Structural engineering
In seismic California the lateral system is not a detail added at the end — it decides where walls can go and how big an opening can be. Designing it in the same room as the plan is the difference between a house that works and a house that gets value-engineered backwards.
What does a structural engineer do on a house?
Structural engineering determines how a building carries its own weight and resists earthquake and wind loads, and produces the calculations a building department requires before it will issue a permit. M&N Home Design is led by a California-licensed professional engineer, so the structural package is produced alongside the architecture rather than after it.
What you get
- Gravity design
- Beams, columns, joists and load paths from roof to footing.
- Lateral design
- Shear walls, moment frames, hold-downs and diaphragm design.
- Foundations
- Slabs, footings, caissons and grade beams, coordinated with the soils report.
- Retrofit
- Soft-storey and cripple-wall retrofits, and strengthening for additions.
- Calculations
- The stamped calculation package a plan checker reviews.
- Construction observation
- Site visits and responses during framing, where required.
Questions we get asked
- When does a home project need a structural engineer in California?
- Any time the permit set includes new or altered structure — a new house, an addition, removing or opening up a bearing wall, a new foundation, a seismic retrofit, or a retaining wall above the exempt height. Building departments will not issue a permit for structural work without stamped drawings and calculations.
- What does the structural engineer actually produce?
- A set of structural drawings — foundation plan, framing plans, schedules and details — and a calculation package showing the loads and how each element was sized. Both carry the engineer’s stamp and signature, and both are reviewed by the plan checker alongside the architectural drawings.
Guides on this
Removing a load-bearing wall in California: gravity is the easy part
The beam that replaces the wall is straightforward. What the wall was doing for the house in an earthquake usually is not.
Can your foundation take a second storey?
The existing footings were sized for the house that is there. Adding a floor roughly doubles what they carry and changes what the house does in an earthquake.
Do I need a structural engineer for my remodel?
When a California residential permit requires stamped structural drawings, what the engineer produces, and how to tell before you commit to a designer.
Where we provide this service
- Structural engineering in Agoura Hills
- Structural engineering in Calabasas
- Structural engineering in Westlake Village
- Structural engineering in Thousand Oaks
- Structural engineering in Hidden Hills
- Structural engineering in Malibu
- Structural engineering in Woodland Hills
- Structural engineering in Sherman Oaks
- Structural engineering in Tarzana
- Structural engineering in Encino
- Structural engineering in Beverly Hills
- Structural engineering in Brentwood
- Structural engineering in Bel Air
- Structural engineering in Pacific Palisades
- Structural engineering in Los Angeles
Send us the address.
Tell us the property and roughly what you want to build. We come back with what the zoning allows, the likely permit path, and a fixed fee for the first phase.