Suzanne Dow Nakaki

Suzanne Dow Nakaki is a principal with The Nakaki Bashaw Group, a structural engineering firm based in Irvine, California. With bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, earned in 1981 and 1986, Nakaki has almost three decades of experience in building design, project management, and structural research programs.

As a structural engineer with both UCLA Professor Robert E. Englekirk’s firm and her own firm, Nakaki worked on many Pankow projects, beginning with Catalina Landing, a 740,000-square-foot, multiple-building project that extended along the Long Beach, California, waterfront. Other projects included a 22-story office building associated with Shoreline Square, Long Beach; the Galleria at Tyler, a regional shopping center in Riverside, California; 555 City Center, an office complex in Oakland, California; Sunset + Vine, a 5-story retail and residential project located at the corner of one of Hollywood’s most famous intersections; the Paramount, a 39-story residential tower in San Francisco; a medical office building at White Memorial Medical Center, Los Angeles; and the Pearl Street Garage in Eugene, Oregon. The latter three projects utilized the precast hybrid moment-resistant frame (PHMRF), an innovative structural technology designed to make buildings more “earthquake proof.” Nakaki was closely involved with its development.

The PHMRF was the product of the joint research efforts of Charles Pankow Builders, the University of Washington, structural engineers John A. Martin & Associates, and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute for Standards and Technology. Nakaki developed design guidelines for the hybrid frame. She also had many discussions with Charlie Pankow about how to improve the technology, get it codified, and get it accepted into practice.

Nakaki has also investigated the seismic performance of high-strength concrete, carbon fiber reinforcement for architectural recast panels, cell core housing, the Spancrete High Seismic Wall Panel, on which she holds a patent, and the application of Oldcastle Modular Prisons to high-seismic regions. From 1988 to 2001, she was associated with the joint U.S.-Japan Seismic Structural Systems Program (PRESSS) and designed its test building. Most recently, she conducted multi-directional testing of cast-in-place “T” shear walls and evaluated Inter-Steel Structures, Inc.’s patented prefabricated metal framing system.

In 1998 Ms. Nakaki received the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute’s Charles C. Zollman Award for advancing the state of the art of precast and prestressed concrete. In that year, she also received a professional fellowship from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, for developing design guidelines for precast and cast-in-place concrete diaphragms. In 2001 she received PCI’s Harry H. Edwards Design Award for the PRESSS test building.

Nakaki reflects that she “always enjoyed working with the Pankow folks,” finding them to be “smart, creative, open to new ideas, yet practical as well. They expected much from their consultants, but in general performance was rewarded with loyalty.”