Sometimes, a designed and engineered connection will appear to look like a member to member gap. Because of that, we need to ask the question: should the truss designer always try to eliminate a member to member gap in a truss? Generally speaking, yes, it’s always worthwhile, but there are...

Candidates and employers keep asking me the same question — what am I seeing in hiring trends for 2026? The honest answer is “it’s complicated.” The more honest answer is that I don’t think the market has made up its mind yet. It’s April and, under normal...

My March article, “Prevent Scope Creep Becoming ‘Just the Way We Do Things’,” talks about drawing clearer boundaries so extra work doesn’t quietly erode margins, burn out designers, and reset customer expectations. While all of that matters, it would be unrealistic...

The MSR Workshop has a solid reputation for providing practical, real world learning, and this spring’s program in Orange Beach, Alabama is shaping up to be one of the strongest yet. The 2026 agenda features two concentrated blocks of educational sessions — Thursday morning (8 am to...

A chase is an intentional opening in a floor truss created by omitting specific diagonal webs to provide space for HVAC ducts, plumbing lines, or electrical runs. For structural efficiency, chases should be located within the middle third of the truss span, where shear forces are lowest....

The “Inspect” tool in Plate Monitor (Joint Properties) is a little known and certainly underutilized tool in the Truss Studio design software that can help you quickly deal with joint plating changes and issues. [For all images, See PDF or View in Full Issue.] We developed this tool...

Wood was not held in high regard in the truss drafting department where I began working. Our fabricator customers often wanted their trusses designed with “old lumber,” meaning the obsolete size of 1-5/8” x 3-5/8”, even though the 1.5” x 3.5” size had been in...

Our industry design standard, ANSI/TPI 1, regulates numerous elements in constructing roof and floor trusses. The following is a brief non-exhaustive summary: Lumber grades and moisture content Pedigree of lumber grades and lumber management Controls on truss profiles Verification of...

In off-site manufacturing, change is inevitable. What is not inevitable is losing money because of it. The change order is not red tape. It is protection. It protects the company, the client, the project schedule, and even the salesperson who worked hard to land the job. Consider how a...

My December article, “What Does Scope Creep Look Like in Truss Design?,” talks about extra trusses quietly added, parapets suddenly included, and engineering tasks drifting onto your desk because someone else didn’t handle them. None of these start out as big asks. They usually...