In a landmark decision, the International Code Council (ICC) Board of Directors has ushered in a new era of safety, awareness, and operational criteria for temporary structures with its certification of crucial changes to the International Building Code (IBC). The forthcoming 2024 edition of the code will feature provisions that will reshape the landscape of regulations governing temporary structures, particularly those used by the entertainment industry for public assembly and live events.

How do you create a new entrance for a world-famous technology university? It must act as an enduring symbol for those entering the university for the first time as well as for the students and faculty every day. It must represent all that is best of what is technologically possible now in the built environment, be rooted in the history of the institution, and look forward to what will be possible.

Travis County Civil and Family Courts Facility in Austin, Texas, uses P3 to construct new building with option to expand.

The completion of a 5-story mass timber commercial office building named Terminus in the city of Langford, British Columbia, on Canada’s west coast, marks an exciting first in the world of seismic systems for timber structures. The building includes 4 stories of post-and-beam mass timber with Douglas Fir glulam beams and columns and Spruce-Pine-Fir (SPF) cross-laminated timber (CLT), all supplied by Structurlam. While the structure and its detailing are clean, elegant, and modern, what is truly unique about Terminus is its steel-timber hybrid seismic force resisting system (SFRS).

Essentia Health’s Vision Northland project, located on the shores of Lake Superior in Duluth, Minnesota, includes approximately 928,000 square feet of new construction and roughly 120,000 square feet of renovation to existing facilities and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023. The project has created a civic asset capable of being both the standard bearer of healthcare in the region and a physical celebration of the community it serves. This formidable project is a healthcare destination for Northern Minnesota. While receiving the benefits of world-class healthcare, facility occupants can enjoy year-round expansive views of Lake Superior.

Simplifying building design with fluid viscous dampers by using an ICC-approved prescriptive method.

Fluid Viscous Dampers (FVDs), or simply “dampers,” effectively dissipate seismic energy to reduce steel and foundation costs in new buildings and improve structural resilience, especially for critical facilities. A new building design procedure using dampers has been developed, validated, and published with certification from the International Code Council. This new design procedure opens the door for more damper applications in new steel structures by eliminating the requirements for nonlinear response spectrum analysis and peer review in damped buildings.

For nearly 40 years, the West Seattle Bridge has been a primary route connecting West Seattle to the greater Seattle metropolitan area. The bridge spans 1,300 feet and is comprised of three cantilevered segmental box-girder concrete sections that rise to a maximum height of 140 feet over the Duwamish Waterway. In March 2020, the bridge was abruptly shut down to all traffic, disrupting the lives of those traveling to and from West Seattle for what would turn out to be nearly 2.5 years. The shutdown occurred because routine inspections had identifi ed accelerated growth of cracks at a significant enough level that immediate stabilization was needed, followed by either long-term repairs or replacement of the bridge. In 2013, inspections revealed cracks forming in the webs and slabs of the bridge’s two main girders. A series of more frequent inspections was performed, which included some epoxy crack injection installation of crack monitoring technology. Between 2013 and 2019, increases in crack growth continued to cause concern. A new engineering analysis was performed, confirming exponential crack growth, which prompted SDOT to close the bridge to traffic in March 2020.

The 2018 collapse of the Morandi Bridge was international news. Completed in 1967, the bridge carried the A10 motorway over the Polcevera Valley in Genoa, Italy. The dramatic collapse and deaths of 43 people shocked Europe, particularly an Italian engineering community that prides itself on a long legacy of engineering excellence. Many theories have been put forward regarding the cause of the collapse, ranging from very human lapses in maintenance and judgment to a lightning strike on a primary cable stay. As of this writing, the cause of the collapse is still under investigation. But this isn’t a story about the Morandi Bridge collapse. It’s the story of what came next.

This is the second of a two-part series on the Kahramanmaraş Earthquake Sequence which occurred on February 6, 2023 in Turkiye. The first article was printed in the STRUCTURE magazine July 2023 issue and presented a background on regional seismicity, seismic design and practice in Turkiye, and the authors’ observations from the field. This article focuses on observations relevant to structural practice in the U.S.