Championing the Design, Make, Build Approach to Construction: How Design Collaboration Leads to Greater Project Success Benjamin Tabolt In the spirit of working collaboratively to ensure project success, MiTek is championing the Design, Make, Build (DMB) approach to construction. This approach creates value-added relationships through the entire supply chain by encouraging integrated project delivery, wholistic design approach,... Read More April 2021 Issue #13261 Page 71
April Showers Bring May Flowers and Automation Chris Scott By April of each year, we’re ready to embrace the change Spring brings. Longer days, sunshine, warmer weather, baseball season, my corvette comes out of hibernation… the list goes on. Another change we’re fully embracing is the offsite manufacturing growth happening within... Read More April 2021 Issue #13261 Page 77
What Will Come From the Stimulus Money? Ray Fedorko In his March 22, 2021 piece in the Wall Street Journal, Jon Hilsenrath’s article title says it all: “Stimulus Checks Have Left U.S. Households Ready to Spend.” Apparently, a lot of study has gone into how the population spends their cash windfalls, and the trend is... Read More April 2021 Issue #13261 Page 82
All Things Wood: Wood Structure Design Basics—Lumber Grading Frank Woeste This series of articles, Wood Structure Design Basics, is intended to serve truss designers (TDs) and others who are new to the wood construction industry and/or may not have the opportunity to study the basics of wood design in a formal setting such as a university. The mix of basics will... Read More April 2021 Issue #13261 Page 86
Defining a Modular Factory’s Capacity is Complicated Gary Fleisher One of the words most often heard when talking about the modular construction industry is “capacity.” Webster defines it as “the amount that something can produce.” Somehow that just doesn’t seem like the right definition for modular construction. One of the... Read More April 2021 Issue #13261 Page 106
Lumber Briefs: The Mess Is Getting Messier As Is the Message Matt Layman Panels are the quandary, rather resins and glue. Widespread announcements of further supply disruptions and declarations of Force Majeure are crippling OSB flooring, siding, and roofing panels. I must step in right here to call B.S. Force majeure is a common clause in contracts which... Read More April 2021 Issue #13261 Page 112
Understanding Ply-To-Ply Girder Nailing Failures Christopher Gould You probably wouldn’t ignore a “warning sign” on the highway, as you can easily imagine the consequences of doing so. We can face similar situations when designing trusses, and the end result is that whatever we do in the software can end up in the real world somewhere on a... Read More April 2021 Issue #13261 Page 116
Introducing the Stronger, Simpler and More Versatile Strong-Wall® High-Strength Wood Shearwall Caleb Knudson After years of development, we’re excited to introduce the newest member of the Strong-Wall® shearwall family – the Strong-Wall high-strength wood shearwall (WSWH). The Strong-Wall High-Strength Wood Shearwall Lineup The WSWH is a high-strength prefabricated shearwall... Read More April 2021 Issue #13261 Page 130
The Last Word: The Last Word on CLT – Cross Laminated Timber Joe Kannapell, PE While admiring a Mass Timber building rising nearby, I wanted to find out if CMs can benefit from this business. Katerra apparently thinks so, first becoming a CM and later a CLT manufacturer. So far, the supply of CLT is limited – the Katerra plant is 2500 miles from this Virginia jobsite... Read More April 2021 Issue #13261 Page 154
Advertiser Forum: Regional Habits and Personal Expectations Anna Stamm The urge to follow our habits is natural for everyone, but sometimes it’s important to think about what exactly those habits are and if they really are something that we need/should do. For example, given the context of recent events, I am wondering how far beyond Oklahoma this car-washing... Read More March 2021 Issue #13260 Page 6