Palisade Engineering

California AB 976 took effect Jan 1, 2026 — permanent elimination of the ADU owner-occupancy requirement.

Nevada AB 310 is on the same trajectory.

Every ADU built under these rules is an unrestricted rental from day one. That changes the structural design work.

California killed the ADU owner-occupancy rule back in 2024 — and it's permanent.

You don't have to live on the property anymore, for new builds or existing ADUs. Nevada's catching up too: cities like Reno now have to allow ADUs by right.

For structural work, this means more detached ADUs built as real rental units from day one — think duplex-on-a-lot, not backyard shed. Setbacks, drainage, and lateral load all get more complicated. And investor-built ADUs justify better floor systems and finishes than the old "granny flat" standard.

The regulatory environment changed. The design standard should too.

250 years from now, the data center you designed this year is either a historic building or a demolition line item.

The difference will be one thing: whether the load path is legible to the engineer who inherits it.

— Paul Waite, PE, SE

Tomorrow is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Most buildings still standing from 1776 aren't standing because of their frames. They're standing because of their masonry walls.

Adaptive reuse in the anniversary year is a masonry conversation, not a framing one.

California AB 976 took effect January 1, 2026 — permanent removal of the ADU owner-occupancy requirement.

If you're doing residential structural work in NV or CA, the 2026 compliance landscape reads differently than 2025.

Our June piece covers 5 ADU types, 5-state law, common pitfalls.

pe-se.com/blog/adu-structural-engineering

ADU Structural Engineering: What Homeowners Need to Know Before Building When an ADU project needs a structural engineer, state-by-state rules across NV, CA, AZ, UT, IA, garage-conversion pitfalls, costs, and the permit process.

We turned down a $400K hyperscale anchorage package last quarter.

The client wanted 5,200 anchor points stamped in 8 business days. Doing it on that timeline would mean cutting checks we wouldn't sign on the bottom of.

They went to a firm that took it. Three weeks later — different package, longer timeline — they called us back.

The point is what "fast" means when the work has your stamp on it.

A shipping container can be a gym — but the structural system that came with it stops working the moment you cut the first door.

Project: military fitness facilities built from modified shipping containers, deployed across multiple US bases.

Each unit had to be re-checked as a unique structure (every pe*******on kills shear capacity in the corrugated wall). Fitness equipment created concentrated dynamic loads no off-the-shelf container is sized for. And the same unit shipped to different jurisdictions with different wind speeds and seismic values — so anchorage and bracing went site-by-site.

A "standard" modular unit stops being standard the moment it crosses a jurisdictional line.

See the project: https://pe-se.com/portfolio/various-military-bases?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=2026-06&utm_content=spotlight-military-bases

Why we left a big firm to do one thing.

The math at a big practice: you bill 80% of your hours, the firm keeps 60% of the bill. Defensible if they give you depth, pipeline, and an insurance umbrella.

At a certain point the math stops working. Specialize before someone specializes around you.

The single dumbest thing in the 2024 IBC:

A 100,000 sf data center serving 40M users is the same risk category as a warehouse storing kitchen towels. Both Risk Category II.

The code pretends the consequences are the same. They aren't.

When the first hyperscale civil lawsuit lands, this section is what's getting cited.