Lakeside Community Hospital
Seismic Retrofit
My Role
Lead structural engineer — full frame design, calculations and construction support.
Scope
Fourteen suspended floors, concrete core, steel secondary frame and podium foundations.
Status
Complete and occupied. Permit package issued first submission, zero variations from frame errors.
The developer’s brief was blunt: fourteen lettable floors on a tight riverside footprint, with floor-to-ceiling glass the architect would not surrender. My job was to make that stand up — and to keep the steel tonnage honest.
The frame solution
I centred the lateral system on a concrete core carrying wind and seismic loads, which freed the perimeter for shallow steel beams and slim columns at a 9-metre grid. Foundations were the real puzzle — variable fill over rock — so I designed stepped pad footings with a ground-beam tie system rather than an expensive full raft. The geotechnical engineer signed off; the budget survived.
Checked, coordinated, buildable
Every connection schedule was modelled in 3D and clash-checked against services before issue, and an independent engineer reviewed the primary frame. On site I answered twelve builder RFIs — eleven within 24 hours — and the frame topped out two weeks early.
Planning something similar? See my structural design service or send me your plans for a fixed-fee proposal.
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