We recently sat down with Noah Diaz, an Engineering Design Coordinator at PWI, to understand how ClearCalcs helps companies like PWI streamline their operations. Noah has been with PWI for over three years, contributing to the company’s success by assisting Darren Miller, PWI's VP of Engineering, standardizing designs, and conducting structural calculations.
PWI, founded in 1979 in Nappanee, Indiana, specializes in structural steel fabrication and has become a trusted partner for industries requiring mezzanines, crane systems, and fall protection solutions. Initially focused on agricultural equipment repair, the company has grown to serve a wide range of manufacturers, particularly in the industrial sector.
PWI works with both local and national manufacturers, offering customized structural systems designed to enhance efficiency and productivity. For example, the company partners with RV manufacturers like Grand Design RV and Keystone RV, helping them optimize plant layouts by designing mezzanines, cranes, and other structural components that fit their specific workflows.
“For example, if an RV manufacturer wants to set up a new plant, we’ll come in and lay out the most efficient way to run their operations. Then, we’ll design mezzanines, cranes, or other structural components to support their specific needs.”, says Noah.
In his role, Noah works closely with both the engineering and sales teams, ensuring that the solutions provided to customers are efficient, precise, and tailored to their specific needs. His work includes everything from sizing crane systems and mezzanine components to creating standardized templates that improve consistency across projects.
For Noah, the goal is always to simplify complex challenges:
“What I find successful is simplifying the complex problems—finding the most efficient way to create standard sizing and calculations. It’s all about enabling the team to work productively and delivering effective solutions to our customers.”
Before adopting ClearCalcs, PWI's engineering team relied on a mix of disparate tools and platforms to perform structural calculations.
Each tool handled a specific aspect of their projects, such as headers, columns, or load-bearing beams, requiring engineers to manually transfer data between different systems. This process was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors.
For instance, the team used separate websites and calculators for mezzanine designs, bridge crane sizing, and column loading. In some cases, they resorted to online research or creating their own spreadsheets to fill gaps in calculations.
Noah recalls how this fragmented approach slowed down their workflow:
“We had a lot of different tools—we were using this website and that website—and it wasn’t very effective for making things efficient. We needed a solution to bring all these tools into one package.”
This lack of integration presented several challenges:
For a company dealing with complex industrial projects, such as custom mezzanines and crane systems, these inefficiencies made it harder to maintain the precision and speed that PWI’s customers expected.
PWI’s engineering team needed a way to consolidate their tools into one unified platform, and ClearCalcs provided the solution.
By integrating key calculators for headers, beams, columns, and footers, ClearCalcs eliminated the need for multiple external platforms and spreadsheets, enabling engineers to perform all calculations in a single tool.
“We can, you know, do our headers, we do our cross members, we do our columns all in one package, which is just three different calculators out there.”
ClearCalcs plays a unique role in PWI’s workflow by facilitating close collaboration between the engineering and sales teams.
A key component of this workflow is PWI’s Traveler System, which tracks project details as they move between departments.
“The traveler goes from sales to engineering, where managers size the project using ClearCalcs. Then it goes to draftsmen who model it in CAD,” explains Noah.
By using ClearCalcs, the team can confidently make design recommendations, quickly adjusting dimensions or loads for accurate quotes and specifications. Noah highlights:
“Sales can quote mezzanines this size by this size according to what’s already calculated.”
This streamlined process reduces the workload for engineers and improves the overall speed of project delivery.
ClearCalcs has also enhanced collaboration across the engineering team, with at least seven or eight members—half the team—actively using the platform. By centralizing calculations and standardizing outputs, ClearCalcs enables smoother transitions between sales, engineering, and production.
One of ClearCalcs’ most impactful benefits is its ability to help PWI create standardized design templates, improving efficiency and ensuring consistency.
Noah leverages ClearCalcs to produce detailed charts and templates that streamline collaboration between the sales and engineering teams.
This process allows the sales team to provide accurate quotes quickly, while the engineering team benefits from consistent and reliable calculations. By referencing pre-calculated templates, sales staff can confidently quote projects and ensure calculations align with customer needs.
This not only accelerates the quoting process but also minimizes errors and improves profitability by reducing lead times.
ClearCalcs’ load linking functionality has significantly sped up PWI’s design process by automating the connection between different elements in a structure. For instance, engineers can link calculations for beams, headers, and columns, ensuring that changes in one area automatically adjust related components.
“The load linking feature is huge for us. Before, we had to use separate calculators and manually input data. Now, it’s as simple as clicking and selecting the element to link,” says Noah.
Additionally, ClearCalcs’ professional report generation has proven invaluable for both internal and external use. These reports are cleanly formatted, making them easy to share with customers, Professional Engineers (PEs), and other stakeholders.
PWI frequently uses these reports to validate designs or provide transparency to clients:
“The reports are very clean and show everything a customer or engineer needs to see. It saves us time when we need to share our calculations,” Noah explains.
ClearCalcs has become an integral part of PWI’s workflow, simplifying complex calculations and improving collaboration between teams. By centralizing tools and creating standardized processes, ClearCalcs helps PWI deliver precise, reliable solutions to their customers.
For Noah, success in his role is about enabling efficiency and simplifying challenges:
“I think going back to what success means to me is having calculators in order to do my job proficiently and efficiently.”
Using ClearCalcs allows Noah to have productive days where he can focus on creating standardized sizing charts and completing designs with ease:
“A productive day for me would be using our calculators and ClearCalcs efficiently so I can produce the sizing and charts that my teams need efficiently as well.”
Conversely, he notes how workflow efficiency is affected when tools aren’t functioning as expected:
“When I’m held back, when the calculators aren’t working like they’re in different tools or I don’t have the calculator I need to do that, that’s where it slows things down and makes things less efficient.”
ClearCalcs eliminates these barriers, empowering Noah and the PWI team to focus on delivering effective solutions to their customers.
Discover how ClearCalcs can simplify your workflow and enhance your team’s efficiency. Explore our calculator library to see how it fits your needs, or contact our sales team to discuss solutions tailored to your business.
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