Consulting Structural Engineers · Mississauga, Ontario
Steele Liu, P.Eng. has designed and supervised structures in steel, concrete and wood since 1993 — power stations, mines, cement plants and wind farms, alongside a steady practice in houses and commercial buildings across Ontario.
Practice areas
Structural analysis and design, dynamic foundation design, and structural system optimization — applied at whatever scale the project requires.
New houses, additions and renovations for homeowners, builders and designers across the Greater Toronto Area — sealed and dimensioned for a building permit.
Mixed-use buildings, warehouses, offices and tenant fit-outs — new construction, addition, alteration, or third-party review of another engineer's design.
Plants, mills and process facilities where loads are dynamic and downtime is costly. Cement, mining, pulp and paper, refining and oil sands.
More than 500 wind turbine foundations across Canada and the United States, over 50 substations, and solar rack and tracker foundations.
Approach
Strive for simplicity — because in structural engineering, simplicity means both savings and safety.
A simpler load path is easier to detail, easier for the trades to build correctly and easier for an inspector to verify — and it almost always uses less material. That principle has held from a four-billion-dollar potash mine down to a single steel beam in a Toronto house, and it is why the engineering tends to return more than it costs.
Drawings and calculations issued under a Professional Engineer's seal, prepared to the Ontario Building Code and the relevant CSA standards.
A beam sizing or a bearing-wall removal does not need a six-week schedule. Small residential files are generally turned around in days.
The analysis approach used for autoclave mats, SAG mill foundations and turbine bases is applied — proportionately — to a house.
Structural system optimization is a stated area of expertise. Where a scheme can be lighter, simpler or faster to erect, the client hears about it.
Sectors served
Long experience across very different structures means the relevant precedent is usually already on the shelf.
Custom houses to 15,000 sq ft, cottages, mixed-use and apartment buildings, a 120,000 sq ft cinema, and a continuous stream of renovation work across the GTA.
Ongoing work for the CRH, Federal White and St. Marys cement plants; a finish mill addition for Lafarge; raw mill steel bins for Cemex in Texas.
Over 500 turbine foundations in Canada and the United States — towers from 80 to 100 m, foundations from 12 to 25 m in diameter. Structural lead at Port Alma, Chatham-Kent, Erieau and Cape Scott, and Owner's engineer on 300 MW and 250 MW wind farms for Enbridge.
Potash for K+S and Mosaic, iron ore for ArcelorMittal, diamonds for De Beers on permafrost, nickel in Madagascar and gold in Venezuela.
Cogeneration and gas-fired station design in Ontario, an oil sands project for Imperial Oil, a Petro-Canada refinery debottlenecking, and more than ten thermal power plants and substations earlier in China and Pakistan.
Long-running structural site services for Irving Tissue and Procter & Gamble, a water treatment pump station, and expansion of the NTN bearing plant.
Selected work
A few from the field. The full record runs to more than sixty named projects.
Client, location and year for each — from residential renovations in Toronto to a four-billion-dollar potash mine in Saskatchewan.
Credentials
Steele Liu is a licensed Professional Engineer in Ontario and has taught structural steel design at a college on weekends since 2006.
That teaching is not incidental. Explaining CSA S16 and the Ontario Building Code to more than four hundred practising engineers keeps a designer current on the codes, and it is a large part of why drawings from this office tend to clear plan review without a round of comments.
Analysis and design software
Send a description of the work, a sketch, or a set of architectural drawings, and you will have a scope and a fee in return.