Structures

Service Overview

Multifaceted engineering services for buildings, infrastructure, and other structures.

Structural designs must balance a range of parameters, including geometry, appearance, functionality, cost, constructability, sustainability, and performance to provide optimal solutions. When structures deteriorate, do not perform as intended, or fail, determining the cause is critical to understanding why. This knowledge helps us develop appropriate repair or restoration approaches when required and design durable new structures that perform well. SGH collaborates with our clients and project teams to understand the goals and takes advantage of our multidisciplinary expertise to provide solutions for many types of structural engineering projects.

Advancing the meaning of what’s possible.

Specialized Capabilities

Building Design

SGH helps project teams achieve their vision by developing creative and coordinated structural designs. Our experience in design, investigation, and rehabilitation enables us to tackle any structural design challenge for new or existing buildings. We help our clients by designing new building structures, peer reviewing designs by others, and applying performance-based design approaches that look beyond the building codes to deliver structures tailored to the project’s needs.

Photo courtesy of Foster + Partners

Photo courtesy of Foster + Partners

Repair & Strengthening

When a structure deteriorates or fails to perform as intended, a building undergoes a change in use/ownership or renovation, or jurisdictions require upgrades, SGH can design repairs and strengthening. We conduct assessments to understand the structure’s condition and develop strategies to extend the useful life, achieve the desired use, or improve the structure’s ability to withstand loads. We match the intervention strategy to the need, ranging from in-kind repairs to comprehensive strengthening programs, such as seismic retrofits.

Seismic Engineering

A structure’s ability to withstand a seismic event without experiencing an unacceptable functional loss also involves its ability to adapt to changing conditions and recover. SGH applies performance-based analyses and failure-risk assessments with traditional design approaches to develop solutions for new structural designs and seismic retrofits. Our technical experts are actively involved in committees that advance the industry’s understanding of earthquake effects and a structure’s response to the ground shaking.

Temporary Construction

Successful projects rely on efficient and effective construction. Construction engineering bridges the gap between contract documents and executing the design. SGH helps the project team by assessing existing conditions, conducting field testing, and evaluating the risks and rewards of various means and methods approaches. Our multidisciplinary teams deliver practical engineering solutions along with temporary and permanent structural designs to help contractors accomplish the work.

Marine & Civil Works

Marine and civil works serve a critical role for society, facilitating the movement of people and the goods and services they need. These structures, which are exposed to the environment, are subject to frequent use and sometimes aggressive conditions, but also require long service lives. SGH understands the challenges of marine operations—such as fuel/oil derivative transfers, bulk and cargo handling, container moving and stacking, and passenger processing— and the complex civil conditions that need to be considered, including site grading, drainage, utilities, and other buried structures. We provide structural engineering services to help owners, operators, and contractors build, maintain, and repair their marine and civil structures and systems.

Geotechnical

No two sites are the same. Site conditions, including the soil, bedrock, groundwater, buried infrastructure, and adjacent construction vary from project to project, creating different sets of design and construction challenges. SGH understands these challenges and collaborates with our clients to mitigate inherent geotechnical risks and facilitate construction at the site.

Creative solutions for structural challenges.

client solutions

New Construction

Designing new elements of our built environment

Evaluation

Analyzing conditions and advancing innovation

Failure Investigation

Uncovering what went wrong

Repair & Rehabilitation

Extending the life of structures and infrastructure

Preservation

Restoring and protecting our most treasured buildings and artifacts

Featured Projects

West

200 Park

The new nineteen-story building at 200 Park Avenue brings 965,000 sq ft of Class A office space and 22,400 sq ft of outdoor terraces to downtown San Jose. SGH provided construction engineering services to the steel fabricator/erector.

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Yilport Puerto Bolívar Expansion

SGH provided peer review and value engineering services for a new 450 m container wharf at Berth 6 and a 12.2 hectare container yard.