Most residential structural engineering work in northern Utah falls into a handful of buckets — and most of it is the kind of thing a big multi-state firm doesn't really want to deal with. That's the gap we exist to fill. You get a senior, licensed engineer on every job, not a junior staff member running calcs under someone else's stamp.
What we do
We handle the small-to-medium residential work that drives most homeowner permits in Davis, Weber, Box Elder, and Morgan counties:
- Load-bearing wall removal letters. The single most common request — sizing a beam to take out a wall in a kitchen or basement remodel and writing the letter your building official needs to approve the work.
- Additions and second stories. From a simple bump-out to a full second-story add. We design new footings, frame connections, and load paths from the new structure down through the existing house.
- ADUs and garage conversions. Internal, attached, and detached. Stamped plans that comply with HB 82 and your city's ordinance. More on ADUs →
- Decks, patio covers, and pergolas. Snow loads on the Wasatch Front are no joke. We size ledgers, beams, joists, and posts so your deck survives a real winter. Decks & additions →
- Retaining walls. Anything over 4 feet (measured from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall), tiered walls, or walls with a surcharge from a driveway or structure above. Walls & foundations →
- Foundation evaluations and repair plans. Cracks, settlement, bowing basement walls — we evaluate, document, and design the fix. Helical piers, push piers, underpinning, drainage.
- Basement remodels. Egress window cuts, header letters for new openings, structural inspections for finished areas you bought.
- Custom homes. Especially homes with cantilevers, large openings, vaulted spans, or unusual lateral systems where the prescriptive IRC tables don't cover what the architect drew.
- Pole barns, shops, and detached garages. Common in West Point, Hooper, South Weber, and Morgan County. We handle the engineered roof systems, anchor design, and lateral bracing.
What we don't do
Saying no is part of doing good work. We don't take on very large new construction projects (think 30+ unit subdivisions), heavy commercial steel, or projects outside Utah. If you're looking for a production shop with a 24-hour turnaround on tract home plans, we're not your firm — and we'll be happy to point you toward someone who is. We exist for the homeowner with one wall they want to take out, the contractor who got blindsided by a code requirement, and the small business doing a tenant improvement that needs a stamp.
How a typical project goes
- You send us a description. A few sentences about what you're doing, photos if you have them, and your address. Email, text, or the contact form — whichever is easiest.
- We send back a fixed fee and timeline. Almost always the same business day. No scope creep, no surprise hourly billing.
- Site visit (when one is needed). Most letters and small plans don't require a visit. Anything involving an existing structure usually does, and we schedule those within a week.
- Calcs and drawings. Designed to your city's adopted code, with the right snow load and seismic values. We name your jurisdiction on the title sheet so the plan reviewer knows we did the homework.
- Stamped deliverable. PDF the same day it's ready. Wet-stamped paper copies on request.
- Plan check support. If the city has a comment, we handle the response. Free.
Built for northern Utah, specifically
Generic engineering software doesn't know that the snow load in Layton is different from the snow load in Eden, or that your bench property in Kaysville sits on expansive clay that's going to argue with your footing for the next forty years. We design with the specific conditions of the Wasatch Front in mind: the IRC version your city adopted, the right ground snow load, the seismic site class for your soil, and the local quirks that show up at plan check.
Based in Syracuse, the entire Davis and Weber County corridor is a same-day drive. We routinely work in Syracuse, Layton, Clearfield, Kaysville, West Point, Clinton, Farmington, Ogden, Roy, and Hooper.