In this post, you’ll find the top questions we frequently get from our new clients about the Soft Story Retrofit Program. What is a Soft Story building? It’s a structure with a weaker first level. This type of building is useless to carry the weight of the floors above during particularly strong seismic shifts, or as we commonly call them, earthquakes. The first story generally [...]

Contrary to what many people believe, a Soft Story retrofit job is more specific than a general seismic risk assessment. The retrofit evaluation addresses a floor of a building that’s considerably weaker than the other floors. What is “Soft Story”? The term refers to one story of a building which is particularly more flexible or fragile in lateral load resistance than the foundation below it [...]

Property owners in Los Angeles and several other tiers 1 and 2 municipalities are often confused about the process involved in Soft Story retrofit, also commonly referred to as seismic retrofit. Let us break it down for you. In areas where seismic activity is a concern, a few types of construction are more high-risk than others. Buildings that are “Soft Story” must fortify in order [...]

Soft Story buildings are prone to earthquakes and could result in substantial loss of lives, profits, and investments. Therefore, Soft Story retrofitting is crucial. In case of strong sideways motion during an earthquake, the weak supports in the “soft” levels could easily collapse. This can lead the upper stories to fall onto the lower ones. In 1994, the same kind of collapse was induced by [...]

If you are wondering how long a Soft Story retrofitting process take, this on-point, no-fluff guide is for you. First of all, the duration of the process depends on the existing way in which the LA building and safety regulations apply to the building structure. It also depends on how talented and experienced your licensed retrofitting architect is. If you are a building owner in [...]

One of the most common questions we get during a site assessment is how much will a Soft Story retrofit process cost? Let’s dive into that today. When the mandatory Soft Story retrofit program in Los Angeles became an ordinance (Ordinance 183893) in October 2015, it was difficult to calculate the construction costs. But ever since then, more than 1,000 multistory properties have been retrofitted [...]