Industry Axis

Topping Out Ceremony

Needham DBS is proud to celebrate a major milestone in the construction of A.Y. McDonald Manufacturing Company’s new brass foundry in Dickeyville, Wisconsin. The Topping Out Ceremony, on August 15, 2025, marking the placement of the final steel beam, is a significant achievement for the entire team and a moment of pride for Needham DBS as the structural engineer as well as the steel detailer and structural steel supplier for the building shell.

As the structural engineer, Needham DBS designed the building shell to meet the demands of a modern brass foundry. This 360,000-square-foot facility required a robust structural system capable of supporting heavy industrial equipment, high-temperature processes, and future expansion. Our team worked closely with A.Y. McDonald, Russell Construction, and the construction partners to ensure safety, efficiency, and durability from concept through execution.

2025 Fort Wayne DB Team

The 2025 Fort Wayne Dragon Boat Festival was a spectacular celebration of teamwork, culture, and competition. Held at Promenade Park on August 1–2, the event featured 23 teams racing along the scenic St. Marys River, accompanied by vibrant opening ceremonies, live music, and traditional Chinese performances.

Needham Invasion entered the festival with determination and spirit, building on our experience from last year’s debut. We are proud to announce that Needham Invasion finished 5th overall among a strong field of competitors. Needham DBS began competing as a company team building experience to join together our Fort Wayne and Kansas City offices. This achievement reflects not only athletic effort but also the incredible teamwork and camaraderie that define our culture.

On September 27, 2025, the shores of Shawnee Mission Park came alive with pounding drums, cheering crowds, and the vibrant energy of the GWN Kansas City Dragon Boat Festival. This annual event celebrates teamwork, endurance, and cultural unity, drawing teams from across the region for an unforgettable day on the water.

This year, "Needham Invasion" proudly earned a Silver Medal in the 500m Premier Open Division, with an average finish time of 2:33.73 and a team best of 2:29.93.

The Concrete Promotional Group (CPG) held their annual Sporting Clay event on September 13, 2023. The event was held at Powder Creek Shooting Park in Lenexa KS. Eleven employees of the Needham DBS Kansas City Office participated. It was a great opportunity to spend time together outside the office environment as well as networking with other companies.

It was our pleasure to welcome Dakota Payne to our team for a summer internship. We all really enjoyed his great attitude, passion for learning, and willingness to dig into all aspects of what we do here at Needham DBS. It’s a wide array, often with many hats to wear, and he was up for the challenge!

We had some great opportunities both in the office and on jobsites. Dakota played a major role in inventory and QC for steel deliveries on some of our large projects in central Virginia this summer. He gained some valuable knowledge about steel construction, tilt-up construction, structural engineering, steel detailing and project management.

Needham DBS and T&T Construction wins a Tilt-up Achievement Award for Lilly RTP. 

The project is a $474 million development spanning over 750,000 SF across 11 integrated buildings. Features of the development include a 240,000 SF three-story manufacturing facility, a 200,000 SF two-story medical device and packaging facility, a 105,000 SF two-story administration and laboratory building, a 95,000 SF refrigerated Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) warehouse, and a fully functioning central utility plant. This project is a complex of buildings that are interconnected by a common corridor, which is 22 feet by 750 feet. There are six buildings adjoining the corridor from both the north and south, totaling a 324,847 SF building footprint with 688,392 SF of floor area. The project is a multi-level pharmaceutical production facility with floor level changes and pass-throughs between buildings. The Owner was committed to building a facility that was state-of-the-art and would carry their needs well into the future.

 The Tilt-Up Concrete Association (TCA)—the global authority for the tilt-up concrete construction industry—announced Karen S. Hand, PE, as the newest president of the TCA Board of Directors. 

Karen has served on the TCA Board of Directors since 2018 and the Executive Committee since 2020. For each of the past four years, she was named a “Top 20 Influencer in the Tilt-Up Industry” by the TCA and was the 2022 recipient of the David L. Kelly Distinguished Engineer Award.

101 Foot Long Joists

Needham DBS delivered long span steel joists to Maranatha Christian Academy in Shawnee, Kansas by way of a 90-foot stretch trailer.  The 101-foot long DLH joists for the gymnasium were delivered on January 17, 2022 with special permitting for a 90-foot stretch trailer and a 10-foot rear overhang.  A second truck hauled additional long span joists on an 80-foot stretch and a 20-foot rear overhang.  The massive joists will span across the gymnasium at 10-foot on ceter to support a 3-inch deep metal roof deck.

Full Scale Panel Testing

Needham DBS designed and supplied the structural steel test frames for full scale composite insulated wall panel testing. Needham DBS, a charter member of the TCA, worked closely with the University of Nebraska Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction's Marc Maguire, PhD. The researchers, contractors, engineers and vendors worked out the loading requirements and the functionality of the test frames to perform the panel testing. Needham DBS was also responsible for the foundation design to anchor the test frames as well as communicating the panel design and detailing requirements for the panel contractor to build the panels.  

Design Build Steel, the "DBS" arm of Needham DBS, supplies structural steel products for all project types.  It was a pleasure to work on a unique project and donate the materials for the advancement of the tilt-up industry. 

Needham DBS' Fort Wayne Office celebrated the success of 2021 with a year end Christmas Dinner.  The dinner was held in the Boardroom at Ruth's Chris Steak House in downtown Fort Wayne on December 11, 2021.

Needham DBS 2021 Advertising Campaign.

Needham DBS is a proud sponsor and exhibitor of the 2020 Tilt-Up Concrete Association Virtual Convention. 

Due to meeting restrictions, the TCA chose to hold a virtual convention for 2020.  Using Virbela as the platform, the TCA created "The Aggregate" where convention attendees created avatars of themselves bringing a human element to the virtual world.  The avatar concept allowed for real time interaction with other attendees.  Needham DBS team members had a lot of fun particpating in games, attending technical sessions, visiting exhibitors and networking with others in the industry.  Needham DBS is looking forward to seeing everyone LIVE next year in St. Louis! 

Todd Brewood has been elected Vice President of the Kansas City Chapter of SEAKM. The appointment is for the 2019-2020 year. The role of the VP is primarily to provide support to the chapter President and to work with the other committee members in organizing the monthly chapter meetings. Todd hopes to help encourage SEAKM membership growth, and to find useful and interesting topics to share and discuss at the monthly meeting.  Needham DBS heavily supports participation in industry organizations and appreciates Todd's committment to further the profession of Structural Engineering.

Todd started his term by attending SEAKM’s Annual Meeting in Wichita, KS on Thursday, April 25, 2019.  The meeting was held at the Wichita Advanced Learning Library.  Presentations included the Oklahoma State Capitol masonry restoration, steel cracking during galvanization, engineering software packages concerns and wrapped up with partially-composite tilt-up panels by Needham DBS' Jason Blankenship.

Employees relocated to home stations on Monday, March 23, 2020 ahead of the Kansas City metro stay-at-home orders. In a rare sighting, two masked bandits were found colluding in the Needham DBS conference room. CFO, Susan Fox Sherry and President, Karen Hand, geared up with makeshift personal protection equipment, met with Chairman Jeff Needham for a debriefing and critical planning meeting.

Stech Home Office

Needham DBS is opening new branch offices all over the metro! (at the request of the county government).

On a related note, table saws make stable office furniture in more than one way.

Needham DBS has been operating in a mostly “business as usual” manner through the COVID-19 pandemic but the reality is, things will not be “business as usual” for some time. As the President tries to wrangle the explosion of new cases and the impacts on the economy, drastic measures may be required to mitigate those risks. State and local government leaders took the message from the President seriously and have imposed restrictions on schools and businesses keeping the spread of the virus from escalating locally. Needham DBS has been closely monitoring the situation and is ready to stand with the President, Governors, and local leaders to make the adjustments necessary to protect the safety and health of our employees as well as our communities.

We are not aware of major disruptions at this time but given the day to day changes, it’s best to be prepared. Schedules may be impacted as we transition to at-home work environments to curb community spread. For material supply projects, there are potential delays and disruptions in our vendor supply chain due to plant closures, we have already been put on alert by most manufacturers.

Needham DBS is currently operating in a mostly “business as usual” manner during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have taken precautions to help protect our employees and offered remote access to work from home through VPN connections should it be necessary to do so. With locations in Fort Wayne, IN and Lenexa, KS the less densely populated areas have resulted in just a few cases regionally and we hope that remains the case throughout the coming weeks.

Both office locations will be closed to all visitors. We are available by phone, video conference and email.

Pittsburg Middle School Addition

The Pittsburg Middle School Addition was selected for the 2019 Kansas ACI Concrete Construction award for the Low Rise Buildings category. The award was presented to the team at the annual Kansas ACI Concrete Construction Awards program on February 12, 2020 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manhattan, KS the evening prior to the Scholer-Peterson Concrete Conference.

The Precast Wall Panels were designed and detailing by Needham DBS with Crossland Prefab being the precast supplier. Other team members who worked on the project were Corner Greer & Associates, DLR Group, and Crossland Construction Co.

SK Battery Commerce GA

Needham DBS has donated $10,000 to the inaugural campaign, raising seed money needed to establish Tilt Lab.

As a philanthropic partner of the Tilt-Up Concrete Association, Tilt Lab’s mission is to cultivate emerging techniques, technologies and ideas with promising applicability for the tilt-up concrete construction industry. With a focus on disruptive and transformative innovation, Tilt Lab will seek to embrace change, further exploiting the already established benefits of the tilt-up system and facilitate collaboration to deliver game-changing innovation related to tilt-up concrete construction.

Karen Hand, President at Needham DBS, and Barclay Gebel, VP Operations at Concrete Strategies, teamed up to present the Case Study for Project Dylan to a packed house at the 2019 Tilt-Up Convention and Expo held in Atlanta.

The composite panel industry is on the frontier of emerging design technologies; the innovation is ripe and ready to propel our industry into the future. Project Dylan is a new prototype fulfillment center, and this seminar will use it as a case study to better understand today’s composite panel industry. The warehouse building’s slab-on-grade footprint is approximately 700,000 square feet, and it has an additional 1.95 million square feet of elevated deck. The exterior is clad with 330,000 square feet of insulated tilt-up panels.