Old College Campus Building
The building you see here is part of a local college campus. The buildings are maybe 40 or 50 years old, and very little is available in the way of recorded structural drawings. Luckily, in this case, pretty much everything we needed to know is visible and accessible, even without those drawings. The task at hand is the replacement of old, inefficient HVAC units with newer, greener, more energy efficient models. The problem was, the new units are heavier by a good margin. We had to verify that the existing roof structure is strong enough to support the increased weight.
No problem, though, we just visit the site, take our measurements, make our calculations, and tell the contractor what he needs to do. Just another day in the life an engineer.
