General Session Presentations
Continuing Education
Each session provides 1 hour of continuing education. To receive credit, use your mobile device or laptop to check-in during each session or write down a code to check in later. Check-in is available from the time a session starts and for 15 minutes after it concludes.
List of Presentations
Scroll down the page to read more about each presentation. Handouts for each presentation can be downloaded from the column on the right once available.
| Session | Presentation | Start Time | End Time | Handout |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Session 1 – Historic Masonry | 08:00 | 09:00 | ||
| 1A | The Dirt on Earthen Masonry: Codes, Challenges and Opportunities Presented by Ben Loescher, LEED AP, AIA | 08:05 | 08:22 | |
| 1B | Common Maintenance Issues With Brick Masonry Walls: When Should They Be Addressed? Presented by Robert C Haukohl, PE | 08:22 | 08:39 | |
| 1C | Historic Masonry Bridges in the US Presented by Peter M. Babaian, PE, SE | 08:39 | 08:56 | |
| Session 2 – Environmental Considerations and New Standards for Masonry | 09:00 | 10:00 | ||
| 2A | Concrete Masonry and Carbon Sequestration Presented by Shoaib Yosoufzai | 09:05 | 09:22 | |
| 2B | Concrete Masonry Passive House Investigation Presented by William Mark McGinley, PhD, PE, FTMS, FASTM | 09:22 | 09:39 | |
| 2C | Introduction to TMS 404/504/604 – Design, Fabrication, and Installation of Cast Stone Presented by Jason Thompson, FTMS | 09:39 | 09:56 | |
| Session 3 – Review of Recent and Upcoming Masonry Research Projects | 10:15 | 11:15 | ||
| 3A | Effect of Base Stiffness in the Performance of Slender Masonry Walls Presented by Carlos Cruz Noguez, PhD, PEng | 10:19 | 10:36 | |
| 3B | Shake Table Tests of a Retrofitted URM Building Presented by Andreas Stavridis, PhD | 10:36 | 10:53 | |
| 3C | Structural Behaviour of Masonry Arches on Moving Supports: from On-site Observation to Experimental and Numerical Analysis Presented by Chiara Ferrero | 10:53 | 11:10 | |
| Session 4 – Masonry Design and Material Considerations | 11:15 | 12:15 | ||
| 4A | Best Practices for Segmental Retaining Walls Presented by Gabriela Mariscal, PE | 11:19 | 11:36 | |
| 4B | Proposed Criteria for the Design of Masonry Beams Subjected to Torsion Presented by Ece Erdogmus, PhD | 11:36 | 11:53 | |
| 4C | Brick, An Old, Old Story Presented by Don Foster | 11:53 | 12:10 |
General Session 1, 8:00 – 9:00 AM
1A – The Dirt on Earthen Masonry: Codes, Challenges and Opportunities
This presentation will assess the current state of earthen masonry construction in the United States, barriers its use, and opportunities for broader adoption. Topics will include supply issues, professional and contractor capabilities, and market demand. Particular attention will be paid to recent developments in the IBC and IRC that have already widened the use of earthen construction, as well as current initiatives to develop national standards for earthen masonry design and materials.
Ben Loescher, LEED AP, AIA, is a founding principal of Loescher Meachem Architects (LMA), a licensed architect in California, New York, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas and Oregon and a LEED Accredited Professional. As an expert in adaptive reuse of existing structures at LMA, Ben has provided leadership and guidance as a Project Director on multiple significant projects, including Beats by Dre’s Los Angeles Headquarters, Neuehouse, Annapurna Pictures, Saatchi & Saatchi, Illumination Entertainment and various other significant media and technology companies throughout Southern California.
Prior to founding LMA, Ben was Project Director at Clive Wilkinson Architects, where he designed and led projects including Google’s Headquarters in Mountain View, the KCRW Media Technology Campus for Santa Monica College, and multiple campuses for The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising/FIDM. Under his leadership LMA designed and permitted the first new construction structural adobe building in California in two decades.
Ben holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design from Miami University, a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Michigan, and a Master of Arts in Architectural History and Theory from The Architectural Association in London, as well as a Certificate in Adobe Construction from Northern New Mexico College.
Ben is an expert in the design and conservation of unconventional masonry construction. He has acted as principal author of significant portions of the International Building Code sections on adobe masonry, has been a contributing author to the International Residential Code Appendix on Cob/Monolithic Adobe, and was certified by examination as an Adobe Professional by The Earthbuilders’ Guild. Loescher holds leadership and consulting positions with several earthen building organizations, including The Earthbuilders’ Guild, The Earthen Construction Initiative, and Adobe in Action.
1B – Common Maintenance Issues With Brick Masonry Walls: When Should They Be Addressed?
Well-constructed brick masonry walls will last for many many years. The brick itself is intended to last for the lifetime of the building, while other wall components such as mortar, flashing, and especially sealants, need to be regularly maintained. Cracking of masonry can have a multitude of causes, many of which can be difficult to diagnose and resolve. Efflorescence and staining can be unsightly – is the condition reoccurring? What color is it and is it water soluble? Can you stain or paint brick? Yes, but would you want to? These issues can plague building owners and facilities personnel tasked with repair and maintenance of these types of buildings. This presentation will focus on some key, pervasive masonry wall issues and when they should be addressed.
Robert C Haukohl, PE, is a Senior Consultant with the Chicago-based building enclosure consulting firm Inspec, Inc. with over 29 years of experience in the investigation of a wide variety of building and building component design and construction issues. His experience has included evaluation and repair design for many different types of building facades, including primarily masonry and terra cotta facades. He has chaired the Masonry Society’s Existing Masonry committee and has presented on a number of building facade topics for TMS, CSI, and ASCE.
1C – Historic Masonry Bridges in the US
Historic masonry bridges are located throughout the United States. Typically, these bridges have a distinctive masonry component related to the timeframe of construction and the prevailing architectural influences of the surrounding region. This session will discuss design considerations required when rehabilitating an historic masonry bridge, including:
- Assessing the historic masonry construction;
- Design options to extend masonry service life;
- Reuse of existing masonry materials in the new construction;
- Construction techniques to facilitate ease and speed of construction for recreating masonry details.
The session will include examples from the presenter’s experience and involvement with several historic masonry bridges.
Peter M. Babaian, PE, SE, is a Principal and the Building Technology Division Head for the Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Chicago office. He has over 20 years experience designing, investigating, and rehabilitating a variety of building enclosures and structures. Peter’s projects involve exterior enclosure consulting for new construction, rehabilitating existing structures and enclosures, historic preservation, building enclosure commissioning, investigating non-performing building enclosures, and providing expert services related to construction litigation. Peter is an active member in many professional industry groups. He is a former chair of the Technical Activities Committee at The Masonry Society and serves as the Vice President of the Society. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Building Congress and Landmarks Illinois. Peter holds a Master’s of Science in Civil Engineering from Northwestern University and a Bachelor’s of Science in Civil Engineering from Tufts University. He is a licensed professional engineer in 32 US states, a licensed structural engineer in 2 US states, and a registered professional engineer in British Columbia, Canada.
General Session 2, 9:00 – 10:00 AM
2A – Concrete Masonry and Carbon Sequestration
The design and construction community continues to increase focus on embodied carbon, and concrete masonry producers have been working to meet carbon reduction goals. New research, first published through ASTM in 2022, has demonstrated that the capability for concrete masonry to sequester carbon after product happens quicker and at a much larger magnitude than previously thought. This presentation will review this research and provide updated carbon sequestration values for CMU through their first two years. Additionally, life-cycle comparisons with other building systems will be briefly reviewed.
Shoaib Yosoufzai is currently working as a Structural Engineering Project Manager (Masonry) with the CMHA. He graduated with a BS Degree in Civil Engineering from the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 2009 and completed a MS degree in Civil Engineering (Structural Engineering focus) from the University of Nebraska and second MS Degree with focus in Post War reconstruction from the Durham University UK. His focus has been on Civil Engineering research, structural design, project and portfolio management. He has previously worked in different capacities including as Chief engineer with the Hyperion Inc, as Engineering specialist and adviser with NATO oversees and as director and portfolio manager for key infrastructure projects oversees. He is interested in research with long-term and strategic impacts.
2B – Concrete Masonry Passive House Investigation
Studies by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) indicates that 50% and 60% of the total yearly energy cost of residential and commercial buildings is associated with heating and cooling (EIA 2010). These studies also show that about 30% of the energy used in the US is being used by this sector. Energy efficiency in residential structures is thus a significant focus of energy efficiency and environmental impact efforts.
As part of the increase in concern about energy use, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) joined with the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) to promote DOE’s Challenge Home program in tandem with the PHIUS+ Certification program. Passive design buildings are thought be a good approach for energy use performance that can support the exclusive use of renewable energy sources in residential applications (Zero Net Homes).
Passive House design is the use of energy saving standards to reduce the amount of heat that is gained and lost within a structure. This then lowers the need for conditioning energy compared to more conventionally constructed residential buildings. These principles can be applied to a range of building types, including residential homes (IPH, 2022).
The following investigation evaluated the energy performance of a home with exterior concrete masonry walls using holistic energy analyses (BEopt, 2022). This type of analysis has been shown to give more accurate assessment of the impacts of mass exterior wall energy efficiency (Kiesel and McGinley 2015, McGinley 2014). Within this study, a typical one-story home was evaluated using holistic energy modeling software and analyzed for their energy efficiency. The predicted energy performance of this home was determined for all seven climate zones of the US.
William Mark McGinley, PhD, PE, FTMS, FASTM, Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Louisville is a structural engineer and building scientist with over 33 years of research and forensic engineering practice in building systems. He currently serves as President of The Masonry Society. Dr. McGinley’s research has focused on the structural performance of masonry walls and veneers, water penetration experiments on envelopes, and the thermal evaluation of steel stud wall systems. He is also active in energy related research. He has been actively involved in TMS as the Chair of the Design Practices committee (1992-1998) and a member of numerous technical committees including the Research Committee, BIM Committee. He has been a primary author in all eight editions of the Masonry Designers’ Guide and he formerly served on both TMS’s Board of Directors and the Technical Activities Committee.
2C – Introduction to TMS 404/504/604 – Design, Fabrication, and Installation of Cast Stone
First published in 2016, TMS 404, 504, and 604 respectively cover the design, fabrication, and installation of architectural cast stone have been updated and new editions of these standards published in 2023, which in turn will be referenced in the 2024 edition of the International Building Code. This session will cover the requirements of and changes introduced to these standards as well as broader best practices for detailing cast stone assemblies.
Jason Thompson, FTMS, is the President of Coltivomae, LLC, a multidisciplinary firm located in Northern Virginia. Prior to founding Coltivomae, LLC, Jason worked for the National Concrete Masonry Association for over 25 years after previously working at a private engineering consulting firm in Washington State. Jason’s duties and responsibilities over his career have spanned an array of activities including design, construction management, research and development, codes and standards advocacy, development of design tools and resources, and delivering seminars and lectures covering these subjects.
General Session 3, 10:15 – 11:15 AM
3A – Effect of Base Stiffness in the Performance of Slender Masonry Walls
Loadbearing masonry walls with a height-to-thickness ratio greater than 30 are typically used in single-storey buildings such as warehouses, theatres, community centres, and school gymnasiums. When subjected to combined gravity and lateral loads, these walls are an effective structural system. Due to their perceived vulnerability to second-order effects, North American masonry design standards (CSA S304-14 and TMS 402-16) set additional design criteria for these walls. In CSA S304-14, designers are required to neglect the base stiffness provided by the wall-foundation interaction, which reduces the strength and stiffness of slender masonry walls. While TMS 402-16 permits using different types of base support for any height-to-thickness ratio, there is a dearth of experimental and analytical evidence on the rotational stiffness provided by common foundations in typical soils.
In this session, experimental and analytical results are presented focusing on the out-of-plane flexural response of masonry walls subjected to combined gravity and lateral loads under various height-to-thickness ratios, types of soils, foundation geometry, and foundation depth. The parametric analysis showed increased flexural capacity and decreased deflections in the out-of-plane direction when the soil-structure interaction was included. These findings imply that accounting for foundation rigidity in the analysis and design of slender masonry walls could be an untapped source of strength and stiffness, which may lead to more cost-effective masonry wall designs.
Carlos Cruz Noguez, PhD, PEng, is the MCAA Endowed Chair in Masonry Structures and the Director of the Masonry Centre at the UofA, with a mandate to remove the unjustifiable limitations imposed on masonry construction by building standards, reveal the untapped capabilities of contemporary masonry, and drive innovation in masonry design. Dr. Cruz-Noguez and his team have cerated a successful and productive masonry research hub at the UofA, attracting more than $4.8M since 2018 to develop impactful research on resilient and sustainable construction systems. He is a member of CSA S304 and TMS 402-16.
3B – Shake Table Tests of a Retrofitted URM Building
This presentation will discuss the recently conducted shake-table tests at the SEES Laboratory at UB on a retrofitted URM building. The tests are part of a NIST-funded project and their goal was to evaluate current methods and code requirements for URM buildings. These are often based on experience providing prescriptive requirements that have not been rigorously validated with data from three-dimensional dynamic tests. The test structure was a single-story double-wythe URM building with a 23 ft. by 9 ft. (7 m by 2.7 m) plan view and height of 12 ft. (3.6 m). It included openings, a roof diaphragm, and parapet, and it was designed to represent existing structures. The building was retrofitted with anchors and strong backs following current design practice based on the guidelines found in ASCE 41-17, FEMA P2006, AWC NDS 2015, AISC 360-10, ABK TR-08 documents. It was instrumented with an array of 160 sensors and cameras and was subjected to a sequence of bi-directional ground motions. This presentation will discuss the retrofit design details, as well as the results from the dynamic tests.
Andreas Stavridis, PhD, is currently an Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo. He earned his Diploma from the National Technical University of Athens, and his MS and PhD from UC, San Diego. His current research focuses on assessing and improving the structural performance of existing masonry and concrete buildings and bridges under service and seismic loads, as well as improving the design guidelines for new construction. He tests large-scale structures in the laboratory and actual structures in the field. He also develops and validates detailed and simplified numerical and analytical tools to simulate the performance of these structures under extreme and ordinary loads. He is a member of technical committees within ASCE and The Masonry Society and he has contributed in the development of the seismic assessment provisions for masonry-infilled reinforced concrete frames in ASCE 41 and FEMA P-2018.
3C – Structural Behaviour of Masonry Arches on Moving Supports: from On-site Observation to Experimental and Numerical Analysis
This presentation will review Structural Behavior of Masonry Arches on Moving Supports both with On-site Observation and Experimental/Numerical Analysis.
Chiara Ferrero is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering of the University of Genoa (Italy). After graduating in Building Engineering and Architecture at the University of Genoa in 2012, she worked for some years as a freelance engineer in the field of structural analysis of existing masonry buildings. Between 2016 and 2017, she attended the Erasmus Mundus Master course in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions (SAHC). In 2021, she completed her PhD with a thesis entitled “Structural behaviour of masonry arches on moving supports: from on-site observation to experimental and numerical analysis”. She carried out her PhD in cotutelle between the University of Genoa and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain), obtaining the International and European PhD mentions. Her research interests include experimental testing, numerical modelling, and structural analysis of existing masonry buildings exposed to natural hazards, with a focus on built cultural heritage.
General Session 4, 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM
4A – Best Practices for Segmental Retaining Walls
This presentation introduces the best practices for the design, specification, and construction of segmental retaining walls developed since the industry started.
Gabriela Mariscal, PE
4B – Proposed Criteria for the Design of Masonry Beams Subjected to Torsion
Torsion of beams has never been addressed by the code. This presentation will introduce issues for the torsional design of masonry beams that have been under development by the Structural Members Subcommittee of TMS 402. It will be an expanded version of the presentation made at the 14th NAMC.
Ece Erdogmus, PhD
4C – Brick, An Old, Old Story
This short presentation covers how brick have or have not changed over the past half century. Presenter Don Foster reviews a 30+ year old article titled Brick: An Old, Old Story (Author Unknown). He reads the questions asked in the article and modernizes the answers for the brick industry today.
Don Foster is currently President of Masonry Cosmetics. In the early 1980’s, Don got his start in the brick industry by working at the Hanley Brick Plant over the summer to pay for his college education. Don started by cleaning out the manganese grinding room, then worked his way up to shape maker. Soon followed brick setter, packer, glaze sprayman, glaze foreman, then distribution manager. Through the years, Don became an Architectural sales representative, district sales manager, then regional sales manager with oversight of 3 brick plants. From there he owned and operated part of a brick distributor for 7 years until he took on Masonry Cosmetics Full Time. Don has been hands-on with every aspect of the brick industry for the past 40 years.