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The team at Top Level Engineering (TLE) visited two fourth-grade classes at Cedar Lane Elementary School in Ashburn, Virginia February 25 in honor of Engineers Week (EWeek). Founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers, EWeek is a week-long celebration of how engineers make a difference in our world and an effort to raise awareness…

At Top Level Engineering, we design buildings to not only meet current engineering standards, but also to meet best practices. In December, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released changes to the ASCE 7 standard, which is regarded as the authoritative source for the specification of loads and related criteria, and it has been…

Earlier this month, we wrote about What Disasters Teach Us About the Importance of Design Codes. the role that our own founder and principal Kirby Hartle played during the devastating 2010 Haiti Earthquake when he served as a Structures Specialist with the Urban Search and Rescue Virginia Task Force 1. For the two weeks Kirby…

Here in the United States, designing buildings to meet international, national, state, and local codes is simply part of the structural engineering process. It’s required by law and expected by customers. It isn’t until natural or manmade disasters strike that we truly gain an appreciation for building and design standards, why these codes are required,…

Top Level Engineering: Celebrating a Successful 2021, Looking Ahead to Great Opportunities in the Future Happy New Year from Top Level Engineering! As we move into the first few weeks of 2022, we look back on the previous year with a grateful spirit – as we have much to celebrate! First and foremost, we are…

The International Code Council (ICC) recently announced significant changes to the 2021 International Building Codes (IBC), according to Part 1 of a recent five-article series in the November 2021 issue “Structure” magazine. Structural engineers should be aware of these significant changes that occurred between 2018 and 2021. In their article 2021 IBC Significant Structural Changes,…

Top Level Engineering Provides Structural Engineering For Goddard School of Ashburn Annex Top Level Engineering worked with Loveless Porter Architects in 2020 and 2021 to provide the structural design for an addition to The Goddard School, located in Ashburn, Virginia. Once completed, The Goddard School of Ashburn Annex will be a 5,000 square foot, two-story…

Approximate Analytical Techniques Why Mastering Them is So Important for Structural Engineers When analyzing and designing indeterminate structures today, most structural engineers are able to rely upon a variety of software programs to help them do the job quickly and precisely. However, possessing the ability to approximate an answer without the use of a computer…