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Engineers Week is February 19 – 25 February 19 – 25 is National Engineers Week. The week celebrates the impact engineers make on our daily lives and encourages young people to consider engineering as a career. For a trade association, AWC employs a lot of engineers and we see the...

Part Four in the Save Money Series Back in the good old days, when I was a rookie lumber broker, central zone SYP producers offered wholesalers a 5% discount which gave us incentive to work their wood outside Mississippi and Alabama. I offer that just to be aggravating. Also, back in...

Photo taken at a restaurant in Maine located on the first floor of a historic textile mill building. Such buildings were constructed in the 1860-65 timeframe. The column is about 18”x18” and apparently continues upward into the next floor (or floors). The side mounted connection was...

“Winning is about having the whole team on the same page.” Bill Walton You might wonder what a quote about winning basketball games could possibly have to do with snow loading on trusses.  As with basketball, the importance of close teamwork also applies to a project...

If you’re hiring or looking for a job, watch the Super Bowl telecast just before half-time. You’ll see the seriousness of the struggle for good people in our industry. After viewing, you may question the Super-sized investment. But, in your business, you know that you have to spend...

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be bombarded with commercials for fitness club memberships and all of those other things we’re supposed to have in our new year’s resolutions designed for “self-improvement.” While most people give up on their resolutions by February,...

On a trip abroad in 2004, I was first introduced to an alternate method of wall panel construction. I was in awe at the cleanliness, the organization, the material flow, ergonomics, and simplicity of the concept. Not a single staff member raced up and down the wall. No one was carrying or...

Lean manufacturing principles help people break through their mindset by helping people challenge what they perceive is an absolute. Beside equipment upgrades, how long has your group been doing what they are doing without any changes or refinements to the methods in other areas besides the...

There is nothing worse than running a truss out the door and then realizing one of the truss members is broken. The question is – can I make a quick fix using a connector plate? The short answer is – no. But there are many who may not realize that specific engineering is required for...

Why do some still insist on placing flat bottom chord gable end frames adjacent to vaulted or scissor trusses when the codes clearly do not allow such framing without special engineering requirements? Can you point me to the code sections that say “No, thank you!”? This is a...