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Wood Research & Development

Our Team

Four decades of timber expertise

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Work that keeps landmarks standing

Inspections

Safety & condition verdicts

Engineering & Design

Repairs, restorations, new builds

Lab Testing

Accredited, non-destructive methods

Engineering & Design · USA

Timber engineering that strengthens what America already built

Cracked glulam gymnasium beams, under-rated hangars, seismic upgrades on the West Coast, WRD engineers the repair in place with advanced fiber systems, for a fraction of replacement cost and without closing the building.

United States

· regional page

The USA Problem

Mid-century glulam buildings, turning up under-designed

Across the US, glulam buildings (schools, gymnasiums, hangars, warehouses) are turning up under-designed or cracked, and the default advice is a century-old fix: intrusive steel hardware that robs headroom and caps capacity, or a full teardown. WRD does it the 21st-century way. We laminate high-strength fiber (Kevlar, carbon, and glass) to the existing member to form a true composite, roughly doubling in-situ capacity while the structure stays in service. On the West Coast, changing code is driving a wave of seismic-retrofit work on exactly these structures, and it plays to our strength.

Mid-century glulam building, USA

Who We Engineer For

Built for US owners and their engineers

School districts & their engineers

County & DOT bridge programs

Owners of aging industrial & hangar structures

GCs & engineering firms needing timber design

Developers repurposing historic timber buildings

Forensic & seismic-retrofit clients

Design methods, in brief

WRD designs restorations with advanced high-strength-fiber systems (FiRP®, RetroShear®, RetroTen®) that bond into a true composite and keep the asset open during the work, and designs new timber too, from engineered bridges to mass-timber buildings. See our full design methods →

Standards & Credentials

Signed by a PE licensed in your state

Repair and restoration design, connection and retrofit detailing, seismic retrofit (growing West Coast demand), and forensic engineering and failure analysis, a service clients specifically seek us out for. Engineered to NDS, AASHTO LRFD, AREMA, AWPA, and ASTM D07, delivered Design-Build or Design-Bid-Build.

US design standards

Regional Projects

On record in USA

Wingspread

Wisconsin · Heritage restoration

Frank Lloyd Wright's Wingspread

Carbon-fiber-reinforced LVL rafter system

A replacement rafter system of carbon-fiber-reinforced laminated veneer lumber that preserved the appearance while greatly increasing strength.

Keystone Wye

South Dakota · Highway interchange

Keystone Wye

Two glulam timber highway bridges

Commissioned by Stantec Engineering, WRD assessed both timber bridges of the Keystone Wye Interchange and specified the fix: diffusing decayed elements, epoxy-filling girder-to-deck gaps, and re-staining, adding an estimated 50 years of useful life.

For United States projects

Specified to the standards your engineers already work to

Repair, restoration, and new-build design engineered to the codes your reviewers check for, signed by a PE licensed in your state.

NDS

AASHTO LRFD

AREMA

AWPA

ASTM D07

State PE

Your U.S. contact

Clay Hoger

Senior Timber Structure Engineer II

10466 Sunnyside Rd SE, Box 70
Jefferson, OR 97352