Reid Zimmerman, P.E., S.E., F.ASCE, a technical director for KPFF Consulting Engineers, a U.S. structural and civil engineering firm, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Zimmerman has focused his career on evolving solutions to the structural engineering practice of seismic isolation, energy dissipation, rocking/re-centering systems, performance-based design, and functional recovery, particularly for mission-critical structures. He enjoys discussing performance objectives with owners and realizing innovative structures that meet their intended purpose. He regularly collaborates with universities and other organizations to bring emerging research into practice and to solve unique, project-specific challenges.
He is considered a leader in the research and development of posttensioned timber rocking walls in the United States. He has served on numerous research projects to experimentally test posttensioned timber rocking walls, including 2-story, 6-story, and 10-story full-scale building specimens on the University of California San Diego shake table. Zimmerman has led development of design requirements for posttensioned timber rocking walls that will allow this seismic force-resisting system to be designed prescriptively in addition to using performance-based design.
Zimmerman is an active member of codes and standards development committees, particularly for the NEHRP Recommended Seismic Provisions, ASCE 7, and ASCE 41. Recently, he has led efforts to codify seismic design for functional recovery of new structures. Seismic functional recovery represents a paradigm shift in the performance objective for structures, moving from the life-safety basis of many current standards to performance measured in reduced building/facility downtime following a major earthquake. Zimmerman has been instrumental in the supporting research, provisions development, and committee consensus process for seismic functional recovery in the U.S.
He has advanced the innovative practice of seismic isolation and energy dissipation in the U.S. He has been involved in the study, design, or peer review of more than 20 structures using seismic isolation or energy dissipation, notably including the Portland International Airport Terminal Core Redevelopment, an award-winning 9-acre mass timber-steel hybrid roof on seismic isolation; the Multnomah County Central Courthouse, the first use of fluid viscous dampers in a new building in the State of Oregon, and the Treasury Resiliency Building, the first seismically isolated building to achieve a Platinum rating from the United States Resiliency Council.
