Nashville Office
After 25 years of our headquarters being located in Southern California--with our Regional Engineers spread across the country--SidePlate is excited to add a new address to our Contact Us page on www.sideplate.com. Our new Nashville, TN location was opened this summer, but national events prevented us from occupying the space until now. We chose Nashville as a location to be close to a number of industry partners we have been doing a tremendous amount of work with, along with making our team even more accessible for our Eastern United States partners with physical resources much closer when they need them.
SidePlate All-Bolted Designs are Quickly Taking Off!
As announced in September, SidePlate now has an all-bolted connection for use on wind/low-seismic projects. We take client feedback very seriously, so this option was developed in response to comments from “production” fabrication shops that prefer to limit welding. There has been quite a bit of excitement already about this new option, as it eliminates shop and field welding and significantly reduces layout, fit-up, and assembly time in the shop. One fabricator estimated that the shop labor time on an all-bolted SidePlate column was reduced by almost 80%. We’ve had quite a few fabricator inquiries about this and currently have six all-bolted SidePlate jobs already in production, with projects located in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, Arizona, and Tennessee. Contact your Regional Engineer to learn more and to see if your project may be a good fit for this innovation.
ETABS New 19.0.0 Release
Please note the SidePlate modeling feature in the latest version of ETABS does not appear to be correctly modeling the connection stiffness, resulting in overly conservative SidePlate designs. CSI has indicated they will fix this in the next patch. We have other modeling options, so if you plan to develop a SidePlate design using ETABS 19.0.0, please contact us and we will provide a very quick non-prismatic solution for you, as well as instructions for proper modeling. Simply call 949-238-8900 or contact your Regional Engineer for assistance.
2020 Marked 25 Years of SidePlate
We have talked about it on and off all year but take a moment to reflect on what 25 years of SidePlate really means. A connection design was born out of a need in the industry after the Northridge, CA earthquake in 1994.

Since that time, SidePlate has continually refined our design with hundreds of physical and computer simulated tests over the last 25 years. Competitors simply can’t match this history or engineering commitment.

Testing and refinement about 10 years ago led us to develop a connection design focused on the eastern part of the country, and, of course, recently our All-Bolted connection design mentioned elsewhere in this newsletter.

We could not have achieved this level of growth and product diversity without the clients we have worked with over the last 25 years—your support has allowed us to do over 900 projects totaling more than 150,000,000 sq. ft. of building space.

Expect the next chapter in SidePlate to bring even more industry impact.
Employee Spotlight
For our employee spotlight this newsletter, we are highlighting Michaela Shaffer, who just earned her PE License!
Q: What is your title?
A: Design Engineer

Q: What do you do here?
A: I work on projects that start as early as schematic design and go all the way through construction. Additionally, I am involved in several specialty teams and committees within SidePlate. My work focuses on developing drawings, maintaining standards & procedures, and working with our internal engagement team. I really enjoy these communication and organization tasks along with my regular engineering work! 

Q: What is your favorite part about your job?
A: I like the people, the working environment, and the innovation that has a part in all aspects of our business.

Q: How has working from home been for you?
A: It's been an adjustment but it’s going well! We are very grateful to have help from family in these strange times. There are moments where I am working on drawings with a toddler on my lap or working into the night to catch up from an interrupted day. As many parents have this year, I’ve taken on a new role as educator as well as my “day-job”. Thankfully my daughters are young, and these activities are often arts and crafts or numbers and letters. We’ve started doing themed weeks to keep things interesting which has been fun for me and the kids!

Each issue of our newsletter will bring another Employee Spotlight, helping you better know the SidePlate team you are working with.
Social Media and SidePlate
In case you want to know more of what we are involved in or are working on, please consider taking a look at our social media feeds:
SidePlate Systems
25909 Pala, Suite 200
Mission Viejo, CA 92691