In September, for the third consecutive year, Scott Adan, Ph.D., S.E., SECB, a Principal with Adan Engineering, was reappointed Steel Subcommittee Chair for the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC).

Dr. Adan has over 20 years of experience as a structural engineer, including investigating existing buildings, designing new buildings, performing earthquake research, and evaluating earthquake risk. He has taught steel design and mechanics of materials at the University of Utah and the University of Washington, respectively.

He has been an active member of SEAONC for the past five years since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area.  Prior to his living in the Bay Area, he was an active member of the Structural Engineers Association of Washington (SEAW), in Seattle.

The measure, proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, would have The City issue a $46.15 million bond to pay for the seismic retrofitting of 125 government-funded affordable-housing soft-story buildings and 31 single-room-occupancy buildings.

The buildings — the residences of mostly low-income families — are among the most earthquake-vulnerable structures in San Francisco and are known as soft-story buildings. The City has estimated that there are 2,800 soft-story structures, those built prior to 1974 and susceptible to collapse during a quake.

A recent analysis found that if privately owned buildings are not seismically retrofitted, a strong earthquake could result in 1,000 deaths, $54 billion in property damage, a $15 billion hit to businesses and 85,000 housing units lost.

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