Structural Design & Detailing

Whole-building structural design from concept sizing to GFC drawings, for RCC, structural steel and composite frames.

Most structural failures that cost money are not collapses. They are a column that lands in the middle of a parking bay, a beam that drops below a ceiling void that was already coordinated, a transfer structure discovered two months after the podium was priced. All of these are decisions made early, in ignorance, and defended late, at expense.

We take on structural design as a whole-building responsibility: sizing the frame, proving it, drawing it, and staying accountable for it through construction.

What the engagement covers

The appointment runs from concept through to as-built records. At concept we produce two or three viable structural systems and compare them properly — not just on tonnage, but on floor-to-floor height, formwork cycle time, crane dependency, and how much of the programme each one puts at risk. That comparison is a single page, and it is the most valuable document we issue.

Once a system is chosen we build the full analysis model, run the code checks that the project’s jurisdiction demands, and put every calculation through an independent internal check before anything leaves the office. The checking engineer’s name goes on the sheet next to the designer’s.

Detailing is where designs are won or lost

A correct calculation detailed badly is a defective building. Congested beam-column joints that no bar bender can actually form, laps landing in the plastic hinge zone, a shear wall boundary element that assumes a bar spacing the site cannot achieve — these are the defects that appear in audits ten years later.

We detail to be built. That means checking bar clashes in three dimensions at the joints that matter, specifying laps and anchorages that fit the member, and issuing schedules the fabricator can work from without a phone call.

Coordination with the wider team

Structure is the discipline everyone else routes around, so we hold the model open to the MEP and façade teams from the start. Service penetrations are designed in, not cut in. Where a slab needs to take a future opening, we say so on the drawing, with the reinforcement to make it possible.

Questions

What clients ask before appointing us

At what stage should a structural engineer be appointed?

Before the architectural concept is frozen. Grid, core position and floor-to-floor height are structural decisions dressed as architectural ones, and once they are fixed most of the structural cost is already committed. A two-week engagement at concept stage routinely saves more than the whole structural fee.

Do you design in steel as well as concrete?

Yes, and the choice between them is one of the first things we test rather than assume. On a mid-rise commercial frame in India, cast in-situ RCC usually wins on cost; on long spans, fast programmes or heavy industrial loads, steel or a composite deck usually wins. We put both on a page with numbers.

Which analysis software do you use?

ETABS and SAFE for buildings, STAAD.Pro for industrial and plant structures, and Midas Civil for bridges and long spans. Model files are handed over at completion — you are not locked into us to make future changes.

Selected work