News

John A. Martin & Associates (JAMA) has opened an office in Oakland, an expansion that expands the firm’s capabilities and extends the service range to Northern California and beyond.

It’s Job Fair season across California, which means our engineers get to meet amazing students, share our vision of engineering excellence, and give out lots of swag. If you’re a student interested in learning about JAMA’s internship opportunities or life in our NorCal or SoCal offices, stop by our tables at one of these upcoming events: • SEAOSC Job Fair – Wednesday, Feb 5 • Cal Poly SLO Job Fair – Saturday, Feb 8 • Stanford Job Fair – Tuesday, Feb 11 • Berkeley Job Fair – Wednesday, Feb 12

Senior Project Manager Ben Rogowski stumbled onto a little bit of JAMA history this week with As Built drawings of the Amestoy Elementary School in Gardena, CA. It turns out that JAMA founder John A. “Jack” Martin was the engineer of record for the original school, constructed in 1955. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to work on this facility again, with a modernization and building addition currently in the works with CSDA Design Group!

JAMA is excited to introduce Kelly Kim – an important part of our expansion plan for 2020. As a shop drawing detailer and project coordinator, Kelly is helping us work across the contractor/designer divide to create structural drawings in parallel with steel details. Following are excerpts from an interview with Kelly: Professional experience: 15+ years of Structural steel detailing and 10+ years as an Autodesk software developer with B.S. in Architectural Engineering. Why JAMA: because we share the same vision. “Working as a steel detailer, I’ve always thought that someone in my position should work closely with structural engineers and doing so offer synergy and improved results. It’s exciting that this thinking is in line with JAMA’s business plan – to provide better, differentiated services to clients. We’re already working to achieve this elevated position together by continuously interacting across BIM/CAD staff, Structural Engineers, and members of the firm’s A

JAMA’s LA Office was featured among ten inspiration-worthy workspaces on Archinect’s Pinterest Board. Our space, showing the breakroom cubbies that are often used for casual meetings, semi-private conversations or even as lunchtime quiet spots, was the highlights, and was featured among other spaces for Shake Shack, Presidio Venture Capital, Diane Von Furstenberg’s Headquarters, and Camp Fenix. Spaces were all over the world. Having a highly functional, well-designed environment goes a long way towards helping us achieve engineering excellence. Check out the full article, and all inspirational spaces: https://archinect.com/news/article/150176933/10-new-workspace-designs-for-your-friday-inspiration

A highlight of JAMA employee’s social calendar is the Family Holiday Party – a happy hour celebration each December that invites employees and their families. This December more than 80 people, including 15+ kids, joined for ornament decorating, food and cocktails, a magic show by the one and only “Kentini”, a Santa Claus appearance, and hand-picked gifts for the kids (made possible by lists from the parents and lots of help from Amazon Santa).

Each month JAMA’s marketing department tries to shed a little extra light on a project so staff, colleagues and clients can see firsthand the ways we’re serving our clients and the industry with engineering excellence. This month’s spotlight project is The Hatch – a flexible lab and office space for emerging bioscience and tech companies. Designed by BAM Architecture Studio, the adaptive reuse and conversion transformed an 80-year old, 22,000 square foot wooden bow truss factory and warehouse into a thriving bioscience incubator. Workspaces provide multi-tenant offices, conference rooms, shared amenities, and parking for smaller companies that are interested in a community setting but are only nominally beyond their initial start-up setup. Individual tenant spaces offer both wet and dry labs with access to a shared auditorium for presentations and seminars. Structurally, the project required a voluntary seismic upgrade of the existing warehouse structure, which included new plywood roo

Senior Project Engineers Adena Nik and Sam Domiati have been busy these days with two of JAMA’s CoreSite Data Center projects. The 4-story, 175,000 SF SV8 (Silicon Valley 8) project in Santa Clara is nearly complete, with individual floor build-outs happening currently. The LA3 project has a way to go, with only steel framing complete. JAMA is thrilled to have data center projects in both NorCal and SoCal. Photo credit Tiemo Mehner/DCM.