Engineered Desk: Winning photo of the Creative Use of Our Product contest. Photo credit: Alan Hanson, Simpson Strong-Tie.
Thank you to everyone who participated in our “Creative Use of Our Product” contest! This was our most popular post yet. Based on comments received, the Top 5 photos were:
1. Engineered Desk
2. Statue of David
3. Top Flange Spoiler Bracket
4. & 5. (Tie): Truss Coffee Table and HD Trailer Hitch Adapter
The winners of the Simpson Strong-Tie Prize Pack, chosen randomly among all comments on the post are:
1. Kimberly T., Brea, CA
2. Natalie D., Pleasanton, CA
3. Zoran P., Vaughan ON
4. Evan L., Pullman, WA
5. Mary P., Franklin, WI
Congratulations to the winners.
If you’d like automatic email updates when a new blog entry is posted (usually once a week), sign up here.
Engineered Desk: Winning photo of the Creative Use of Our Product contest. Photo credit: Alan Hanson, Simpson Strong-Tie.
Thank you to everyone who participated in our “Creative Use of Our Product” contest! This was our most popular post yet. Based on comments received, the Top 5 photos were:
1. Engineered Desk
2. Statue of David
3. Top Flange Spoiler Bracket
4. & 5. (Tie): Truss Coffee Table and HD Trailer Hitch Adapter
The winners of the Simpson Strong-Tie Prize Pack, chosen randomly among all comments on the post are:
1. Kimberly T., Brea, CA
2. Natalie D., Pleasanton, CA
3. Zoran P., Vaughan ON
4. Evan L., Pullman, WA
5. Mary P., Franklin, WI
Congratulations to the winners.
If you’d like automatic email updates when a new blog entry is posted (usually once a week), sign up here.
With all of the frenzy that happens before (and during) the holidays, I won’t be doing full blog posts this or next week. But, I did want to remind you that this Thursday (12/20) is the last day to enter our “Creative Uses of Our Product” contest. We’ll post our five winners to the blog next week.
This week will be a short snapshot into what we were doing yesterday. We are always testing products and usually the only people who stop by to watch the tests besides the lab technicians are an R&D engineer and occasionally the product manager. As valuable as testing is, the simple day-to-day stuff just doesn’t generate much excitement – crushing bowling balls is fun and gets a crowd, but we save that for orientation classes.
In my previous life as a building designer, I occasionally saw some creative installations of Simpson Strong-Tie products. These usually came in the form of an RFI where the contractor was asking for forgiveness for a misinstallation. However, this week’s post pays tribute to the creativity and ingenuity of our customers. The following photos are some of my favorite interesting applications and creative uses of our products. Some are purely utilitarian, which describes most of the aftermarket automotive uses. Others have a unique beauty while solving a problem or filling a need. Some are truly works of art and the rest are just plain silly. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Tell us which picture is your favorite by posting a comment, or tell us about an interesting application or creative use for Simpson Strong-Tie products you’ve seen. We’ll be awarding five commenters with a Simpson Strong-Tie Prize Pack via random drawing (one entry per person, please). Details and rules here.
In my previous life as a building designer, I occasionally saw some creative installations of Simpson Strong-Tie products. These usually came in the form of an RFI where the contractor was asking for forgiveness for a misinstallation. However, this week’s post pays tribute to the creativity and ingenuity of our customers. The following photos are some of my favorite interesting applications and creative uses of our products. Some are purely utilitarian, which describes most of the aftermarket automotive uses. Others have a unique beauty while solving a problem or filling a need. Some are truly works of art and the rest are just plain silly. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Tell us which picture is your favorite by posting a comment, or tell us about an interesting application or creative use for Simpson Strong-Tie products you’ve seen. We’ll be awarding five commenters with a Simpson Strong-Tie Prize Pack via random drawing (one entry per person, please). Details and rules here.
I confess to being a bit of a technology junkie. I think it was around 1995 when I first overcame my fears and cracked open my computer case, installed a new hard drive and upgraded to an enormous 8 megabytes of RAM. While I still enjoy building my own home computer every now and then, it seems like keeping up with technology is a full-time job. For every new website or app, you can expect two or three more just like it to follow. Trying to filter through all of that information to find what’s useful to your specific job, process or project can be impossible.
I’ve found it’s usually best to let the need dictate the technology, versus the other way around. When I was designing buildings, contractor sketches or descriptions of field issues were often not clear (especially the ones that had been faxed 5 times!). Sometimes we could figure it out with several phone calls, but other situations would require a field visit. A photograph would work, but developing film and sending the photos would take too long. The development of inexpensive digital cameras so field questions could be e-mailed with photos really streamlined my process for responding to field issues.
I am attending the 2012 SEAOC-SEANM Convention in Santa Fe, New Mexico this week. I did not realize that Santa Fe is the oldest state capitol in the U.S., first inhabited by Spanish settlers in 1607, and then settled by Don Pedro de Peralta in 1609-1610. The Palace of the Governors, built in 1610, served as the main government building in Santa Fe for nearly 300 years. The current capitol building, known as the Roundhouse, is the only round state capitol building in the U.S. Our airport shuttle driver used to be a tour guide, so we learned a lot on the drive in.Continue Reading
I am attending the 2012 SEAOC-SEANM Convention in Santa Fe, New Mexico this week. I did not realize that Santa Fe is the oldest state capitol in the U.S., first inhabited by Spanish settlers in 1607, and then settled by Don Pedro de Peralta in 1609-1610. The Palace of the Governors, built in 1610, served as the main government building in Santa Fe for nearly 300 years. The current capitol building, known as the Roundhouse, is the only round state capitol building in the U.S. Our airport shuttle driver used to be a tour guide, so we learned a lot on the drive in. St. Francis Cathedral, Santa Fe. By Bill Johnson, 2005. Licensed under Creative Commons, some rights reserved.
The first session I attended today was a discussion of recent earthquakes. James Mwangi Ph.D, PE, Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering at Cal Poly, discussed his project to develop sustainable reconstruction practices for masonry and concrete structures in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. Then Joe Maffei, Ph.D, SE, talked about lessons learned about concrete wall design from the 2010 Chile earthquake. Continue Reading
My apologies for being late with my blog post this week. We are having our once a year big sales meeting, so I’ve been traveling to the Midwest to participate. Speaking of traveling, several times each year, we invite our newest employees to our home office in Pleasanton, California for a week-long Sales and Product Orientation class. Although originally envisioned as detailed product knowledge training for our sales people, the class has evolved over the years to include people from all areas of our business such as finance, accounting, IT, purchasing, quality, marketing, and (of course) engineering.
I do one presentaton for the class explaining the importance of a continuous load path in a building, and another covering the history of innovation that led to some of our products. It is a great opportunity for me to meet my new coworkers by spending some time with them before they embark on their careers in different parts of the country (or world!).
Holdown Test Setup
My favorite training session I do for the class is about product development and testing, which includes a tour of our test lab in Pleasanton. We go over a lot of testing basics – how we select lumber, get parts made, build setups and run the tests. For a demonstration, I used to run a simple joist hanger test and also a holdown test. Usually I’ll pick a heavy holdown to test, since those make an impressive bang when the steel breaks, and then everyone jumps and gets a good laugh out of it.
It’s that time of year again: newly graduated college students are entering the workforce. For the student, it’s an anxious time. They are often wondering how and if four plus years of college has effectively prepared them for the real working world. For the potential employer, it can be a gamble. They have decided to take a chance on someone who likely does not have any professional work experience, but expect production from day one. On a recent visit to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, my colleague Scott Fischer got a firsthand view of what students are doing to prepare for a career.
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