Genus Connectors Magazine

Tell Us Your Genuine Story for a Chance To Win!

You may have noticed that the cover of our new 2013-14 Wood Construction Connectors Catalog features the word GENUINE. What do we mean by Genuine Simpson Strong-Tie Connectors? It’s really based on our roots and our founder Barclay Simpson, who made his very first connector for a customer in 1956. Barc believed in doing whatever it took to help the customer succeed.Today, helping the customer remains our number one priority. Whether that’s being on a jobsite to help with a product installation, spending endless hours on R&D and product testing or making sure our products get to our customers on time. This is what we promise to do everyday, and we do it genuinely.

This week, I wanted to share my own GENUINE story. And it doesn’t involve product testing or R&D.

2013 Connector Catalog cover
2013-2014 Wood Construction Connectors Catalog cover

Before I joined this company, I first met a Simpson Strong-Tie Anchor Systems Field Engineer named Chris Burnett when he visited my firm for a lunch presentation. While I ate way too many slices of pizza, Chris introduced me and my coworkers to Simpson Strong-Tie mechanical anchors, ET-HP™ (formerly ET) and SET epoxy, and even did an installation demonstration. We also discussed Simpson Anchor Systems code report coverage, which was important to us. As we were thanking him for his time (and the pizza), Chris followed up with me and another engineer on a question we asked during the presentation. He already answered it, but he wanted to know more specifics about why we asked about bulk epoxy.

We had a project under construction with a large number of epoxy dowels and we had specified another brand of cartridge epoxy. The contractor wanted to substitute a bulk epoxy due to the volume of dowels, but the manufacturer’s bulk epoxy formulation didn’t have a code report, which our specification required. Chris took the project information and said he’d follow up with the contractor. An hour or so later, we received a submittal package from the contractor requesting to use SET epoxy.

Chris had assembled the submittal, which included the necessary information we needed to review the product and we were able to allow the substitution. The product change allowed the contractor to stay on schedule, which fostered a lot of good will with our client and the building owner.

I continued to rely on Chris for many years as my go-to resource for help on difficult anchoring problems or crack repair solutions. He always impressed me with his genuine focus on my success and the success of my projects. It started with answering all of my questions and getting me the technical information I needed to do my design. And it finished up on the jobsite with hands-on training for the contractors to make sure the product specified was installed correctly.

We are asking our customers to insist on Genuine Simpson Strong-Tie Connectors because they know that our connectors are backed by the quality, innovation, support and people of Simpson Strong-Tie. We want to hear your story about why you choose Genuine Simpson Strong-Tie Connectors and give you the chance to win several great prizes. Visit www.strongtie.com/story to enter, and for more information on what we’re doing to help our customers succeed.

– Paul

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Paul McEntee

Author: Paul McEntee

A couple of years back we hosted a “Take your daughter or son to work day,” which was a great opportunity for our children to find out what their parents did. We had different activities for the kids to learn about careers and the importance of education in opening up career opportunities. People often ask me what I do for Simpson Strong-Tie and I sometimes laugh about how my son Ryan responded to a questionnaire he filled out that day: Q.   What is your mom/dad's job? A.   Goes and gets coffee and sits at his desk Q.   What does your mom/dad actually do at work? A.   Walks in the test lab and checks things When I am not checking things in the lab or sitting at my desk drinking coffee, I manage Engineering Research and Development for Simpson Strong-Tie, focusing on new product development for connectors and lateral systems. I graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and I am a licensed Civil and Structural Engineer in California. Prior to joining Simpson Strong-Tie, I worked for 10 years as a consulting structural engineer designing commercial, industrial, multi-family, mixed-use and retail projects. I was fortunate in those years to work at a great engineering firm that did a lot of everything. This allowed me to gain experience designing with wood, structural steel, concrete, concrete block and cold-formed steel as well as working on many seismic retrofits of historic unreinforced masonry buildings.

2 thoughts on “Tell Us Your Genuine Story for a Chance To Win!”

  1. Nice story, Paul.  I recommend that every engineer in every office know who their Simpson rep is and keep in contact with their area rep is because the Simpson reps know which offices are busy and which office might be looking for people.  You never know when you might need a job and the reps are a valuable resource.

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