When a structural engineer in Phoenix sits down to design the base connection for a new industrial facility, they reach for AISC Design Guide 1: Base Connection Design. When a contractor in Boston needs to determine load combinations for a partially erected structure, they open ASCE/SEI 37: Design Loads on Structures During Construction. When a concrete designer in Seattle wants to understand the reliability framework behind ACI 318, they look to publications shaped by ACI Committee 348 on Structural Reliability and Safety.
Each of these documents represents the codified judgment of the structural engineering profession. They are the references that make safe, economical, and consistent steel and concrete design possible across the United States. They are also documents that CSD Structural Engineers’ team members have written, reviewed, updated, and shaped over more than five decades.
How a Design Guide Becomes a Design Guide
For most engineers, a design guide arrives as a finished product: a downloadable PDF, a printed binder on the shelf, or a chapter referenced in a calculation. The path from research to published guidance is far less visible, and far more rigorous.
For AISC Design Guides, the process begins with the AISC Committee on Specifications and the AISC Committee on Manuals. These bodies identify subjects where the profession needs codified guidance, then select authors whose practical and academic credentials match the topic. The selection process is deliberate. Not every interested party can volunteer to write a design guide; AISC determines who has both the technical depth and the practical experience to produce a document the industry will rely on.
That selection process is how CSD founder Dr. James M. Fisher came to author the second edition of AISC Design Guide 1: Base Plate and Anchor Rod Design, published in 2006 with co-author Lawrence A. Kloiber of LeJuene Steel Company. The 2006 edition expanded the scope of the 1990 original to address constructability issues that engineers and fabricators encounter where steel structure meets concrete foundation. When the third edition arrived in 2024 under the broader title Base Connection Design for Steel Structures, it was written by Dr. Amit Kanvinde of UC-Davis with CSD’s Dr. Mahmoud Maamouri and Joshua Buckholt. Dr. Fisher and CSD’s Steve Herlache served on the AISC review committee that vetted the document before publication.>
Dr. Fisher’s name also appears on AISC Design Guide 7: Industrial Building Design, now in its third edition. Other CSD-authored AISC guides include Design Guide 10: Erection Bracing of Low-Rise Structural Steel Frames, originally written by Michael West (also a longtime member of the ASCE/SEI 37 standard committee), and Design Guide 34: Steel-Framed Stairway Design, written by CSD’s Adam Friedman.
The Standard Behind the Standard
Writing a design guide is one role. Maintaining the foundational documents the entire steel industry uses is another.
The AISC Specification for Structural Steel Buildings (ANSI/AISC 360) is updated on a six-year cycle, with the most recent edition published in 2022. Each new specification triggers a corresponding update to the AISC Steel Construction Manual, the reference book virtually every U.S. structural steel engineer keeps within arm’s reach. Updating the Manual to reflect changes in the Specification is not a clerical task. Hundreds of tabulated values must be recalculated, design examples reworked, and content reconciled with referenced standards including ASCE 7, ACI 318, AISI S100, and the International Building Code.
For more than two decades, CSD has performed that work. CSD engineers have updated all of the tabulated values in the AISC Manual to comply with each new edition of the Specification, and have produced and independently checked the design example companions AISC publishes alongside the Manual. CSD’s Mike Kempfert currently serves on the AISC Manual Committee, the consensus body that develops and approves Manual content, and on the conference planning committee for NASCC: The Steel Conference.
Because AISC standards are developed under American National Standards Institute (ANSI) consensus procedures, the process requires balanced committees representing designers, fabricators, erectors, academics, and other stakeholders. Drafts proceed through balloting, public review and comment, and formal resolution of every comment received. Independent third-party review is built into the process before any update reaches publication.
Reviewing the Industry’s Output
CSD’s contribution extends well beyond the documents the firm authors. CSD engineers volunteer as peer reviewers for technical publications across the structural engineering profession. The AISC Engineering Journal sends each manuscript to an average of three outside reviewers, experts in the specific technical area the paper covers. The ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering and the ASCE Journal of Architectural Engineering operate under a single-anonymous peer review process managed by their editorial boards. CSD’s Joshua Buckholt and other CSD engineers serve in these reviewer roles, evaluating submitted research, commentary, and design methodology for technical accuracy, reproducibility, and relevance to practice. CSD engineers have also reviewed AISC publications in development, including the HSS Connection Design Guide.
This work is largely invisible to the readers of the eventual published article. That is precisely the point. Peer review exists to catch errors, sharpen reasoning, and prevent flawed methodology from entering the body of guidance that practicing engineers rely on. The credibility of every published article depends on the rigor of the engineers who reviewed it before publication.
Beyond Steel
CSD’s involvement in standards development is not limited to steel. Dr. Mahmoud Maamouri, who became CSD’s president in January 2025, has chaired ACI Committee 348 on Structural Reliability and Safety since 2016. Committee 348 is responsible for the structural safety and reliability principles that underlie ACI’s concrete design standards: the framework that defines how reliable a concrete structure must be and what load and resistance factors are appropriate to achieve that reliability.
In the construction engineering arena, CSD’s Tom Getschman serves on the ASCE/SEI 37 standard committee responsible for Design Loads on Structures During Construction. ASCE/SEI 37 was first published in 2002, revised in 2014, and reaffirmed in 2019. It provides the load criteria for partially completed structures, temporary supports, and erection sequences. Like AISC standards, ASCE standards proceed through a consensus process: a balanced standards committee, balloting by ASCE members, and public balloting, with reaffirmation cycles not exceeding five years.
Why This Matters to a Project
The standards work and the project work feed each other. CSD engineers who serve on the AISC Manual Committee see proposed code changes well before they appear in print. CSD engineers who review journal articles encounter new research methodologies before those methodologies enter common practice. CSD engineers who participate in ACI and ASCE committees develop the documents they later apply on projects.
The effect is a working familiarity with the reasoning behind the codes, not just their printed text. When CSD provides connection design, peer review, or construction engineering services, the firm is applying codes its engineers helped write.