Low/Mid Rise

Low-rise building designs include, but are not limited to, multi-story commercial and residential structures, educational buildings, parking structures and warehouses. Typical structural framing systems depend on the owner’s requirements, project construction budget, site conditions, contractor preference and other factors. For residential buildings there are various types of floor systems that can be implemented to provide the required structural performance such as concrete slabs plus metal decks on open-web steel joists, composite slab and joist systems, or thin reinforced concrete slabs on precast prestressed concrete joists, hollow core slabs. In commercial and educational buildings, the previous structural systems are used in addition to reinforced concrete or post-tension slabs depending on desired clear spans and typical column spacing, supported on steel or reinforced concrete columns. Parking structures typically consist of precast concrete joists supported on soffit beams that bear on shop-precast or tilt-up panels or reinforced concrete columns. Warehouse facilities are typically framed with open-web steel joists which carry metal decks and are supported on reinforced masonry walls. Various types of foundations are implemented based recommendations by the geotechnical engineers which include deep (piles, caps, etc.) or shallow spread or continuous wall footings.