San Francisco, CA
Catholic Schools
Scope/Solutions
Following the adoption of a 2014 ordinance, the City of San Francisco requires seismic assessments of certain private school buildings. SGH helped the Archdiocese of San Francisco (Archdiocese) by evaluating twenty-six buildings at twelve schools. Although the ordinance only required only assessment and not remediation, the Archdiocese elected to perform voluntary seismic upgrades at several school buildings following completion of the evaluations.
SGH evaluated twenty-six buildings at twelve schools based on the methodology established in ASCE 41 – Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Existing Buildings for a Tier 1 Screening. The buildings included reinforced concrete, wood-framed, and steel-framed structures. We prepared Scoping Reports to determine which school buildings were subject to the ordinance, identified potential structural and non-structural deficiencies for each subject building, and prepared Evaluation Reports for submission to the City, as required by San Francisco Administrative Bulletin AB-109.
The Archdiocese retained us to perform detailed analyses and design seismic upgrades for the main school buildings at Holy Name School, St. Anne School, St. Cecilia School, St. Monica School and St. Thomas the Apostle School.. While the upgrades were voluntary, they comply with the City of San Francisco’s requirements for safety, in the event that such strengthening became mandatory in the future. The upgrades included:
- Providing new wood-framed roof-to-wall and floor-to-wall anchorage
- Strengthening wood diaphrams
- Adding new concrete shear walls
- Establishing new steel and carbon fiber-reinforced polymer collector and chord elements
We coordinated with the Archdiocese of San Francisco to phase the work during summer breaks to minimize the disruption to the schools.
Project Summary
2020
Key team members
