By working together and concentrating on strength design in building construction, architects, engineers and others have given a big boost to the safety of homes in the market. And fortunately, they are also using technology to add even more measures to strength design.

And strength design is just one of part of the collaboration, learning and cooperation that goes into making building processes as good as they can be. That’s why it benefits all parties when architects are learning about what a structure’s material will hold, how it bears the weight and how the engineering works in real world scenarios.

In a recent report, Tom Whittow, a vice president of computerized structural design in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said that by learning about the whole picture of strength design, architects will help the process of converting buildings from blue prints to finished product. No longer is there any need for architects and engineers to be speaking different technical languages. Architects need to know as much as they can about how materials are used and how the structure connects. And engineers need to know the reasons why an architect is approaching the design in a certain way. The process is a two-way street.

“Architects think about the structure as a whole when they create a design,” Whittow said. “When they do, we can choose LRFD or allowable stress calculations to better accommodate the structure into the building they’ve designed.”

One of the ways that strength design has become more of a guideline for factoring in more safety precautions into home building is because of computer technology. The new technology is able to take into account all of the materials and strength design and deliver very specific calculations to engineers, architects and all parties along the line.
Fallah Shaikh, a professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said that the assist from computers is a benefit.

“There is a need to augment any design method with other considerations,” Shaikh said. “An engineer’s own incisive judgment about the potential of the structure must also be brought to bear.”