Hien Nguyen and Brandon Winter were our winners this last year for their amazing contributions to the department and company. They both exemplify the Engineering department’s mission of providing world-class innovation, testing and customer support and embody Barc Simpson’s Nine Principles of Business. 

The Simpson Strong-Tie® Excellence in Engineering award was created in 2020 to recognize notable contributions from our Engineering team members who continually exceed expectations in their roles. To determine the recipients each year, people managers from our North America teams submit nominations that are then reviewed by our senior leadership team.  

Hien Nguyen 

Hien has been with Simpson Strong-Tie for 24 years as a licensed professional engineer and published technical author. In 2023, she was a key contributor to three new product launches in addition to supporting projects to develop updated load values, code reports, product evaluations and catalog reviews. 

Passionate about finding ways to make a bigger impact on the company, Hien shares her knowledge and skills by training groups of subject matter experts in Viet Nam, including both leading sessions personally and recruiting other experts in fasteners, wood, connectors and concrete to present. She also traveled to Viet Nam for an extended time last year to provide in-person training and mentorships and build lasting relationships. She is deeply loved and respected by our Viet Nam team, as evidenced by the enormous welcoming party at the airport when she arrived! 

Hien executes many complex and challenging projects, sets expectations and delivers on time. She is the go-to resource for technical topics at the company in the critical areas of holdowns and cold-formed steel. Through her work with code and technical committees and technical presentations at conferences, she’s also earned recognition in the industry as a trusted resource for product solutions. 

One of our Engineering team members wrote about Hien’s incredible mentorship and support of their professional development: “It is a rare and refreshing experience to work with someone who possesses such a combination of expertise and approachability. Her impact on my professional growth has been profound, and I am truly grateful for the privilege of working alongside such a remarkable individual.” 

Brandon Winter 

Our second 2023 Excellence in Engineering winner, Brandon Winter, has been with the company nearly 10 years, joining us after working at a leading structural engineering consulting firm for several years. Upon joining Simpson, Brandon almost immediately discovered his passion for designing and supporting Strong Frame® moment frame solutions. He was recognized by Structure magazine and Simpson Strong-Tie for coauthoring “Building Resiliency – Soft-Story Retrofit Solutions” in March 2017. This was in the last year of the City of San Francisco mandatory soft-story retrofit program, with our specifiers and customers acknowledging his valuable expertise in the industry and his contribution to the retrofit efforts in the Bay Area.  

Brandon has presented dozens of structural steel PKs and worked on designs for hundreds of projects, both for his branch and for the numerous other branches who continually reach out to him for help. He has become the company expert and go-to resource for anyone in need of technical support or learning the intricacies of structural steel, which is a very technically complicated product line. Brandon has developed design instructions for the Enterprise Services team, served as the main branch reviewer of our many software tools, and continually puts himself in the customer’s shoes to make sure they get the best product solution possible. He has also gone the extra miles and hours to ensure that all the other branches benefit from his expertise, a dedication that was on display at our recent Engineering Summit structural steel breakout session, where he was able to offer many insights and answers to questions. 

From his manager Louay Shamroukh, “Brandon’s exceptional work ethic, his skills, his attitude in going above and beyond and his motivation to help his teammates as much as possible to secure our success are great reasons to recognize him this year as the winner of the 2023 Excellence in Engineering Award.”