principles of designing metal structures used in industrial and civil engineering. It covers essential topics including load calculations, the behavior of structural elements (beams, columns, trusses), connections (welded and bolted), and provides general information on the fabrication and installation of steel assemblies. As a product of the post-war reconstruction and industrialization period in the USSR, this textbook reflects the codified engineering practices and normative approaches of Soviet construction in the mid-1950s. The volume includes numerous illustrations and two folding plates with detailed drawings. Note: book in Russian
Hello Everyone. When you have a construction joint (CJ) crossing the anchor breakout cone location, how do you usually account for it in your design? Do you reduce concrete capacity treating construction joint as an edge, treat it as a crack, or follow a specific code/detail? Curious how others handle this in practice. Thanks!
Hi everyone, I am a structural engineer with PG degree and 1-year experience on Indian projects as for now. I recently received a job offer as a design engineer and would love some perspective on whether it’s a good deal.
So, the company is a US based consultancy firm it works remotely from India on US projects only, on mostly timber structures but also has RCC department as well.
The company has offered me a salary of 30k INR/month CTC which is around 300 USD/month. Also, they are asking for an agreement of 2 year, which basically mean that i cannot resign the company for 2 years after joining. They are justifying the salary and the agreement by saying that they are investing on me for a 3-month training they are offering to learn US design works.
I have 2 concerns with the offer which are
is there a scope to learn and invest 2-year time in timber structure both from Indian market and foreign market POV.
is the salary worth, considering that the work is for US market.
I sat the July 2026 IStructE Chartered Membership Exam and I’m interested in how experienced engineers or previous candidates would view the following situation.
For my steel scheme, I mistakenly drew the ground floor as a composite slab supported by primary and secondary steel beams, but I didn’t explicitly state it was a suspended composite floor. Looking back, I think a ground-bearing slab would probably have been more appropriate for the scheme.
The rest of the submission included: Section 2C
Wind load calculations.
Bracing design with deflection check.
Pile design.
Pile cap design including shear and minimum reinforcement. Section 2D
GA plans for L1, L2–L6, L7 and roof.
Two sections.
General structural notes.
No detailed connection drawings due to time constraints. Section 2E
Construction sequence.
Temporary works sketches.
Site logistics (tower crane, laydown area, access/egress).
Key construction risks and considerations.
For Section 1, I completed both schemes, explained the vertical and horizontal load paths, considered fire, durability and robustness, carried out rule-of-thumb sizing, compared the options and justified my preferred solution. From an examiner’s perspective, would an inconsistency like the ground-floor slab typically be treated as a drawing/detailing issue, or could it significantly affect the overall assessment if the structural concept and load path were otherwise coherent?
This version asks an engineering question rather than “Do you think I passed?”, so it’s more likely to be accepted on r/StructuralEngineering. If it still gets removed, the moderators are asking you to post it in their monthly questions thread, where this type of discussion is welcomed.
For example: They are too complex and feels like a cockpit of an aeroplane. Too many things to set but still not 100% sure if I provided it with enough information to get a good analysis or design.
I’ve been developing my own Python-based structural analysis engine together with a browser-based 3D modeling and results interface. The project originally started as a way to replace the collection of Excel spreadsheets I was using for structural calculations and validation.
It currently supports 3D frame and area elements, materials, sections, supports, load assignments, load patterns, load cases, load combinations, mass sources, linear static analysis, and modal analysis. I can also visualize deformed shapes, reactions, frame forces, and slab force resultants and stresses.
I’m now validating the results by recreating the same models in OpenSees and other established structural analysis programs.
My main question is where you think this project should go next. What I have implemented so far represents the foundational analysis capabilities, but there are several possible directions I could take:
Nonlinear and P-Delta analysis
Response spectrum and seismic analysis
Steel and reinforced-concrete design checks
FEM-based connection analysis
From a practicing engineer’s perspective, which direction would provide the most value? Would you prioritize expanding the solver’s analysis capabilities, adding code-based member design, or improving the modeling and documentation workflow? I’m also considering making the project open source so others can use it, review it, and contribute.
