Carl Kloos, S.E.
Principal
I lead the Portland office of Kurt Fischer Structural Engineering. I was excited to return to my home town in 2016, and I look forward to improving Portland’s seismic resiliency one building at a time.
I have gained a wide breadth of structural engineering experience working on commercial, adaptive re-use, multi-family residential, high-end residential, educational, military, infrastructure, and healthcare projects in Oregon, California, Colorado, and Washington. By paying attention to the details and collaborating with other design professionals, I use my background to develop creative solutions to a variety of complex problems.
I believe sustainability in our building designs is crucial. However structural engineers are often overlooked as key players in creating sustainable buildings. There is much more that we can do than specify fly-ash in the concrete mix design. As a structural engineer, the key is to enable the team to achieve the sustainability goals. Whether it is designing a structure to accommodate a green roof, upturning beams at the perimeter to improve day lighting, or locating shear walls to promote the stack effect, there are many ways that structural engineers can contribute to the team’s sustainability goals.
I also believe that a greater discussion on resiliency needs to occur both at a policy level and as a part of the design criteria used for individual buildings. Has a new building designed to a "Life Safety" level really done its job if it needs to be demolished after a design earthquake? And what about the implications of the current design practices when spread over an entire city that includes older buildings that don't meet a life safety performance level? This cannot be acceptable. As part of my commitment to improving resiliency I am a member of the Disaster Resilience Working Group of the SEI Sustainability Committee, and I am also a US Resiliency Council Certified Rater.
