December 22, 2006 10:59 AM CST

Reinforced Masonry Design Code Group Meets Phoenix

By Rashod R. Johnson, P.E.

The Reinforced Masonry Design Code Group met in Phoenix, AZ on November 28, 2006 with many local and national masonry promotion groups to discuss the results of their trial designs.

Over 50 design engineers from all across the country were given 5 different masonry structural design problems and asked to use the most recent version of the Masonry Standards Joint Committee (MSJC) Code and the International Building Code (IBC). The result of these trial designs was a list of over 30 suggestions of Code changes that should be implemented to either fix design code problems or make portions of the codes more understandable to practicing designers.

The RMDCG will forward this list to the Masonry Alliance for Codes and Standards (MACS) so that they can develop strategies to incorporate these changes in the appropriate design codes.

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About the Author

Rashod R. Johnson, P.E., is president of The Roderick Group in Chicago. He is the former Director of Engineering for the Mason Contractors Association of America and currently serves as a technical consultant to the association.