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  • Structural Design

Structural Design in Baltimore for Homes, Additions, and Commercial Buildings

Structural design determines whether your building stands strong, stays level, and remains crack-free over time.

Whether you’re opening up a Federal Hill rowhouse, adding a second story in Hamilton, or building out a Baltimore warehouse, we calculate what carries the load once walls come down.

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Maryland-licensed P.E. · DBE/MBE/SBE certified · Structural, architectural, and MEP from one firm · Baltimore City and 30 miles out

What Is Structural Design

Structural design is the process of working out what holds a building up and putting it on paper. It covers the beams, columns, footings, walls, and connections that carry weight, and it produces the drawings and calculations a contractor builds from and a permit office reviews.

Everything in a building is eventually carried by something else. The roof sits on the walls. The walls sit on the floor framing. The floor framing sits on beams and foundations. The foundations sit on soil. Structural design is the work of tracing that path, checking that every piece along it is strong enough, and sizing anything that isn’t.

Here’s the plain version. If you can see it and live in it, it’s architectural. If it holds the building up, it’s structural. If it heats, lights, or drains it, it’s MEP.

Structural design is design and documentation. We’re not the ones swinging the hammer, and we don’t sell you materials. We tell you what the building needs and give your contractor something to build from.

Structural Design vs. Structural Engineering:
What's the Difference?

Structural Design vs. Structural Engineering: What's the Difference?

Structural engineering is the whole field, including inspections, forensic investigations, repairs, and assessments of buildings that already exist. Structural design is the specific part where a new structure is planned and drawn — new framing, a new addition, a new opening, a new foundation.

The difference matters when you’re deciding who to call.

If you have a crack in your basement wall and you want to know what caused it and whether it’s serious, you need an assessment. That’s an inspection and a report.

If you already know what you want to build and you need someone to work out the beam, the footing, and the connections, you need structural design. That’s drawings and calculations.

Most Baltimore projects end up needing both, and usually in that order. We handle both, so you don’t start over with a second firm in the middle.

Do You Need Structural Design?

You almost certainly need structural design if you're:

  • Removing or opening up a wall that carries weight
  • Adding square footage: rear addition, second story, bump-out, dormer
  • Building a rooftop deck or a roof deck over an existing roof
  • Finishing a basement that needs underpinning or a lowered slab
  • Cutting a new opening for a large window, slider, or garage door
  • Replacing or sistering floor joists, or moving a staircase
  • Fixing a bowing, bulging, or cracked brick wall
  • Converting a rowhouse into two or more units
  • Putting in a new foundation, footing, or retaining wall
  • Installing heavy equipment: rooftop HVAC, a commercial kitchen hood, solar panels, a hot tub
  • Told by a plan reviewer or an inspector that drawings are required
  • Buying a property and you want to know what it'll actually take to do what you're planning

You probably don't if you're:

  • Doing cosmetic work: paint, flooring, trim, fixtures
  • Replacing a kitchen or bathroom in the same footprint
  • Swapping windows for the same size unit
  • Doing like-for-like repairs with no change to the framing

If you're not sure which side you're on, that's what the first call is for. It costs nothing and it takes about ten minutes.

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What We Design

Residential

The most common call we get. You want the kitchen and living room to be one room. We work out whether that wall is carrying anything, what size beam replaces it, how the beam is supported at each end, and how the load gets down to the foundation. Then we draw it.

Rear additions, second-story additions, bump-outs, and dormers. New structure has to tie into old structure that was built to different standards, and the existing foundation has to be checked for the new weight it's about to carry.

Popular across Canton, Fells Point, Federal Hill, and Locust Point. Existing rowhouse roofs were never framed for people, furniture, and snow at the same time. We design the deck framing, the support below it, and the stair or hatch penetration.

Getting usable ceiling height in a rowhouse basement means going down, and going down means the existing foundation has to be extended before it loses support. This is the work where guessing gets expensive.

Cracked, bowing, or settling foundation walls. Bulging front and rear brick walls. Failing lintels over windows and doors. We identify the cause first, then design the fix.

Bouncy floors, undersized joists, rotted joist ends, and openings cut for ductwork or stairs by someone who shouldn't have.

Full structural design from footings to roof framing on Baltimore's infill lots.

Smaller scope, same requirements once the permit office is involved.

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Commercial

Restaurants, retail, offices, medical and dental suites, and childcare. New openings, new mezzanines, mechanical units on the roof, and equipment loads the original building never anticipated.

Warehouses, churches, and storefronts becoming apartments, offices, or event space. A change of use usually means a change in live load, and that's a structural question before it's anything else.

Rowhouse-to-multi-unit conversions, small apartment buildings, and stacked units, including fire separation and floor framing at unit lines.

Before you close on a building, we can tell you what the structure will and won't support, so your pro forma isn't built on a guess.

Wood, cold-formed steel, structural steel, masonry, and concrete. We pick the system that fits the budget and the building, not the one we're used to drawing.

If your set is priced and the structural number came back high, we'll look for a cheaper way to carry the same load.

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Baltimore Rowhouses Are Their Own Structural Problem

A Baltimore rowhouse doesn’t behave like a detached house, and engineers who don’t work here regularly get this wrong.

Your neighbor's wall is your wall

n most rowhouses, floor joists run side-to-side, resting in party wall masonry pockets to carry the floors. Because these shared walls—sometimes only one brick thick—connect the whole row into one continuous structure, end units or houses next to vacant lots behave differently than those anchored in the middle of a block.

Which walls carry weight is often the opposite of what people assume

Because the joists span between the party walls, many interior partitions in a rowhouse carry nothing at all. Others carry more than they look like they should. The only way to know is to open up, measure, and trace the load path.

Bowing front and rear walls are a load path problem, not a cosmetic one

Because front and rear walls run parallel to joists, they are only tied in at the sides while supporting heavy roof and floor loads. Over a century, this causes them to lean. The fix requires structural specification, tying the wall directly back into the floor framing rather than applying a simple patch.

Joist pockets are not a free-for-all

Cutting new pockets into a party wall to land new framing weakens the wall that's holding up both houses. There are better ways to support new framing, and we design them.

Vacant neighbors change the math

If the house next door is open to the weather, has been razed, or is scheduled to be, your party wall's situation has changed and the design has to account for it.

This is the building stock we work in every week.

Ask Us If You Need an Engineer

What Working
With Us Looks Like

  • Schedule consultation

    You describe the project. We tell you what it needs, what it doesn't, and roughly what's involved. If you don't need an engineer, we'll tell you that too.

  • Site visit and field measurements

    We measure framing, spans, and load-bearing conditions directly on-site since original Baltimore drawings rarely exist or match reality. This prevents costly mid-construction redesigns on older buildings.

  • Analysis and options

    We calculate the structural options and present the trade-offs so you can decide. For instance, a flush beam hidden in the ceiling costs more than a dropped beam below it, while steel spans further than wood but is harder to maneuver into a rowhouse.

  • Structural drawings and calculations.

    Plans, framing details, sections, connections, and the supporting calculations. A set your contractor can price and build from and a plan reviewer can follow.

  • Permit support

    If review comes back with comments, we respond to them. That's part of the job, not a change order.

  • Construction support

    Contractor questions, field conditions that don't match the drawings, and site visits when they're useful. Old buildings hide things. When something unexpected turns up behind the plaster, you can call us.

Engineering Services Across Baltimore

Geoterra serves the Greater Baltimore Area and will happily travel to visit any residential or commercial business. 

  • Baltimore, MD 21201
  • (410)-814-8747
  • info@geoterraec.com
  • Monday - Saturday: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
  • Sunday: Closed

Areas We Serve:

  • Columbia
  • Glen Burnie
  • Dundalk
  • Ellicott City
  • Annapolis
  • Towson
  • Bowie
  • Bel Air
(410) 814-8747
  • Why Us

Why Baltimore Owners and Builders Work With Us

Structural, architectural, and MEP from one firm

Most projects need at least two of the three. Hiring them separately means you're the one making sure they talk to each other, and coordination gaps are what plan reviewers catch.

Led by a licensed professional engineer

Geoterra is led by Principal Engineer Richard Negri, P.E. You talk to the engineer, not to an account manager.

We work in Baltimore's actual building stock

Rowhouses, formstone, brick bearing walls, century-old framing, and infill lots between two neighbors. We know what we're going to find before we open the wall, and we know how review runs here.

We tell you when you don't need us

Plenty of calls end with us saying the project doesn't require structural design. That's a better outcome for you and it's why contractors keep calling back.

DBE/MBE/SBE certified

Geoterra holds Disadvantaged, Minority, and Small Business Enterprise certifications, which matters on public and institutionally funded work where participation goals are written into the contract.

Straight answers on cost and schedule

Design time and review time are two different clocks. We give you both numbers separately.

  • FAQ

Common Questions About Structural Design

A structural engineer figures out how a building carries weight and designs the parts that do the carrying — beams, columns, footings, framing, and connections. On a renovation, that means checking what's already there and designing whatever has to change. The output is drawings and calculations your contractor builds from.

You usually can't tell by looking. In a Baltimore rowhouse, the floor joists typically run between the two party walls, so many interior partitions carry nothing while the shared side walls carry everything. The reliable way to know is to check the joist direction and trace the load down to the foundation, which takes a site visit.

If the wall carries any load, yes, and you'll generally need drawings to get a permit for it. If it's a non-bearing partition, often no. Since you can't safely assume which one you have, the cheapest version of this question is a phone call before demolition starts.

It's driven by four things: how big the project is, whether it's new construction or an existing building, how much field measuring is needed, and how many options you want priced. Existing buildings cost more to document because nothing is where the old drawings say it is. Describe your project and we'll give you a real number.

A single beam design on a straightforward rowhouse can turn around in about a week after the site visit. A full addition or a commercial build-out runs several weeks. Permit review is a separate clock on top of that, and it varies by jurisdiction.

Often yes, but it depends on what's underneath. New weight up top has to travel all the way down through the walls to the foundation, and the existing foundation has to be checked for it. Zoning height limits and historic district rules apply separately from the structural question.

Some cracks are normal settlement and some are active movement. The pattern, width, and direction tell you which. It's worth having looked at rather than guessed at, because the cheap fixes for the serious version don't work.

Both. Roughly half our work comes through general contractors, architects, and developers who need structural design on a project, and the other half comes from homeowners and business owners who call us directly.

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