Category: Building Strong

Why Is Community Resilience Important?

Community resilience is the concept that we can design and build better to reduce susceptibility to disasters. The idea of building for resilience is in the DNA of Simpson Strong-Tie and is why we’re considered a leader in structural systems research, testing and innovation. That commitment to building for resilience is why we partner with other leaders in the field like the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society. 

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Great ShakeOut 2019: Reddit Asks Us Anything About Earthquakes

Each year, Simpson Strong-Tie teams up with the West Coast’s top earthquake scientists and preparedness experts to take questions from Redditors about earthquakes and tsunamis. The Reddit AMA is part of the Great ShakeOut, the world’s largest earthquake drill, where 55 million people drop, cover and hold on. The next Great ShakeOut is scheduled to take place at 10:17 a.m. on October 17, 2019, and your organization still has time to get involved. 

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Building Our Company’s Future

“Company culture” has become a catch-all term to express the essence of what makes an organization good (or, in some cases, not so good) to work for. As a human resources leader, it’s my honor to work with teams dedicated to acting as positive influencers in the culture of our company. When we set out to create new processes to protect and grow the unique culture of Simpson Strong-Tie, we had outstanding direction from our founder, whose values are as relevant today  as they were more than 60 years ago when he first opened the doors.

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Building Safety Month 2019: Partnering to Build Strong and Smart

Simpson Strong-Tie is proud to sponsor Building Safety Month. This annual event, which takes place over the entire month of May, is intended to raise awareness of building safety and all that it involves. The International Code Council pairs together professionals from the building construction, design and safety communities with corporations, government agencies, professional associations and nonprofits to promote building safety.
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It’s Alive! Self-Healing Concrete, Materials Science and Other Evolutionary Developments

Legions of catatonic organisms lie asleep in the matrix, waiting only for momentary exposure to water and oxygen in order to awaken — whereupon the organisms immediately germinate, grow and fulfill their destiny, sealing the cracks in the fabric of their universe before falling dormant once again.
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Little Locales Using Big Data to Prevent Bridge Failures

Situated on the northwest coast of Oregon, the resort town of Seaside — population 6,685 — seems an unlikely place for advanced seismic and tsunami simulations. But just offshore Seaside’s charming 1920s boardwalk and its broad, sandy beaches famed for razor clamming, the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate is slowly sliding underneath the behemoth North American plate.
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Hurricane Season: Understanding High-Wind Home Preparation

As we’ve seen with the hurricane seasons of that past decade or so, homes are not always built to withstand a major storm. The hurricane season of 2017 was one of the deadliest and costliest seasons in US history. Countless homes and buildings were severely damaged or destroyed, leaving thousands of families displaced. It will take years for communities to rebuild and recover from such devastation.

Fortunately, there are solutions that can help protect your home from a hurricane or high-wind event.
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Better Engineering for Stronger, Longer-Lasting Bridges and Wastewater Infrastructure

Eighty-one years ago this May, traffic opened on a newly constructed bridge span between Marin County, California, and the city of San Francisco. At 4,200 feet long and with towers 746 feet high, the steel suspension bridge was the longest and tallest bridge of its time. Built at a cost of $35 million, held together with 1.2 million rivets, and painted international orange from end to end, the Golden Gate Bridge was an instant symbol not just of California idealism, but of American engineering and construction might.

While the Golden Gate is no longer the longest or tallest bridge in the world, its iconic status has endured. Named one of the seven wonders of the modern world by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Golden Gate enjoys regular special attention from 13 ironworkers and 28 painters who replace corroding steel and rivets with high-strength steel bolts and constantly touch up the span with paint to prevent corrosion.
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Picking Up the Pieces — Examining the Effects of Hurricane Harvey

From hurricanes and earthquakes to wildfires, floods, freezes, droughts, severe storms and more, natural disasters plagued the United States in 2017. The National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) reports that 2017 could be a record-breaking year for disasters that cause over $1 billion in damage. As of October of 2017, NCEI reported 15 such events in the United States, only one fewer than in the record year of 2011. Without going into the details of why these events occur — we’ll leave that to the scientific community — there are ways to prevent damage and destruction by building resilient communities and structures.
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