Blog

No, 83 Isn’t Too Old to Renovate. Just Ask San Francisco Resident Roberta Gordon FTF Featured in Dwell Magazine Originally designed in 1957 and constructed in 1963, this home underwent a major transformation. Perched on a slope like many houses in the Westwood Highlands neighborhood, the shed-roofed 1960s structure boasted a two-car garage at the […]

A tree grows in Napa A private golf clubhouse on family-owned vineyard knoll is reimagined with nature in mind. Thanks to Marin Magazine for featuring a project we collaborated on with the talented Karin Payson and Plath Company Inc. FTF completed some minor engineering alterations, and it was a pleasure watching Karin transform an old, […]

Congratulations to FTF’s Jillian van Enckevort for being elected as a new member of the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California (SEAOSC) Board for the term 2023-2025! Bravo! “Jillian’s structural engineering journey began when she was a young girl accompanying her father, a general contractor, to his work sites. Her exposure to the construction industry […]

FTF Founder and Principal Randy Collins recently returned to his alma mater, UCSD, where he attended an all-day Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Industry-Academia Workshop and visited the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center.

Author: John Dal Pino Contributors: Claire Hu, Elizabeth Bognar, and Hongxun Yang Below is an inside look at John’s full report on Ferndale. Introduction & Objectives Between Christmas and New Year’s, I led a small group of young FTF engineers on a long day trip to the California North Coast to learn from the December […]

We are thrilled to announce our commitment to the #SE2050 Challenge to work toward net-zero embodied carbon structural systems by 2050! FTF Designer, Josefine Olsson, LEED Green Associate, will be leading this effort to educate our staff on embodied carbon, run Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), implement embodied carbon-reducing strategies in our projects, and has created a comprehensive Embodied Carbon […]

For the past four years, we have been actively working with the LBE (Local Business Enterprise) Advisory Committee to build consensus among business leaders and convince political leaders that these revenue limit increases – the first in 23 years – will enable San Francisco small businesses to grow, prosper, and successfully graduate from the program. Thanks to […]

In July of 2020, we received word that one of our most important projects was completed – the Children’s Academy, high on a hill above Port-au-Prince in Haiti. Together with BAR Architects and their team, we developed and coordinated the design of a 2,700 square foot earthquake- and hurricane-resistant expansion to the school by adding a […]