Women in Engineering at M+K

We’re very proud to showcase Mulhern+Kulp’s ‘Women in Engineering’ group, comprised of 12 members across our Philadelphia, Atlanta, and San Diego offices. WIE launched over two years ago in support of the diversity initiative from our 2020 strategic plan.

The Mission of WIE is “Retention, Community, Volunteering” with the goal to positively impact the work experience, careers, recruiting, and retention of female engineers at M+K. At its core, the group provides a community of support and mentorship for members to discuss topics and challenges unique to their experiences as women engineers.

Working in collaboration with the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), our WIE members presented ‘Introduce a Girl to Engineering’ at a high school in Marietta, GA, attended a SWE networking dinner at Villanova University, and participated in Habitat for Humanity’s ‘Women’s Build Day’ in San Diego.

In keeping with the spirit of Giving Back at M+K, the WIE group created a team to raise funds, promote, and participate in the nationwide Susan G. Komen ‘Walk for the Cure’ event on behalf of Breast Cancer Awareness month. A ‘Wear Pink Day’ fundraiser was staged at each of our offices which contributed to the overall achievement of raising $4,000+ in support of research and advocacy to combat breast cancer!

We’re looking forward to WIE’s continued positive contributions to M+K’s staff and culture, as well as their charitable efforts and their promotion of engineering as a great career opportunity for young women.

The Boardwalk | Minno & Wasko

The city of Long Beach is part of the NYC metro area and home to a $369M oceanfront luxury residential development right on the iconic boardwalk. Aptly named “The Boardwalk”, the project takes the place of a long-abandoned stretch of land known to locals as the “Superblock”. With over 400 condominium and rental units served by 40,000 SF of amenities and 6,500 SF of retail options, it’s clear to see their mission is to create a new coastal living experience.

A single 10-story building constructed of COMSLAB floors and light gage stud walls alongside a pair of 9-story reinforced concrete buildings are all supported off a 2-story reinforced concrete podium and parking structure. This base structure and its foundations were designed to support the heavy loads standard for this type of high-rise construction (the buildings above, pools and heavy vehicle traffic, and high coastal wind loads to name a few) in addition to the breaking wave and debris impact loads required in VE flood zones, all while ensuring the structure could access (but not disturb) the boardwalk structure after which it was named.

While always proud to work alongside Minno & Wasko Architects and B2K Development, we were particularly enthused to be a part of a project that would have such a transformative impact on the city of Long Beach and the greater NYC region.

Suncadia Resort | Architects Northwest

Suncadia is a resort community at the base of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, known for its luxury stays, amenities, and year-round outdoor activities throughout its mountains and meadows. This high-end custom home was designed and built in collaboration with Architects Northwest and KBM Construction to fit seamlessly into this landscape, with the complex elevations and sweeping roof profiles expected of any modern mountain lodge escape. Heavy timbers were used frequently in exposed roof and porch framing to complete the aesthetic and pair well with the structures of the nearby resorts.

As seen in any of the picturesque snow-capped photos of this community, they experience some serious snowfall. With that in mind, the structures in this region must be designed to support snow loads 5-10 times greater than much of the rest of the country. Supporting these heavy loads while maintaining a slender roof profile is challenging for wood framing, but thankfully fits right in our wheelhouse.

A Marketing Director’s Testimonial

My name is Rob Taylor, Marketing Director here at Mulhern+Kulp.

Initially, the bulk of my career was focused on strategic brand identity development and packaging design. I worked with multi-national corporations such as Procter & Gamble, Mattel, and Disney, among many others. I then started a consulting business, with the intent of bringing my consumer goods marketing experience to the business-to-business sector. This ultimately led me to M+K.

M+K was the first engineering firm I’d ever worked with. When I transitioned from consultant to full time employee about 7 years ago, I began the process of getting to know everyone. I must admit that, coming in, my view of engineers was shaped by stereotypes from TV, movies, and books – basically, introverted math nerds.

As time passed, I realized that M+K was anything but a monolith. Among our great employees is a published author, several musicians [some have published songs], a world traveler who has climbed Kilimanjaro [among other feats], talented golfers, basketball & soccer players, skiers, cyclists, a yoga teacher…I could go on!

Speaking of musicians, I don’t think there’s a better example of how interesting, diverse, and creative our staff is than the fact that we have an M+K Band! Members include multiple singers, guitarists, keyboardists, bass players, and a drummer who plays in jam bands [also a rabid Phish fan]!

The lesson for me is best summed up by the idiom ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover’. This truly is a great place to work, and we have 10+ years’ worth of workplace culture awards to back up that claim!

Soundwater Apartments | Studio Architects

Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, Studio Architects provides thoughtful designs over a large swath of the construction industry with projects in education, hospitality, sporting venues, and, where our paths intersect, residential. Our collaborations on multi-family residential buildings include several in New York’s Hudson River Valley and in various locations across the southeast. The latter of these regions is home to our largest project together to date, along with builder/developer Southeastern.

Soundwater Apartments offers luxury rental units with all manner of modern amenities in the Metro Center district of Nashville, TN, right on the Cumberland River. In addition to eight independent apartment buildings ranging from two to five stories, the complex also includes a dog park, two pools, and a three-story clubhouse with a fully stocked community room, fitness center, and rooftop lounge. Reaching the five-story limit of wood-framed construction with three of these buildings balances grandeur and material cost, but requires intimate knowledge of the additional structural requirements to keep the construction safe and buildable at these heights, particularly in a region with high seismic loads. These high lateral loads also provided design challenges at the steel-framed clubhouse, which ultimately required the hefty connections and careful detailing that come with Intermediate Moment Frames.

Water’s Edge | OMNIA Group Architects

Designing the structure for custom shore houses is often challenging. Cost-effective wood framing alone will sometimes not cut it when trying to resist high wind forces while leaving room for the ocean view. However, of the variety of wall and floor framing systems used to achieve these designs in the northeast region, reinforced concrete is rarely one of them.

Water’s Edge is a three-story custom single-family home on the beachfront in Long Beach Township, New Jersey. To ensure this shore home would be as robust as possible, the owners chose to build it almost entirely out of reinforced concrete. Both the walls and floors were framed with an Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) system, which uses proprietary wall blocks and light gage floor joists to speed up the concrete installation and skip the insulation step afterward. To maximize visibility, concrete was subbed-out for more slender steel columns in a few key areas, namely the two-story bright-red steel x-brace supporting both levels of outdoor deck in the center of the main elevation.

The architectural design was provided by The OMNIA Group Architects, a full-service architectural firm performing single-family, multi-family, and commercial work in the Philadelphia region, among others. While we have collaborated on some production style homes, the majority of our work together includes the more unique and challenging custom projects that Water’s Edge exemplifies.

Harrison Urby | Minno & Wasko

As one of our oldest collaborators (20+ years), we’ve had no shortage of successful projects alongside Minno & Wasko Architects and Planners. Though we have designed many multifamily and mixed-use buildings together in northern New Jersey and the surrounding region, the series of expansive urban redevelopment projects in Harrison, New Jersey with Ironstate Properties stands out as one of our first and longest running multifamily partnerships. Since 2006, we’ve designed a total of 12 mid-rise buildings and various auxiliary structures – most of which occupy a full city block.

Section 4 of Harrison Urby, the latest and largest of these projects, is no exception. With five mid-rise residential buildings (ranging from five to seven stories) and a single-story café, there was a wide variety of structural systems required to ensure an efficient use of materials. While the taller buildings are exclusively light gage metal stud bearing wall systems, the five story structures are predominantly wood framed with a single story of light gage at the first floor. The two-story basketball court built inside one of the residential buildings created an interesting challenge, requiring a steel frame to support the three levels of units above and fit between the units on either side. The café structure rounds out another varied project with its glued laminated timber framing supporting a cross-laminated timber roof deck.

Ralph C. Fey Architects

Bucks County-based Ralph C. Fey Architects has been bringing their thoughtful architectural vision to projects across the Delaware Valley for more than 25 years, with a focus on balancing the artistic heritage of the region with more modern themes.

This high-end custom in Washington, NJ (aptly named “Familial Traditions”) finished construction in 2022 by builder C. Raymond Davis & Sons and features a generations-old tree around which the house was designed. Along with the usual challenges of creating and supporting open spaces with heavy/sensitive finishes, both the architecture and structure had to take special care in the design of the foundations and upper-level decks to not risk interfering with the tree or its root system. This unique design choice, along with the great lengths taken to blend the historic aspects of the preserved farm with its contemporary elements, were central to the project receiving the 2022 Excellence in Design Award by the Bucks County chapter of the American Institute of Architects. While we are always proud of a job well done, we’re particularly honored to contribute to award-winning projects.

M+K Opens New Office in Boston

From hurricanes, nor-easters and intense inland winter storms, to thousands of miles of coastline buffeted by relentless ocean winds – building in New England can be a challenge. Whether we’re designing production homes, high-end custom homes, or multi-family buildings, our wide range of residential structural engineering experience transcends the environmental demands inherent to the region.

We’re known for our dedication to fast turn-around times, personal & responsive service, and a flexible, creative, engaged approach that yields innovative and practical solutions to complex problems. These qualities are valued by our great customers based in every region across the country, and we’re sure the folks in New England will love working with us too!

Our team is looking forward to building new relationships and bringing the unique M+K brand of structural engineering to the architects, builders, and developers in Boston and the entire New England Region.

M+K Earns 2022 Employer of Choice Award

Since the day we opened our doors, we’ve been committed to building a company that fosters professional and personal growth, promotes the importance of volunteering and giving back, and embraces the value of having fun. We felt then, as we do now, that pursuing these goals were very important to the well-being and productivity of our employees and, by extension, our firm.

When it comes to workplace excellence awards in the Structural Engineering community, we’ve consistently ranked in the top 5 ‘Best Firms to Work For’ nationally. While winning awards in recognition of our culture isn’t new, we’re excited to add some new hardware to our shelf…PSMJ’s 2022 A/E/C Employer of Choice Award! Even better, this was our first year participating in their national competition that determines the best of the best. Only the top 10 firms in the entire AE industry are honored with this incredibly exclusive and hard to achieve award – and we couldn’t be more proud of the recognition.

“Building an Award-Winning Culture” is literally part of our Mission Statement, and we’re blessed to have such awesome employees who consistently contribute to this effort. Thanks to our whole team for their hard work, and thank you to PSMJ Resources, Inc. for this recognition!