Criterium Engineers

About Criterium Engineers

Founded in 1957 and now one of the US-leading structural engineering consulting firms, Criterium Engineers helps building owners, homeowner associations, real estate investors, and contractors understand the buildings they own, manage, or purchase.

In Helen Watts' own words: "We do a different bunch of core things at Criterium. One of them is what you call a traditional design shop, and then we also do reserve study for condominium associations, as well as building inspections."

We sat with Helen Watts and Nate Powelson - Criterium's structural expertise leaders - to understand how they are changing how engineering is done, turning it into a collaborative team process with the help of Calcs.com.

Speeding up routine design analysis

Across its offices, Criterium reviews about 200 engineering designs annually, 75% to 85% of which are done in Calcs.com.

"The majority of our calculations, unless it's something very odd, are done in Calcs.com," Nate said.

In a typical project lifecycle, a client may approach Criterium and say they want to modify their building. Nate's team works through the feasibility in Calcs.com, then takes those calculations into CAD for the final drawings.

"Here at Criterium Engineers, we seem to get one request a week: 'Hey, if I put this steel beam on the bottom of this 200 year old timber, how much strength do I get?' Getting a program to do that versus spending hours writing through that is something that we're highly interested to save time."

Handling complex design and calculations

Every once in a while, Helen said, a complex design comes her way that her team wants her to help solve.

"The only way that I can evaluate them is by using tools like Calcs.com."

"We had a guy who wanted to put a roof deck over the entrance to his little residential building. He wanted basically no post and no visible means of support. So we gave him one option, and we gave him another one which is a whole lot simpler and cheaper. We run all of this scenario in Calcs.com."

Nate and Helen particularly value the speed of what-if analysis.

"I also like the speed at which you can do the what-ifs with the utilization checks," Helen added. "For example, a client wanted to get rid of the rafter ties, so Nate and I got on Zoom and I said, what if we do this and the utilization check lights went all red. What if we stick it this way? And we got the green light. I like the way the painful stuff are now speedy."

Reviewing projects across teams

Structural engineering review is an important part of the project workflow at Criterium Engineers. Every project is reviewed by another engineer before it goes out.

"Criterium is really big in that nothing goes out without getting a second review," Helen says.

"Part of the reasons why we went with Calcs.com was when we looked at the various programs, Nate liked the output on Calcs.com and how the platform explains what was going on. It meant it was easier for him to review my work and vice versa."

"I like that I can follow Calcs.com on my own," added Nate.

The ability to do the design in Calcs.com and export a legible printout means calculations are accessible to any reviewer on the team - across Criterium's 30+ franchise offices in the US and Canada.

A platform for cross-office knowledge sharing

Using Calcs.com has transformed the way Criterium's team collaborates. In addition to the webinars they host to share knowledge with franchise offices, Helen noted that the ability to run analysis collaboratively means there is a cross-pollination of knowledge that makes engineers in her team smarter.

"If you want to go and do something, I'll say, let's get on Zoom, bring up Calcs.com and I'll talk you through it."

Nate and Helen's complementary backgrounds - Helen from construction, Nate from design - strengthen their work together, and Calcs.com gives them a shared environment where that collaboration happens.

"Nate and I work really well together because I come from construction and he from the design side of it. So, we're very yin and yang, and I think it makes our design much stronger when we work together."