0:00 - Madeline
All right, so on today's episode, we had Tyler Sease, who was our first structural engineer, which is interesting considering we've had a lot of architects and engineers of other realms, but he was the first one, and that's actually your realm. This episode had a lot of technical aspects to it. Was there anything you wanted to hit on before we went into the episode?

0:21 - Andy
Yeah, I mean, Tyler is somebody that I respect a lot, and I was really excited to have him on. I've known him for a while now, and just learning about what he does, learning about his business. He's in a more, I'm a structural engineer, as you know, but he's in a more niche-type company, a niche-type business than I am, which is connection designs of steel members, of structural steel. And also some other aspects, we call it specialty engineering or delegated design, which we'll get into all of that. What I want to mention is it is technical. It is a little more heavier conversation, but while we want to enhance the world around us, what he does, what his business does, he's ensuring safety. He's doing that with excellence, and there's no fluff around that, right? You have to do that right, and so while he's working on some cool stuff. Don't get me wrong. Some really interesting stuff, and we talk about that, but there's a tone of, this is important. This is an important topic. There's a weight to this, right? And I guess you could say that that tone is carried through the conversation, right? Now, as a part of that, we want to do it with excellence. We want to do what we do with excellence, and I feel that he shared that today. And also he shared that in his whole episode and his business at large really. So that's really what I want to highlight and I think everybody's gonna see all of that in this episode today.

2:08 - Madeline
For sure.

2:09 - Andy
Well my name is Andy Richardson and this is our producer Madeline and this is the Enhanced AEC podcast where we discuss with professionals in the AEC industry about what they're doing and why they're doing it.

2:25 - Andy
Let's get started.

2:31 - Madeline
Welcome to Enhance, an AEC podcast where we learn the why behind AEC professionals so that you can learn your why.

2:38 - Andy
Well, welcome Tyler to the Enhance podcast.

2:41 - Tyler Sease
Thanks for having me.

2:42 - Andy
Yeah, definitely glad to have you down to Beaufort and thanks for making the drive.

2:49 - Tyler Sease
Appreciate it. Not too far of a drive.

2:52 - Andy
So, yeah, I wanted to open it up. Do you like baseball?

2:56 - Tyler Sease
To an extent, yeah. More college than pro.

3:01 - Andy
And we gave you some prescriptive questions. I should ask you this. I do go sometimes go a little bit off of the rails.

3:09 - Tyler Sease
Go for it.

3:10 - Andy
Yeah, you're an engineer, so we have to deal with things, right? But yeah, a curveball. So, and really this isn't it should be a hard one for you because the question is, if you didn't have steel, what material would you design with?

3:26 - Tyler Sease
That's a tough one. My whole career's been focused on steel, so. Yeah, I told you it was curveball. I guess I would go towards aluminum, just because it's, well, it depends what it's for. Aluminum's good for certain things, but in terms of being closest to steel, aluminum is sufficient for its weight.

3:49 - Tyler Sease
Corrosion resistant.

3:51 - Tyler Sease
Only good for certain things though.

3:54 - Andy
Have you done much of the aluminum work?

3:56 - Tyler Sease
We do some here and there, like at water treatment plants and stuff like that for high corrosion areas or some exterior guardrails and stairs and stuff like that, but not a ton of it.

4:14 - Andy
Yeah, so that one was not necessarily what I would have thought of, but that's good. What is it that you like about steel the most?

4:24 - Tyler Sease
For one, I think I just, I was kind of not forced into it, but it was, I grew up with it because I started detailing when I was like 14. So I just, cause my dad had a steel detailing business, so I just started with it. But in terms of like, Once I got into college and started learning engineering, I like the consistency of it. The material is the same throughout. Whereas like concrete, you've got a lot more variables than actual materials in terms of different mixtures, the combination of concrete and steel. I just, the fact that steel is consistent throughout its section, I just always enjoy that aspect of it.

5:11 - Andy
Yeah, the thing about concrete makes me so nervous because you really don't know exactly what you're getting until afterward. You know, it's like, okay, well I didn't meet the PSI.

5:22 - Tyler Sease
Still a lot more exact than like geotechnical. Like it's even, you can do all the testing, but it's still a lot of guesswork there.

5:32 - Andy
Yeah, that would be a tough field to get into, right? So you started when you were 14. I guess your dad has a of the detailing business. He did, yeah. When you were in high school? How did that happen? I guess he just said, you're doing this, you're helping us, or how did you get started with detailing?

5:51 - Tyler Sease
I don't remember if it was optional or not, but yeah, we just kind of, I don't know how it started, and I guess it was kind of neat because I started a little bit before the 3D modeling days, so I got to see some of the more old school way of doing things so some of the early stuff I did was like an actual copy of prints would come in through FedEx or something and I would go scan them in and make copies for the different detailers or another thing I did a lot was making bolt lists for the fabricator so now that's fairly automated through the detailing software but back then it was going through each, the e-plans and looking at each beam and the connection and coming up with bolt quantities and the lengths of bolts needed and stuff like that. I mean, learned how to read drawings and put stuff together.

6:49 - Andy
That's a pretty tall task for a 14 year old, isn't it?

6:53 - Tyler Sease
I don't remember if I was doing all that at 14. Some of the early stuff I did, but yeah.

6:58 - Andy
Yeah, so that's pretty impressive.

7:00 - Tyler Sease
Always enjoyed it, so. Yeah, it seems like it just took right to you I guess or was it more that you what came first was it like hey you had the personality for it or we're just being around it so much or maybe a mixture of the two I don't know cuz like some people go to college and they're not sure what they want to major in at all for me it was never like always just knew I was gonna do engineering it was maybe figuring out exactly what part but is that's what I I always wanted to do.

7:36 - Andy
You saw the detailing side, you could have gone construction, you could have gone engineering, or maybe even detailing itself, but you chose engineering. Was there anything that drew you more toward the engineering side?

7:45 - Tyler Sease
I don't know if there's anything in particular. I mean, I just always liked math, always liked engineering once I got into it, and just kind of went with it and stuck with steel. And kind of just kept building on different parts of the steel industry.

8:07 - Andy
Now, you're in Columbia, South Carolina. You went to Lexington High?

8:14 - Tyler Sease
Gilward High School. Oh, Gilward High School.

8:16 - Andy
So, I didn't know that, actually. I knew you went to school somewhere in that area. So, I went to Airport High School.

8:23 - Tyler Sease
Oh, really? Yeah, I grew up in Columbia.

8:25 - Andy
So, I don't know if you knew that. I don't think so. Yeah, I grew up in Columbia and went to what's called High School. So it's near the airport.

8:34 - Tyler Sease
Real creative name.

8:36 - Tyler Sease
We played airport in high school sports and all.

8:39 - Andy
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I mean, Gilbert is kind of out, like I grew up in what's called Gaston, like I grew up in the country. You grew up in the country, basically.

8:47 - Tyler Sease
That's right, on a dirt road.

8:49 - Andy
Yeah, exactly. So that's pretty cool. But you now live in the Lexington area and have a business there, right? Instructional engineering business. So you Fast forwarding a little bit from your education up to SSE. Southern Steel Engineers. Southern Steel Engineers. For short. And what do you guys do, basically? And by the way, we're AEC, so we have some engineers, but also architects and contractors. But what do you guys do, exactly?

9:24 - Andy
So, yeah.

9:26 - Tyler Sease
I mean, we deal with architects, engineers, and contractors. So we're a structural engineering firm. But within that, we're pretty niche in that we focus on steel. And even more specifically than that, we've really narrowed in on what is usually called delegated steel design. So in layman's terms, essentially, a lot of what we're doing. So we can do some steel building design. We used to do more of that. We don't really do that anymore because we're more focused on the delegated steel design. So the engineer of record, which is a lot of what you do, a lot of times they'll design the beams, the columns, the bracing system, trusses, the size of the members, but not design the connections. So we do a lot of steel connection design, shop drawing review associated with that at times, and then we do a lot of miscellaneous steel design, be stair systems, railings, ladders, catwalks, platforms, mezzanines, all that kind of stuff. We do a little bit of erection engineering. Right now we're in the middle of a big one. Those jobs are really time consuming, so they're harder for us to fit in a lot of it, so we kind of try to space those out strategically.

10:48 - Andy
Yeah, and that's steel erection? That's right. So is that a sequencing thing, or like a safety, like shoring aspects, or both?

10:58 - Tyler Sease
So like the project we're working on now, big aviation project, it's got trusses that span, the clear span is like 460 feet. Okay, wow. Yeah, they're big boys. So our scope is involving the stability of the structure, while it's being built, which gets to be almost an infinite game, because you think about it like normally when you design a building, you're designing it as a completed structure. When we're tasked with checking the stability of the structure while it's being built, if there's 10,000 pieces, there's really 10,000 phases of iterates, so you can't check every single one of those, so it's using judgment and experience and running through a lot of phases to figure out which critical phases need to be looked at for different components and making sure it's stable, checking for wind loads, and also like those long span trusses, working through the lift design for those to make sure that they don't buckle while they're being lifted, make sure it's a safe pick and stuff like that. So it's really interesting work, but it gets very time consuming. But it's interesting, but the other part of it is you're also, some members may see more load during erection than they see in the final building. So it adds an interesting twist to it.

12:35 - Andy
Yeah, that sounds very interesting. Now those trusses, 460 feet, I imagine they've got some pretty good members on them. And what kind of members you're looking at?

12:47 - Tyler Sease
I think the biggest is a 14 and 455. So that means the 455, what does that mean? 455 pounds per linear foot. So if we took a foot of it, it'd be like 400 pound guy.

13:04 - Andy
That's amazing. So yeah, that's a pretty big boy right there. Yeah, for sure. So any other cool jobs you guys working on right now or that you've done in the past?

13:14 - Tyler Sease
We're kind of getting started on a children's hospital in Memphis. That one's in the early stages, so we'll be doing the connection design and miscellaneous steel design for it. Memphis is right at the big fault line.

13:34 - Tyler Sease
Is it New Madrid?

13:39 - Tyler Sease
Yeah, it's high seismic and it's high importance factors because It's a children's hospital, and so it's very, the seismic system's pretty crazy on that one. So a lot of interesting connections for it.

13:53 - Andy
And is that one of the driving forces of the connection design? Because what might make the question is, why do we need a delegated design and an EOR? I mean, I'm sure you get that all the time, I would imagine. But why do you need the EOR? Is it the seismic, or is there other things driving So I think there's a mixture of different factors.

14:17 - Tyler Sease
Some of it is engineers of record. Some of them may not be specialized in connection design. So delegated design is something that is very common on the East Coast out kind of to the Rockies. From the Rockies to the Pacific, it's much less common. California, it's pretty rare. But, so some of it's specialty based. Some of it is, depending on the fabricator and the erector that get awarded later in the process, they may want connections done a certain way, or specialized towards what's best for their shop, or sometimes erectors have a shortage of welders, so they may want all the connections that can be bolted, bolted. So it's, some of it saves rework and allows for customization towards a specific shop preference. Some of it is expertise of just not doing that work because there may be a more specialized engineer that can do it or sometimes it's just financial and contractual. If you've got competing engineering firms, you don't want to take on a bunch of additional costs and provide that delegated what could be delegated could save you time and money and it can also help schedule because sometimes a firm that's really specialized in it can do it faster than a firm that's not.

15:49 - Andy
Yeah and I mean from my standpoint of doing it one thing I've noticed is like what you mentioned the competition I mean if everybody else is keeping that out of the contract well it's kind of hard to keep it in there, because you know that's gonna be another, it might be 20%, it might be 30%, but that's a big percentage.

16:13 - Tyler Sease
Especially if you're working for the architect, where there may not be much of a, from their standpoint, a benefit in doing it. Whereas maybe if you're working on a design build for a general contractor, they may see additional benefits in it, or maybe not, but it can be different. And that's one thing that, The longer you're in this industry, you kind of learn that there's a lot of different parties involved. And so trying to put yourself in their shoes and think about what they're looking for in the project and all can kind of sometimes let you figure out what the best approach is or what's driving the project.

16:55 - Andy
Yeah, what are some things that help? What are some things that help me? Let's say we're in a delegated design situation with your standard connection design type situation, what would be some things that you would suggest to make it run smoother? To, I guess, like the GC to the team at large.

17:19 - Tyler Sease
I would say for the GC standpoint, encourage or at least allow communication because A lot of times we're not allowed to directly contact the engineer of record and if it's a quick-moving project, there's not, I mean, you know how RFIs can go sometimes up through, sometimes it has to go up through chains, get loaded into Procore, make it around to different people. It can really stall out a project because if you've got, say there's 12 weeks to to do connection design and detailing before the fabricator needs to get steel in the shop, if you spend four weeks on back and forth with RFIs, they're still gonna wanna try to keep that 12-week date that they firmed up with the GC, but that just took the engineering and detailing schedule from 12 weeks down to eight. So, I mean, kickoff meetings are great, or early communication. Sometimes it happens. I mean, it's not that it doesn't happen, but there are times when it either doesn't happen or doesn't happen quick enough, or they want 24 people on a team's meeting and you spend a week coordinating the time that works. So I mean, a lot of times what I feel like works best and what we do a lot is we'll call the engineer of record, work through some questions, and into confirming the RFI, because at that point, and honestly, I think that works best for everybody in most cases, because then it's easy for the, we can write the RFI the way it needs to be, then the engineer of record can easily say correct, or get it back quickly, because it's just confirming what we've already discussed. It also allows the opportunity for back and forth without going back and forth with RFIs if it is something that's Another thing that I've noticed is in general it can be difficult for engineers to put things in writing in concise, clear ways. We're generally good at math, not as good at often, not everybody, but in general not as good at writing and conveying thoughts and words. So being able to talk through that and have some back and forth helps a lot.

19:53 - Andy
When also there's infinite number of options yeah I mean you could do double angle you could do shear tab and it's like well there's a reason why we don't want you to use double angle or I don't know you know so yeah it's because we don't know what the reason is but yeah and that's where and but if you did it with the RFI process and Procore and all these things you're gonna be back and forth back and forth and then you get together you're like well we didn't want double angles because because we just don't have access to that material right now because there's a shortage on it. I don't know.

20:26 - Tyler Sease
A lot of times for the EOR, I would say just make the requirements clear on the drawings as much as possible. Because a lot of times, it seems like we wouldn't deal with this anymore, but a lot of times one of our first RFIs is, are these loads here ASD or LRFD? Because you'd be surprised how many times loads get put on but then it's not stated whether they're ASD or LRFD. So then we have to clarify that or it could be something like clarifying if it's a seismic job, have overstrength factors been applied to those axial loads on the collector beams. If we can call the engineer, that may be a quick, yeah, they've been applied, proceed or no, they haven't, you need to add that and then we get moving. So, but as much, clarity can be put on the drawings that just benefits all parties. Because sometimes our clients, they may not be as technically versed in the connection requirements or what loads will be required, so they may not know what to expect. And if the loads aren't shown, then they may say they take off planning for 3-8 inch gusset plates, and then they find out it's, oh, those are actually supposed to be special concentrically braced frames, which is high seismic, and we end up telling them, designing it, and it's one inch gusset plates, that's a lot of cost that they didn't know how to account for, you know, so.

22:02 - Andy
Now the collaboration piece, and this is a big deal because, I mean, who, what's the impetus for not allowing you to call? Is it the GC? Or who's stopping you? Is it the GC, the architect, the engineer, or the government?

22:18 - Tyler Sease
It's rarely the engineer. It's usually the GC or architect. Sometimes I think it's just a matter of they want all communication to be clear out in front of everybody. Other times, I'm not really sure what the reasoning is. I've only had one engineer that when we called seemed offended that we would call them. It was really odd. Then after I talked to him a little bit, then he understood we weren't like trying to skimp on something. We were just trying to make sure something got done right. He was fine. It was, I don't know, maybe they, and in a lot of cases I think maybe somebody has a bad situation happen on a project or something. They're gun-shy about doing something a certain way, a bad experience. Well I know engineering are pre-Madonna's most of us are so we think we have I mean we get nervous when another engineer calls you it's like you know either they're calling to yell at me or tell me I did something wrong or you know so that might be that could be part of it but it sounds like you haven't had that experience really well we we approach it from the standpoint of trying to work together to get to the best solution on this job that works so we're not trying to even if we notice something we think somebody maybe did wrong we're not going kind of, we're gonna try to just work towards a solution, not try to, and sometimes in that case, there have been situations where we know an engineer did something wrong, and we'll try to reach out to them and give them a heads up, versus like getting on a teams meeting with the whole, everybody, and trying, like, then making it confrontational, you know? Because it's a lot easier to have a just one-on-one conversation about something or point it out and then let them drive the direction it needs to go.

24:16 - Andy
Like hey it's not stated which one. Now what does that mean by the way because some people may not know ASD, LRFD, ASAP.

24:24 - Tyler Sease
So ASD is allowable stress design and then which is a so there's two methodologies really so you got ASD AISD, allowable stress design, LRFD, which is load resistance factor design. Yeah, I believe, yeah. Strength-based design is another. That's the other thing. We've, ultimate design, there's, we've added too many words that different people use in different ways, but ultimately you get, like, AISC has worked to align the methodologies and the safety factors so that whichever way it's done, you get essentially the same result as long as the same process is used throughout. Roughly, in general, LRFD loads are 50% higher than ASD. So it's just, it's the same result at the end of the day. It's just different, applying different load factors to like dead load and different safety factors to something like the bending capacity of a beam. But ultimately you should end up with the same result or very very close to the same result.

25:40 - Andy
Like basically the beam ends up being the same and it's still safe either way. It's just how you get there.

25:46 - Tyler Sease
So the shear load may be 100 kips ASD but that's the same as 150 kips LRFD. So it with that 50 percent difference it is very important to make sure you've got the design Synced up the whole way through.

26:04 - Andy
It's like are we in metric or are we in English? Something like that, right? So and that's important. I mean, I just noticed that on a drawing set today because Like wind loads, you know, you got well the wind loads is just a whole nother thing too because wind loads used to be a ASD basis. Yeah, right and then they said now wind loads are an ultimate And then we have pressures are an ultimate but the window that you go by this so this is relevant for architects because they got to go buy a window and go sit back a window right so if your pressures are like let's say that the quote-unquote ultimate pressures are 50 pounds per square foot what kind of window do you buy do you buy a 50 pound window PSF or do you buy a 30 pound window being DP there was high pressure and so it depends on also what the basic the window which by the way most of the time your windows are in ASD okay which is why I usually I usually put my wind loads in ASD because the people that use it is usually the architects yeah so that's why we usually do that about wall panels and everybody's using everybody in the ASD you know like the AEC world yeah kind of thinks in a and plus to me this is my opinion it's just easier, but I grew up on ASD, so I'm an ASD guy. Now, with regard to concrete, you have to use ultimate or LSD. And with seismic, it gets confusing to try to use ASD. So, like the overstrength factor, stuff like that. But we're getting a little nerdy. I am, but I took you down that road, so thanks for going down that road. But, so I want to go into, we've kind of talked a little bit about some tips, and I guess, is there anything in the industry at large that would help, this is a big question, I don't know if there's something that maybe you could think of, but is there something in the industry at large that would help projects go smoother as it relates to steel, delegated design, or maybe even stair design?

28:21 - Tyler Sease
that I talk about to our team that kind of applies to what we do and the engineer of record is I tell our team like we want to eliminate the gray area because there's the opportunity for things to slip through the cracks if the delegated design isn't communicated the right way in terms of what gets really confusing is if there's a detail on the drawings that is on the contract drawings where the engineer of record has seemingly designed a connection, we'll ask an RFI sometimes to confirm that that is their intent, and sometimes they tell us it's schematic, and we're like, well, we need to look up what schematic means, because that, but it comes down to just communication, because it would be fine, if you detail it out completely, if you put this is conceptual delegated design request, then it's clear what the intent is. Or if you show just general framing, or the general intent, and it's clear that it's delegated if there's loading. And same thing for us, sometimes we can't ask an RFI about every detail, and a lot of times it seems very clear what the intent is, but we try to be very clear with our details and what we design and where it applies and where we've assumed that the, or not assumed, because we try to get rid of us. We have to make assumptions at times, but we try to document those to make sure that we know what we designed and then that you can tell what we designed. And hopefully there's no gaps because we did a job a couple of years ago up in New Jersey. It was one of the most, difficult projects we've done. It had mass timber columns, concrete, it was concrete walls, concrete floors, steel mixed in. So there was a consultant designing timber and our mass timber connections and some of the connections for steel to wood and then the EOR designed some connections and we designed the steel to steel and there was a lot of confusion early on and so we went we had to really get detailed on that one of like we started boxing in things and brown boxes of like we didn't design this we want to make sure that's clear because if somebody it's unless everybody's really paying attention stuff could fall through the cracks in that scenario because they assume somebody else designed it and it's like the spider-man meme where they're just pointing at each other and but So it's eliminating the gray area, and that's difficult to do at times, and making sure that it's clear what the intent is, or who's designing what, especially when there gets to be two or three parties involved in the same scope area.

31:27 - Andy
And I think at that point, the key is probably raising your hand and saying, hey guys, this is a real big deal, we need to get this thing tightened up, I mean, you didn't design the building. You are coming in, I mean, it's already been working on this thing for months and maybe a year. And now you're coming in and it's like, well, wait, we got some.

31:50 - Tyler Sease
And that one in particular, I think, I don't know the full backstory, but that job had been in design for at least a year, maybe two years before we started. And I think that the engineer record firm had some turnover. So the engineers involved at that point to the initial design. There was a lot of factors that played into that, having confusion and needing some clarity, eliminating that gray area. We're trying our best to. So it's hard sometimes to not go too deep into engineering stuff. Sometimes we'll hire, like if we hire a new grad, we'll start saying stuff in the office, words that like TC bolts or stuff that's like second nature, talking about weld types stuff, and it's like, we forget, like, they don't know all of that. You have to stop and remind yourself that not everybody knows all these terms.

32:46 - Tyler Sease
Yeah, they don't even know what ASD is, right?

32:48 - Tyler Sease
They just know LRFD.

32:49 - Andy
Yeah, yeah. Because that's what they teach probably these days, I would imagine. They actually were teaching that when I was coming through, but I still was like, the thing about it, the influence of ASD, and it's always carried through, so in some Engineers really love the ASD manuals.

33:06 - Tyler Sease
I actually was quoting a job today or this week where the general notes required the use of the ASD 9th edition manual for connections, which I'm not so sure if that's really the best way to do it at this point.

33:25 - Andy
Yeah, we might want to graduate at least the 13th, right? Is there any stories that you can remember, like what you were saying about the TC bolts, et cetera, with your recent grads?

33:43 - Tyler Sease
Yeah, I mean just, I guess in general, like, I don't know. I started talking to an engineer one time about GERTs, and they're like, looking at me like, what's a GERT? I mean, because you don't learn that in school. I mean, at least at USC, where I went to college, They're not getting that specific into building components. I mean, there's a lot of, really, we started making a list of terms because our estimator, when she started with us a year and a half, two years ago, she was new to the industry. And it's like, all right, we've got to really back up and make sure we're explaining what all these different terms, what a girder is, and what a cantilever is, all these girders. And spandrel beams and it's like you realize like at some point it's like there's a lot of terminology and stuff that we take for granted once you're in the industry for a long time that people new to the industry won't know up front.

34:46 - Andy
And then you got the terms that people interchange either regionally or AEC the different the A and the E and the EC says it differently.

34:57 - Tyler Sease
Or even AEC I've seen a with the C being construction and some with the C being consulting, consultants. Everything's up for grabs, right?

35:10 - Andy
Now the estimator, how does that work? Are they helping you get quotes? Is she helping you in other aspects like with the construction of it?

35:22 - Tyler Sease
The way we work our process, we price everything lump sum. Up front, which we have to get good at or else that can not go well if we don't estimate it well. So we price, we try to estimate the amount of time we'll have, like say for connections, we'll say a job's got moment connections and vertical bracing, we'll come up with quantities of those, try to, we have time factors that we apply based on different types of connections, different complexities, and then repetition factors and all that just to come up with maybe it's 10 hours for moment captions or 40 whatever we think it is so it's reviewing the drawings a lot of times we're pricing miscellaneous too so it's reviewing the architectural drawings for stair railings ladders anything like that and working through our process and our spreadsheet to come up with how long we think it's going to take and then documenting that on our proposals.

36:29 - Andy
So really helping you get your quotes, I call them quotes, proposals I guess.

36:34 - Tyler Sease
I use those words interchangeably. Sometimes I use one, sometimes I use the other.

36:39 - Andy
But that sounds like a smart way to do it. So I'm getting some inside scoop from you in terms of running the business aspects.

36:46 - Andy
Because you do both, right?

36:49 - Andy
You run the business and you're the president. Of SSE. So I imagine one of the questions here is just wearing the different hats of a business. Are you still involved in the design every day as well? So how do you, how do you?

37:05 - Tyler Sease
To an extent, yeah. So I started the firm in 2017 and it was just me to start with and then pretty quickly we hired Chris who was our, is our vice president and then kind of been growing steadily and we're up to 11 people now and which there's a very big difference in running a company with one or two people versus 11 like there's a there's a lot of growth that we had to go through in terms of figuring out processes and ways to do things and part of that was I mean initially I was doing 90% design work or more of my time and then as we've grown I've had to shift more towards sales and I've always done like the bookkeeping and some of the HR and I used to do the IT now we've got an IT consultant that does that for us and a little bit involved in everything to some extent but as we've grown I've gotten we've broadened our team to where we've got people helping out more in different areas and But so I guess to answer your question, I'm still involved in a little bit of all of it. In terms of design work, I'm more so now kind of reviewing things and talking strategy with our team and high level focus on projects versus in the weeds running calps as much. It depends on the project. There's still projects I'm doing engineering on, but definitely not as much as I used to. Do you miss getting in the weeds with the calcs? At times, yeah. I forget what project it was a few weeks ago. I just spent the day working on calcs and stuff and that was kind of fun. I hadn't done like a whole day of just engineering in a while.

39:05 - Andy
What do you enjoy currently about your work?

39:10 - Tyler Sease
Luckily, I enjoy most of it. I've realized that I really like engineering, but I also really like the business side of it. So I enjoy that part of it, too. I've got a business consultant that I work with, and they asked me, like, why are you still doing bookkeeping and running payroll yourself? I was like, well, I can run payroll and do retirement plan contributions and all that in nine minutes. Because at first, they thought, it was a much longer process. And I didn't, I hadn't timed it at that point. But the next time I did it, I timed it and I'm like, I've got it down to nine minutes. If I got somebody else to do that and I reviewed it, it'd probably still take five minutes. So I might as well just do that. But yeah, I mean, I guess the biggest thing, my favorite thing I enjoy is building relationships with our clients and helping solve their problems. Because ultimately, Engineering is part of it, but helping solve their problems and figure out fixes for issues on projects is really where you can add a lot of value. It's also really fulfilling when a client comes to you with a problem on a project or some kind of unique challenge. It's fun trying to figure out a solution, especially when it works and helps them either be successful in the project or land a project or help it go smoothly.

40:45 - Andy
Yeah, can you share an example? Is there one that comes to mind?

40:53 - Tyler Sease
I mean, one thing that comes up fairly often is really working to, in different situations, optimize things in a certain way for the shop. Or right now, on that erection project, we're working through a bunch of challenges. And also working to coordinate the use of certain types of connections that make the erection go smoothly because that's a huge project. So it's really important that they can keep moving with the erection quickly. And some other things we've done before is like working through like trusses are a unique one because there's a lot of different ways to do trusses in terms of the connection. Or how you build them. So there's, and one thing that some people might not think of initially is like the shipping restrictions. So one thing we'll look at early is like how long is the truss will fit on a truck? Is the depth short enough that it will fit on the width of the truck? That determines a lot of times whether we shop weld it or field bolt it, figure out where to put splices, or sometimes in that situation say a pipe rack with trusses and it's galvanized, well then you have to consider whether it can fit in the tub for the galvanizing. At the galvanizer, they're selling it out to you. So there's a lot of variables. Sometimes it's not as simple as saying, hey, let's make these bolted. There's a lot of other stuff that goes into it to figure out what the best approach is.

42:33 - Andy
Yeah, sounds like a big puzzle.

42:36 - Tyler Sease
Yeah, I mean, at times. A few years ago, I was talking to a family friend that didn't really know the industry, and he was asking kind of what we did. And I started explaining to him different things, and he's like, sounds like you're a problem solver. I was like, well, yeah, I guess so in a lot of ways. That's what we're trying to do.

42:59 - Andy
Yeah, and it's exciting to see that you still to get your hands on the design and just lead your team, I guess, which is a big part of what you do as well, is mentoring and leading and teaching these younger engineers. Are you seeing, I guess one of the questions is about education, and we hit on that a bit. Are there big gaps in education right now that you're seeing?

43:33 - Tyler Sease
Well, I mean, I guess big from the standpoint of, like, a lot of times when I'm interviewing a new grad or maybe a senior that's getting ready to graduate, I'll tell them, like, you've probably learned 10% of what you need to know in college, and 90% of it will be after in terms of what makes you successful. Because you, in my opinion, you can't graduate college and stop learning and be a successful engineer. That's probably not gonna, unless there's some program I don't know about, probably not gonna turn out well. It's, I mean, codes are changing, software's changing, the industry materials change. It's a, you have to keep learning and keep evolving and have that curiosity to keep working at it. But there's been a couple people that I really caught off guard when I told them they've probably only learned 10% of what they need to know. And it probably depends to some extent what programs you go into and all, but most college programs don't go heavily into actual building design. There's probably some that do it more than others, but it's more so the fundamentals of design of a beam or a column, but not necessarily how to coordinate framing around the shaft wall with an architect and different considerations like that you know so yeah yeah it's when you put it like that it definitely could be scary but it is fact you might as well face it at some point right yeah I mean I definitely agree with that the big thing like right out of school is getting in a firm where you've got a good mentor somebody that's gonna help teach you and explain things versus I was fortunate to have good mentors and a lot of engineers that I learned from that took that time to explain things to me and we try to do that with our team and not just tell them because I found too that like for myself and then for engineers that we've got people remember things better if they understand the intent behind it versus just telling them hey do this and then it might not really stick because they don't They just know I'm supposed to do this, but if you understand why it's done that way, it helps it make sense and tie it to other things.

46:01 - Andy
Yeah, and do you guys have a pretty good process to help them along as far as how you do your work?

46:10 - Tyler Sease
I think so. I mean, it's not terribly formal, but there's a lot of intent there. We've done it now. We've hired four or five engineers right out of college that we've brought through successfully. A couple of those are PE's now. We've got a pretty good process. We don't have a study guide. It's not very regimented. There's a lot of intent and a lot of just working through projects and explaining things to people and teaching them. One thing in my office I've got, because we're still an office company, that's part of what I like working around people. And it helps with especially, I think training engineers right out of school, there's benefit and working with people together. And like in my office, I've got different profiles of shapes and a welding rod, different bolts, and all these different steel piece of deck. And I'll use that and let people look at it, hold it, and touch it. And it helps you remember different things, like the fillet of a white flange. It makes a little more sense when you've tangibly seen stuff.

47:45 - Andy
And you guys go out there. That's a little better. You guys go out in the field. I mean, I've seen some things where you met and went and did some welding. I mean, I bet that probably helps as well.

47:55 - Tyler Sease
I think that's about a year ago now. We did that and got to weld and bolt and see the shop. And yeah, we took a whole team. I mean, that was really good, really good thing for our team and our young engineers and got to weld up a beam and seeing some of the engineers leaving they're so happy to take their little welded with some pretty bad welds plates and a lot of people have them sitting on their desk in their office now.

48:28 - Andy
Did yours pass inspection? Did yours weld?

48:31 - Tyler Sease
I didn't weld because I welded before, so I let them do it, but it probably wouldn't have. Well, likewise I would probably not pass the muster either. We had a couple that looked decent, but some very questionable.

48:47 - Andy
Yeah, I just wanted to ask, you know, maybe what tools you're using right now that is, obviously you may not want to tell all your inside secrets, but is there any tools or anything you're doing right now that is giving you an inside edge?

49:07 - Tyler Sease
I don't know about giving us an edge. I think Some of it, I mean, it changes so quickly. I mean, for us, the way we operate, I mean, we use Revit for drafting, which when we started using that, that was a little bit of a change. But we use MACAD for a lot of our calves. We have a lot of proprietary calves that we've developed. Then we use things like RAM, elements, which is similar to Reso3D. We use Ideastatica for finite element-based connection design, which we were one of the first firms in the U.S. To purchase Ideastatica and start using it. I think it was in 2019. It's becoming more mainstream now, but it's one of those that you can do a lot with it. It's a very powerful tool. You have to As with any software, I had a professor that always said, garbage in, garbage out, and said that you need to have some idea of what the results should be before you hit the run button. Because I think it's very dangerous for engineers to use software if they're not familiar with what it's doing or what they should be getting out of it. It can be dangerous. But that's a really powerful tool and we use it for or complex geometry, complex connections, or unique situations that not everything fits perfectly with AIC equations. Because design's evolving. Architects are getting more creative with what they want in terms of skews and geometry and curves.

51:00 - Andy
And also the final element, it gives you a very clear picture I mean, you can almost even get a hedge, too, right? You can get value engineering is the other benefit of it. Whereas the AISC equations, I mean, you can run through six different limit states, or you could just, okay, you know what, plug it into the program. Like you said, I definitely agree.

51:20 - Andy
Like over here, that's my math I did today.

51:24 - Andy
And it was more of a back of the envelope calculation, is what I call it. I said, because I was working with one of our engineers, and I said, now, matter of fact, we picked up the idea of statica. He said, matter of fact, why don't you go and this is just the back of the envelope. It's a quick thing. So I'm 90% sure. But the difference between 90% 100% sure is, I want something to back it up. Because you can't just be 90% sure in this field.

51:58 - Tyler Sease
No, and that's one thing that's difficult is sometimes I feel like I'm being a stickler with our team it's like yeah 90% is not good enough yeah I mean we have to be near not perfect but I mean we have to be make sure it's right yeah and that's one thing that I think in general engineers are good at is knowing that responsibility that we have in terms of making sure we design safe structures and that's really I think that sums up for me a lot of what you do because, and I tell people this too, because like nine times out of 10, a quarter inch shear tab with, you know, fill it up with bolts, it's probably gonna work.

52:44 - Andy
But, you know, and tell me if you disagree, but your job is to make sure that that one out of 10 failure doesn't happen on that shear tab. Like, okay, you know what, this one really should be like a tab or 3 something like that.

53:00 - Tyler Sease
Yeah, I mean and it depends and for that example it depends on the project because yeah, I mean sometimes it's we're working on some data centers now that have our multi-story and the Servers are heavy. So the floor framing is very heavy So it but yeah, I mean it is In that example, I mean like when we do shop drawing reviews There may be 2,000 beams on the job, and it's not good enough to get 1,990 of them checked right. We've got to get them all, and we've got to check everything and make sure all the connections are right. You have to be very detail-oriented, I think, as an engineer in general, to enjoy it, or be good at it, because if you If you don't like detail, or attention to detail, it'd be hard to be a good engineer.

54:02 - Andy
Yeah, 9 out of 10 is good enough. You're not going to cut it in this field, is it? So, I mean, how do you teach that? I mean, is that teachable, or is that something you just got?

54:12 - Tyler Sease
I think it is, but I think it's kind of inherent to, like, I think a lot of engineers, a lot of engineers have similar mindsets, just because, like, to go through engineering and to go through that process, get your degree, you kind of learn to think a certain way, and you learn some of it, but hopefully it's impressed upon you how critical it all is, as your entry level in the field, by mentor, understand it. I mean, that's one, in our value and vision statements that we have, the first one is remembering the magnitude and importance of what we do, and it really ties into safety and the fact that buildings could collapse if we don't do our job right, if you don't do your job right. It's not being dramatic, that's our responsibility to get it right.

55:07 - Andy
Yeah, I mean, that's what we do. It's serious stuff. I mean, you mentioned the values, so one of the things that we talk about on here is just your why, the enhanced world around you. Since you brought up your values, I mean, what is your why? I mean, why do you do what you do? What are your values?

55:30 - Tyler Sease
I mean, I guess in terms of the why of what we're trying to do, what I want to do, I mean, I guess it starts with providing for my family and taking care of my family and then our team and their family. And then beyond that, our clients, we really look at our clients as partners. As much as we can, we try not to take one-off projects. We're really looking to build long-term relationships, and a lot of our clients now are almost more like friends than clients to an extent. And then another one of our values is we're not just trying to do an okay job. I forget exactly how we have it worded, but we wanna be very good at what we do. Technical excellence and making sure we're doing really high quality work and and getting it right.

56:28 - Andy
What does that mean to you to be you know okay versus technically excellent? How do I know when I've reached that point? Is there something like...

56:41 - Tyler Sease
I'm not sure that it's easy to define but I mean I think I think most people probably probably no, to some extent, if they're doing really high-quality work. For instance, we don't do wood design. I can do some wood design. I passed the SCE and had wood design on it. I've done a little bit of wood. I wouldn't be technically excellent at it. I could design something that probably wouldn't be the best design. I could design something that would work, maybe over-designed or just not a practical detail or something. But I think in a lot of ways, and with us, because we're niche in what we do, focused on steel, it allows us to really build a level of expertise and skill in that area. Because when we do webinars and continuing ed, we're focused on steel, all of it, as much as we can. And we're always working on developing that knowledge. Our team knows the steel manual really well.

57:48 - Tyler Sease
But although I'll say nobody really knows every bit of it.

57:52 - Tyler Sease
I mean, it's a very intense manual, very voluminous.

57:59 - Andy
Man, that's a good word right there.

58:01 - Tyler Sease
It's all the caffeine.

58:07 - Andy
I love that.

58:07 - Andy
I mean, I could share that idea of excellence.

58:11 - Andy
I mean, we have what we call It's a steel name, 29E6.

58:19 - Andy
Of course you know what that means.

58:21 - Andy
We ended up not doing as much steel as what I thought we would do.

58:25 - Andy
We do a lot of steel, but one of our E's, the E6, is excellence.

58:31 - Andy
So I share that similar concept.

58:34 - Andy
One of the E's is also enhanced.

58:36 - Andy
I think that's just like something that's always I've always wanted, I can never say we're the best, because I don't know what everybody does.

58:48 - Tyler Sease
And sometimes that's something, personally, when people are marketing and saying they're the very best, it's something, or they've never made a mistake.

58:58 - Tyler Sease
It's like, are you sure about that?

59:00 - Tyler Sease
Can you really make that claim?

59:02 - Tyler Sease
And we're not trying to say that, but we want to strive for doing the best job we can, for being at a very high level.

59:09 - Tyler Sease
in terms of what we do and what we specialize in.

59:12 - Tyler Sease
That's what drives us to keep getting better.

59:15 - Tyler Sease
I mean, one thing, we've got a project management software that we use and that we track tasks on projects, but we also have a development task list.

59:27 - Tyler Sease
We've probably got 200 or 300 development things in there that we think of or we want to develop or get better at or create a specific out for to create a process for that.

59:40 - Tyler Sease
I've told our team before, I'll be concerned about the company when we get to the point we don't have any ideas.

59:47 - Tyler Sease
You know?

59:48 - Tyler Sease
Because it's like, I want to, continuous improvement is one of our, something we always focus on.

59:57 - Tyler Sease
Another thing I've told our team, it's like, thinking about it like a sports team, it's like, we get better, as each person gets better, our team's better.

1:00:06 - Tyler Sease
our processes get better, our team gets better.

1:00:09 - Tyler Sease
So there's a lot of different ways we can build and get better both personally and as a company.

1:00:16 - Andy
Yeah, well and that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is I respect you, I respect what you guys are doing up there and you know I wanted to get some feedback from you.

1:00:33 - Andy
You're actually our first I think you're our first structural engineer on.

1:00:37 - Tyler Sease
Appreciate that.

1:00:41 - Andy
And you know, one of the reasons I created it as Enhance is I wanted people like yourself to feel, I mean, we don't really compete per se.

1:00:48 - Andy
I mean, I don't really do connection design, maybe every now and again, but I wanted people like you to feel comfortable to come in and talk.

1:00:55 - Andy
And I mean, we're friends as well.

1:00:59 - Andy
And so I really appreciate you coming on.

1:01:02 - Andy
I'm just sharing everything that you have today.

1:01:05 - Andy
I've learned a lot about, you know, ASD and LRFD and what you guys are up to.

1:01:11 - Andy
Was there anything else that you wanted to hit on today?

1:01:15 - Tyler Sease
Not specifically, no.

1:01:17 - Tyler Sease
Yeah, appreciate you having me on.

1:01:19 - Tyler Sease
It's always good to talk engineering and business.

1:01:22 - Andy
Yeah, do you like seafood?

1:01:24 - Tyler Sease
Love seafood.

1:01:25 - Andy
Yeah, why don't we go grab some seafood then?

1:01:28 - Tyler Sease
That sounds good to me.

1:01:29 - Andy
Alright, sounds good.

1:01:30 - Madeline
Thanks for being on Hey everybody, thanks for listening to today's episode of Enhance, and please leave a like, a subscribe, or a follow, and we'll see you next time.