Bringing Excellence to Engineering: Meet Our 2022 Excellence in Engineering Award Winners

Bringing Excellence to Engineering: Meet Our 2022 Excellence in Engineering Award Winners

This year, the Simpson Strong-Tie Engineering department held their 2023 Engineering Summit and awarded four engineers the 2022 Excellence in Engineering Award. This award recognizes the incredible contributions from our Engineering department, who continually exceed expectations in their mission to create the best solutions we can for our customers and our company.  

This award is peer-nominated, and each of these four winners go above and beyond as engineers at Simpson Strong-Tie. Learn the reason for their nominations and how they exemplify our company’s values through their work. Understand what this award means to them and dive into each award winner and their accomplishments below. 

Simpson Strong-Tie Greg Bundy, Senior Branch Engineer with his award
Simpson Strong-Tie Greg Bundy, Senior Branch Engineer with his award

Greg Bundy, Senior Branch Engineer

 Branch: Columbus, Ohio  

Greg was nominated for being a leader at his branch by creating tools to successfully convert competitor specifications, serving as a mentor for engineers in the department as well as throughout the branch, and serving as technical expert for key literature. 

Over his career at Simpson, Greg has forged a long track record of developing innovative solutions to support the industry. Some of his more impactful accomplishments include the development of joist hangers, serving as the primary author of an extremely popular tech bulletin that combines all our connector/anchor solutions for tying wood structures to foundations, and creating/presenting an engineering workshop on Foundation Design and Connections following a major natural disaster. 

Greg joined Simpson Strong-Tie with 20 years of consulting experience and quickly became a mentor for all engineers in the department, modeling the behavior and approach that is expected from a professional engineer. Everyone at the branch knows they can rely on him to quickly respond to the many challenges that arise in their product lines. 

Reflecting our Company’s Values 

In 2022, Greg represented the Engineering department in orientations for new hires following Barc’s principle #5: Everybody Matters. His two-hour program focuses on the importance of the work we do at Simpson Strong-Tie and how every single one of us has a responsibility to ensure that the products we provide and the service we offer live up to our high standards. In every one of the orientations that Greg participated in, our new employees have voted the engineering presentation as their favorite, helping to ensure our culture continues for many more years. 

From Greg: “One of Barc’s famous quotes is ‘Great companies are built with great people.’ So true. I believe great engineering departments are built with great engineers and I have always had the greatest respect for Simpson Strong-Tie engineers. Therefore, to receive this award from my colleagues in the Simpson Engineering department is a tremendous honor.” 

Simpson Strong-Tie Phillip Hui, Branch Engineer with his award
Simpson Strong-Tie Phillip Hui, Branch Engineer with his award

Phillip Hui, Branch Engineer

Branch: Stockton, California  

Phillip was nominated for his leadership in growing mass timber specifications companywide, always embracing the opportunity to take the initiative, including authoring a key technical bulletin and training our technical support representatives and field engineers. 

He is continuously training the technical reps and field engineers on wood and mass timber connectors, lateral systems and fasteners. Phillip also traveled to other branches over the course of the year to give presentations to key mass timber engineering firms, taking the time to promote our brand and educating their specifiers on all the Simpson Strong-Tie solutions for mass timber construction. 

The sales team has noted how thoroughly he understands their needs . Without complaint, he always steps up and makes it happen. He has been very willing to travel and visit jobsites, and has embraced the opportunity to attend building shows, proving himself a very thoughtful and engaged resource at the shows.   

Reflecting our Company’s Values 

Our second winner exemplifies Barc’s principle #9: Be Humble, Have Fun. Regardless of how tough the job is, he’s always smiling and has a great sense of humor, qualities that make him approachable. His fun and humble demeanor makes him the engineer of choice for the sales department.  

Phillip also exemplifies Barc’s Principle #2, Be the Leader, by taking the initiative in creating an ASCE41 technical bulletin, and he has made himself the go-to engineer for the mass timber products at his branch and throughout the company. 

From Phil: This award is the fruition of teamwork and to me is not a personal award. The success that we had that I was fortunate to be involved in came from efforts from all aspects of the company including engineering, sales, and manufacturing.

Simpson Strong-Tie Joel Houck, Associate Technical Manager, Research & Development with his award
Simpson Strong-Tie Joel Houck, Associate Technical Manager, Research & Development with his award

Joel Houck, Associate Technical Manager, Research & Development

Branch: West Chicago, Illinois

Joel was nominated for being a tireless risk-taking innovator in our mechanical anchor and tool product lines, having earned several patents and creating processes that improve future product development. 

Joel is a tireless innovator with a seemingly endless supply of ideas and numerous patents. He is not afraid to allow fast failures to be one of our best learning tools and has often disproven or proven half-a-dozen ideas before most of the rest of us have caught up. He has created and developed the concrete testing lab. On top of that, he continues to push the limits of how we utilize testing to drive R&D through his work studying the interactions of products with materials; in doing so, he has begun to create predictive models that will help aim all future development in this area. 

Reflecting our Company’s Values 

This winner’s impact stretches to his local community where he engages with high school students, thus embodying Barc’s principle #8: Give Back. In typical fashion, he takes this a step beyond the tour and actually invites them to shadow him on the job to get deeper insight into the professional life of an engineer. Joel also models Barc’s principle #7: Risk Taking Innovation. He is eternally curious, highly inventive, and willing to do the dirty work of trying and failing until success comes. 

From Joel: “Winning the Engineering Excellence Award makes me grateful to be part of the supportive culture of the Simpson Strong-Tie Engineering team. The collaboration and support of this team has enabled me to do what I love — be creative and solve problems for our customers. I’m at my best when I’m enjoying my work, and the Simpson Strong-Tie culture allows me to do that every day, so this award is a reflection of the great culture that is currently being built within the Engineering department. I anticipate great things from our engineers in the coming years!” 

Simpson Strong-Tie Josh Rosenbrock, Senior Technician, Product Engineering with his award
Simpson Strong-Tie Josh Rosenbrock, Senior Technician, Product Engineering with his award

Josh Rosenbrock, Senior Technician, Product Engineering

Branch: Pleasanton, California 

Josh was nominated for creating key systems to improve product testing and interdepartmental SAP processes, always focused on continuous improvement in standardizing engineering tasks to the highest level of quality. Josh has been instrumental in recommending and providing guidance on how to effectively test products. He has initiated procedures to improve communication between the engineering and lab teams in the past several years, and continues to develop processes and work instructions to standardize daily engineering tasks. Josh collaborates with multiple departments, including R&D, the labs, and quality to ensure that we conduct all our product testing to the highest standards. 

Reflecting our Company’s Values 

Josh is a leader highlighting Barc’s principle #4, Long-Range View, managing the test database for years, continuously suggesting a more advanced and robust test management system that can support the department’s expansion in the future. His proven ability to communicate, to listen genuinely to others, and to show respect to every person that he works with are great demonstrations of Barc’s Nine Principles of Business. 

From Josh: “The Excellence in Engineering award is a wonderful acknowledgement. It means that I can do what I love while also helping improve the Engineering department. I am proud of the improvements I’ve helped to implement to better the communication between the different engineering teams. Knowing others are happy with those improvements means a lot to me.”  

Congratulations to the latest award winners. The important work our engineers do allows us to have a better understanding of how structures perform, advance our design technology, and improve building safety. 

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