Filling the Gap: Design Assist

Welcome back to Filling the Gap, our series dedicated to educating you about expansion joint solutions. In this installment, we’re discussing design assistance services.

Have you ever drawn a great design only to have a structural engineer stick an expansion joint through the middle? Did the client then ask you to “make these ugly joints disappear”? Or maybe you have more regulatory hoops to jump through than you know what to do with? Regardless of where you are in the process, design assistance (which we’ll be shortening to “design assist” from here on out since that’s usually what we say) might be for you. Design assist is one term, but it takes many forms.

At CS, design assist will be tailored to your project, but here are a few types of scenarios or projects that we see often:

1.         Early in the game

Our favorite. You might approach us at the very beginning of your project, saying, “We know what we want to do; can you help us?”  Loma Linda University Medical Center is a great example of a project where we were involved every step of the way, from the very first meeting.

Getting us involved on the ground floor, metaphorically speaking, saves time and limits extra work down the line. Navigating the regulatory process is smoother and faster when we’ve been involved from the start. If we’re not brought in until after a set of contract documents has been approved, then our calculations and drawings might not align perfectly with those plans as we draw what we see as correct for our product. This can lead to two sets of documents that don’t match and get rejected by the reviewers, causing rework on both sides—no one wants to spend more time and money repeating the approval process.

Similarly, perhaps you know what you want to accomplish, but it isn’t exactly something that’s been done before. Involving us early gives us time to do the fun stuff—research and development, including testing at our own in-house facilities or one of the world-renowned university-based testing facilities we’re partnered with. We aren’t afraid to take standard products and morph them into a solution that fits your project both functionally and aesthetically. We might look at a project and say, “We haven’t done this before, but let me tell you what we can do—we can take it back to our lab and we can load it up or cycle it or burn it, depending on what ‘it’ happens to be.” This gives both you, the owner, and us a sense of confidence that what we’re proposing is going to do what it needs to do and look how you want it to. Testing also provides all stakeholders the opportunity to hold it and, in many cases, understand the scale of the exact system that will be in their building.

On the flip side, once a project is up and running, how long are we willing to stay on and collaborate? As long as you need us. Take the historic Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah for example. When the building needed a seismic upgrade—moat covers and MACC units—the Church of Latter-Day Saints came to us for custom solutions that would cater to both the historic nature and functional necessity of the project. They were already knowledgeable about what they wanted and needed us to turn it into a reality. At the time this post is published, we will have been working with them for about six years, with around two more years to go until completion.

Another long-term example that comes to mind is San Francisco International Airport, where we’ve developed an ongoing relationship and can act as a resource. One of our senior product development managers visits about twice a year to do field walks and ensure that their expansion joints are still functioning properly.

2.         Agency compliance

This is what most formal design assist projects are. These projects are located in places where there’s a regulatory desire or something that’s special enough that validation testing or calculations are required.

It may also involve incorporating our design documents into the project’s overall contract document sets in order to gain regulatory approval and avoid deferred submittal of our products. In these cases, we provide information and support the project throughout the review and comment process.

What makes us qualified compliance guides? Think about it as an evolution:

We perform tests to better understand one of our products (whether in-house or as part of a larger project). We articulate our findings back to the community, for example, in the form of a published paper. We’re able to join code bodies and other regulatory committees where we take that knowledge and discuss how to change the overall building code when appropriate.

Essentially, we understand the process and requirements from start to finish because we participate at every stage.

3.         Sales support

During the multiple phases of design documents and closer to bidding, an architect, waterproofing consultant, or design-build contractor might need some guidance to get over the finish line. We don’t necessarily provide calculations in these situations; we can help confirm that the selections are appropriate and justify the choices to the rest of the stakeholders.

If there are budgetary concerns, this may also be a stage when we can offer value engineering (VE) options. In addition to engineering support, we have a full range of other pre-sales support functions to assist all project participants.

This is by no means an exhaustive list—chances are that any kind of help you need, we can give. No matter the size of a project or what stage it’s at, we provide a way of getting clients on the right path to make everything work together. Every solution begins with an idea, and we’re here to work with you from concept to concrete.

Contact your local sales representative or reach out to Senior Product Development Manager, Rob Belvin, to get started.