A decade ago, Jack P. Moehle got a bee in his bonnet about the sorry state of the approvals process for performance-based seismic design of tall buildings. As a peer reviewer of several projects, he witnessed a contentious permitting process that pitted structural engineers against each other and worried many building officials. In at least one city, they were so wary of PBSD that they refused to consider any tall building designed using the high-end method, which its supporters see as the future of seismic engineering.