For the fourth straight year, Wright Engineers has been named Utah’s Best of State in the Structural Engineering category. The Award recognizes outstanding businesses in Utah that demonstrate excellence, differentiate themselves from their competitors, and contribute to a better quality of life. “It’s a thrill and an honor to receive this recognition”, said David Winn, Vice President and Director of Wright’s Utah operations. “We’re so happy to see that our work is making a difference.” David credits the win to our many clients, friends, and business partners who trust us with their projects, and to the great work of our Salt Lake City team members.
LOS ANGELES SMALL LOT ORDINANCE
Wright Engineers’ executive vice president, Scott Jones, joined Alan Scales, principal at KTGY Group Architects, on a recent “DETAILED” podcast, sharing their expert insights about the unique challenges of designing and building on extremely compact Los Angeles Small Lot Ordinance sites. The ordinance allows for development of detached single-family homes in a “fee simple” (homeowner owns the property beneath them) arrangement built only a handful of inches apart.
The benefits of the arrangement are plentiful as compared to an attached product—no condo map, no homeowner’s association required, no sound attenuation between homes, and the surety provided by owning the dirt. The structural challenges are also many—including providing effective seismic force resistance (via shear walls) with so little wall at the front and rear, coordination of routing of mechanical and plumbing through the very tight floor structures, and designing a cost effective foundation system in expansive soils without the ability to use post-tensioned slabs. Scott’s structural insights begin at around the 12:15 mark.
WRIGHT ENGINEERS’ FIRST PROJECT, 1997
As part of our year-long 25th anniversary celebration, Wright Engineers is taking a trip down memory lane to our very first project, the headquarters for TWC Construction and Procaps Laboratories. Brent Wright’s handshake agreement with Las Vegas architect James E. Stroh was made just before Christmas, 1997.
Completed construction documents for the 88,000 square foot, 3-story tilt-up office and warehouse on Eastgate Road in Henderson, Nevada were delivered to Stroh’s office 3 weeks later. “I had worked with Brent Wright on many successful projects prior to him founding Wright Engineers,” said Jim, “so I was fully confident that he and his team would deliver—and they did.” Wright and Stroh went on to work together on numerous other industrial, office, and retail projects over the next several years.
Matt Weinman, at the time a project manager with TWC Construction, recalls that because the building was fast-tracked, the team had to work together to address construction challenges as they arose. “I walked into the construction trailer one day and Brent Wright, our super, the concrete sub, and a city inspector were all huddled together sketching connection details. They did whatever was needed to keep the project on track.”