Kiernan Steel Win at Global Excellence Awards 2021

Before adopting IDEA Statica in April 2016, Kiernan Steel, like so many other designers, had to resort to using simplified connection design software which, due to their assumptions, often meant that plates and welds were larger than (what we now know) was required.

Not only this, but the rigid guidance rules adopted by the Eurocodes, meant that only conventional and standard connections could be calculated and anything which was out of the ordinary, had to be calculated manually using engineering judgment and a degree of conservatism. To this end, we like so many other designers, would use the power of Excel to create spreadsheets to automate this process us. However, this tends to create a “black-box” approach whereby it is very difficult for someone else to check the calculations and validate the results.

We then were introduced to IDEA Statica and straight away saw its potential to speed up the connection design process. In the beginning, we used conventional software for the simple connections and used IDEA to create the unorthodox connections. However, over the years, IDEA Statica has quickly become our main connection design software which we use for almost all of our connection designs.