Weidlinger Associates has joined with Brian L. Cochran and Associates to provide full-service building design on the West Coast.

CALIFORNIA - The international engineering firm of Weidlinger Associates, Inc., has more than doubled its professional staff in building design in the Los Angeles area with the addition of Brian L. Cochran and Associates, Inc., Consulting Structural Engineers. The expanded office moved to a new location in Marina del Rey in February 2007.

Brian and Michael Cochran, now Weidlinger Associate Principals, have completed more than 3,000 structural design projects on the West Coast, the majority in California. Both are licensed structural and civil engineers in the state. Brian is a former Building Director for the City of Beverly Hills. He founded the practice in 1971 and his son, Michael, joined in 1985. Weidlinger Associates, headquartered in New York, has eight offices, including one in Mountain View, California. The firm was established in Los Angeles in 2001 with the acquisition of Hart Consultant Group (1992).

“Our decision to join forces with Brian and Michael Cochran is testimony to the professional respect we have for their talent and expertise. With this addition, Weidlinger is poised to become a major presence on the West Coast,” said Dr. Hart, principal-in-charge of the Marina del Rey office.

The principals of both firms share a long-term commitment to design excellence; advancing the state of the art of building; safety and sustainability; and the continuing education of professionals in the region. In May, they presented a seminar in Los Angeles on wind engineering to report on the patterns of damage observed during post-hurricane investigations in Florida, the Gulf Coast, and Hawaii, as well as the likely effect of recent changes in wind engineering codes.

Four principals of the Los Angeles practice (Dr. Gary Hart, Dr. Chukwuma Ekueme, Brian Cochran, and Michael Cochran) are current or past members of the Board of Directors of the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California. In addition, Brian Cochran is a past president and Michael Cochran is returning as incoming treasurer and future president of the organization. Dr. Gary Hart is Professor Emeritus at UCLA. Michael Cochran is a guest lecturer at the USC School of Architecture and an active member of the AISC committee that sets standards for the design of steel moment frame connections, of great interest to engineers after the 1994 Northridge earthquake revealed their weaknesses.

Weidlinger and Cochran first collaborated on the base isolation retrofit of a critical building for satellite production owned by Hughes Aircraft. A recent collaboration also involved aircraft: a seismic retrofit of the SuperMarine Building that once housed an aircraft museum and is now a production studio for Audi USA. With architect Jeffrey M. Kalban & Associates, Cochran designed the award-winning Compulaw Building, a "romanticized Miesian pavilion" (LA Architect) that makes natural light and outdoor views available to everyone.

Weidlinger’s new office is located at 4551 Glencoe Avenue, Suite 350; Marina del Rey, CA 90292-7927; Phone: 310 315.8430; Fax: 310 315.8431.