Steel Connection Design

Fabrication-Ready Connection Engineering, Stamped and Built to Erect Clean

A steel frame is only as good as the connections holding it together. The members get the attention, but it’s the joints — the moment connections, the shear tabs, the base plates — that actually carry the load from one piece of steel to the next. Get them right and the frame goes up clean. Get them wrong and you’re looking at rejected shop drawings, fabrication delays, RFIs stacking up, and a fabricator who can’t cut steel until someone sorts it out. At Lam-Wood Systems Inc., our licensed Professional Engineers design steel connections that are correct, code-compliant, and detailed the way the shop actually needs them — so your project moves from drawing to fabrication to erection without the back-and-forth.

Connection design sits in a frustrating gap on most projects. The engineer of record sizes the members and shows the loads, but often leaves the actual connection design to be sorted out later — by the fabricator, by a delegated engineer, by whoever ends up holding it. When that handoff is sloppy, the connections become the bottleneck that holds up everything downstream. We close that gap with complete, sealed connection designs that fabricators can build from directly and reviewers approve the first time around.

What We Design

Steel connections come in a wide range of types, each with its own load demands, code requirements, and detailing logic. Our team engineers the full spectrum, matched to how your frame actually behaves and how your fabricator actually works.

Moment Connections. Where the frame needs to resist rotation and transfer bending, moment connections do the heavy lifting. We design fully restrained and partially restrained moment connections — welded, bolted, or a combination — engineered to transfer the forces cleanly while staying buildable in the shop and the field.

Shear Connections. Shear tabs, double angles, seated connections, and the everyday workhorses of a steel frame. We detail these for efficient fabrication and reliable load transfer, because the connections you repeat hundreds of times across a building are exactly where small inefficiencies add up to real cost.

Base Plates and Anchorage. The connection between steel and foundation has to transfer load into the concrete and survive everything from gravity to uplift to overturning. We design base plates, anchor rods, and the anchorage details that tie your frame to its footing safely and to code.

Bracing Connections. Lateral systems live and die at their connections. We engineer the gusset plates and bracing connections that resist wind and seismic forces, balancing the heavy loads these joints carry against the geometry a fabricator can actually build.

Complex and Custom Geometry. Skewed members, multi-member nodes, transfer conditions, connections into existing steel — the joints that don’t fit a standard table are exactly where experience matters most. We engineer the complicated geometry that other firms flag as a problem and hand it back as a solution.

Detailed for the People Who Build It

A connection design that’s structurally correct but impossible to fabricate isn’t finished — it’s a problem waiting to surface in the shop. The best connection engineering accounts for how the steel actually gets cut, welded, bolted, and erected, not just whether the numbers close. Our designs reflect that. We detail connections with weld sizes, bolt patterns, plate dimensions, and clearances that a fabricator can take straight to the floor, and we think about erection sequence and field access so the connection that works on paper also works on a windy morning sixty feet up.

That buildability comes from experience on the supply and fabrication side of construction. Years of working with custom steel hardware and detailing how steel ties into the rest of a structure means we design connections that fabricators and erectors can execute without a fight. Every design we deliver is stamped and sealed by a licensed Professional Engineer — defensible under review, clear on responsibility, and ready to build.

Where Steel Meets Everything Else

Steel rarely stands alone. It frames into timber, supports stairs, anchors railings, and ties into the rest of the structure in ways that demand connections engineered across materials. This is where our broader practice pays off. When your steel frames into a mass timber structure, the same team handles the Mass Timber Connection Design on the other side of that joint. When the steel is carrying stairs and guardrails, our Steel Stairs and Railing Design service is already engineering those systems. And when a connection problem shows up in the field mid-erection, our Construction Support Engineering team turns a stamped fix around fast.

Designing both sides of a steel-to-timber connection under one roof is something most firms simply can’t offer — and it’s exactly the kind of coordination that keeps a mixed-material project from fracturing into a mess of finger-pointing between separate consultants.

Who We Work With

Steel fabricators rely on us for delegated connection design that’s complete, buildable, and approvable — so they can quote accurately and cut steel on schedule. General contractors and construction managers bring us in to keep the steel package moving and de-risk the connection scope. Engineers of record partner with us to handle the delegated connection design their contracts push downstream. Whoever owns the steel, we make the connections work.

Engineer Your Connections With Lam-Wood

The connections decide whether your steel frame is a smooth erection or a running battle. With licensed Professional Engineers, fabrication-ready detailing, and the ability to engineer steel-to-timber and steel-to-everything-else under one roof, Lam-Wood Systems Inc. delivers connection design you can build from with confidence. This is part of our full structural engineering practice. Contact our engineering team or call 303-458-1736 to get your connections engineered right.