The worldwide economic downturn places greater demands on the design and construction industries as banks and other lending institutions require enhanced price definition and cost control. Financing will distribute to projects that provide the greatest value for the lowest associated risk. Consequently, little tolerance for waste and inefficiency can be expected in the foreseeable future.
While productivity in non-farm industries has more than doubled in the U.S. since 1964, labor productivity in the construction industry has actually declined — despite tremendous technological advances. For the structural steel industry, one major culprit is the inefficiency created by poor or incomplete connection design practice. In 1995, William Thornton, then Chief Engineer with Cives Steel Company, lectured at the AISC National Steel Construction Conference outlining many costly shortcomings with steel connection design. Areas of concern included poorly defined load criteria for the design of simple shear, moment, and bracing connections, as well as the use (or abuse) of stiffener and doubler plates in columns. It can easily be argued that nearly all of Thornton’s concerns remain present fourteen years later.