Since Los Angeles joined San Francisco Bay Area cities last October in tightening seismic standards for non-ductile concrete buildings and multi-family, wood-frame structures with parking underneath (ENR 11/9/15 p. 16), seismic retrofit work in those cities has been booming. Structural bracing for some 15,000 buildings—built before a 1976 Uniform Building Code update—is expected to drive demand for the next 25 years.
“There aren’t enough contractors to do it all,” says Dennis Cameron, DL Cameron Construction, Oakland, Calif.