Load-bearing walls
Removing a wall to open a kitchen or living space. New steel or engineered-wood beams, posts, and a verified load path down to footing.
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Services
Structural analysis and design, dynamic foundation design and structural system optimization, carried out for projects of every size in Ontario.
05 — Residential
Houses, additions and renovations
The steadiest part of the practice: homeowners, builders and designers in the Greater Toronto Area who need a beam sized, a wall opened up, or a permit set sealed.
Most of these files close quickly. Send a photo of the wall, the direction the floor framing runs and a rough plan, and a scope and fee normally follow the same day. Where a site visit is warranted to confirm what is actually carrying the house, we say so rather than guess from a drawing.
Additions and second storeys
Assessing whether the existing structure and foundation can carry the addition, and detailing the connection between old and new.
New houses and cottages
Full structural packages for custom builds. Recent files include houses of 13,000 and 15,000 sq ft and an 8,000 sq ft cottage.
Basements and underpinning
Lowering a basement, underpinning existing footings, and excavation shoring where the dig is close to a neighbour or the street.
- Typical deliverable
- Sealed structural drawings and calculations for building permit
- Typical schedule
- Days for a single beam; one to three weeks for a full house package
- What is needed to start
- Photographs, a floor plan or sketch, and the age of the house
- Codes and standards
- Ontario Building Code; CSA O86, CSA S16, CSA A23.3
01 — Commercial and institutional
Offices, warehouses, mixed-use and fit-outs
New construction, addition, alteration or change of use — including acting as the reviewing engineer on another firm's design.
A
Additions and alterations
Office and warehouse additions, roof and floor openings, mezzanines, new equipment loads on existing framing, and the structural work associated with a change of occupancy.
B
Light-gauge steel framing
Cold-formed steel stud and joist design for general contractors — load-bearing and infill walls, parapets, and connection detailing coordinated with the cladding.
C
Tenant renovation and design review
Fit-out structural design, and third-party review of alteration drawings before they go to the landlord or the municipality.
D
Mixed-use and apartment
Mixed-use buildings and apartment renovation work, where residential floors sit over commercial space at grade and the load path has to change direction.
02 — Industrial and process
Where the loads move
Plants, mills and process facilities: cement, potash, iron ore, nickel, diamonds, tissue, refining and oil sands.
Industrial structures fail differently from buildings. The governing case is rarely snow; it is a vibrating mill, a thermal cycle, a surge in a bin, or a maintenance lift nobody drew. Dynamic foundation design is a stated area of expertise here, which is why Dyna 6 sits alongside STAAD.Pro and SAP2000 on the desk.
Dynamic machine foundations
Mill, compressor, pump and turbine bases analysed for both static capacity and dynamic response, including SAG mill foundations and autoclave support mats.
Bins, silos and racks
Steel bin and hopper design, storage and handling structures, pipe racks, and the platforms and access steel that go with them.
Plant additions and debottlenecking
Adding a line to a plant that has to keep running: finish mills, process expansions, refinery debottlenecking, tank and thickener foundations.
Difficult ground
Permanent camp foundations on permafrost, underground pumping chambers, deep piled mats, and rock anchor systems.
03 — Energy and substations
Turbine bases, solar racking, substations
More than 500 wind turbine foundations across Canada and the United States, and over 50 substations — for International Power–GDF Suez, Enbridge, Kruger Energy, Recurrent Energy, SunPower, AIM PowerGen, Marubeni and EPCOR.
- Wind turbine tower foundations — spread footing, piled and rock anchor types, for towers from 80 to 100 m and foundations from 12 to 25 m in diameter.
- Conventional, dynamic and fatigue analysis — the three cases that actually govern a turbine base, with site construction support through pour and grout.
- Solar rack and tracker foundations — repeated units where a small per-unit saving multiplies across the whole array.
- Substation structures — equipment supports, bus structures and foundations, including detailed design of a 500 kV substation at Kingsbridge for EPCOR, and substations at Port Alma and Harrow.
- Owner's engineer and due diligence — independent structural review for owners and lenders on wind farms up to 300 MW.
04 — Foundations and ground
Everything below the first floor
Foundations are where most structural risk and most structural cost actually sit.
Spread and mat footings
From residential pads to a 20 m diameter footing and heavy equipment mats.
Piled foundations
Driven and cast-in-place piles, pile caps, and the load distribution between them.
Excavation shoring
Shoring design for basement excavations tight to a property line, a road or an existing structure.
Underpinning
Lowering or extending existing footings without losing the building above.
Rock anchors
Anchor systems for uplift and overturning where competent rock is available.
Dynamic foundations
Response analysis for rotating and reciprocating machinery using Dyna 6.
06 — Review, checking and due diligence
Independent review
A distinct service, and one this office has been retained for repeatedly by owners, lenders and larger engineering firms.
Past engagements include structural checker on potash and iron-ore processing facilities, structural due diligence on wind farms for Enbridge and Marubeni, drawing checks on cement plant steel and concrete, and design review of tenant alteration drawings. Finding the problem before the contractor does is a defined scope with a defined fee.
Design checking
Independent verification of another engineer's analysis, drawings and details.
Technical due diligence
Structural risk review of an asset before acquisition or financing.
Condition assessment
Site survey of an existing structure to establish what it can actually carry.
Construction site support
Field review during construction, and resolution of what the drawings did not anticipate.
Not sure which applies?
Describe the problem in plain language. If it does not need an engineer, you will be told that too.