Millennium Tower Retrofit Receives NCSEA, SEAOC, SEAONC Structural Engineering Excellence Awards
The Millennium Tower foundation upgrade project at 301 Mission Street in San Francisco continues to earn recognition for its innovative design and engineering achievement. The National Council of Structural Engineers Associations (NCSEA) honored the project with two top prizes in the 2025 Structural Engineering Excellence (SEE) Awards program. Led by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (SGH), the project received the Award for Excellence in the Forensic/Retrofit/Rehabilitation category and was also named a co-winner of the Structure of the Year – 2025 Award, recognizing the most outstanding project across all categories. SGH Consulting Principal Ron Hamburger and SGH alum Lachezar Handzhiyski accepted the award at the 2025 Structural Engineering Summit on 16 October 2025.
Earlier this year, the project also received top honors from the Structural Engineers Association of California (SEAOC) and the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC). SEAOC honored the project with the Excellence Award in the Retrofit/Alteration category and named it Project of the Year, the organization’s highest distinction recognizing outstanding structural engineering achievement statewide. SEAONC bestowed an Engineering Excellence award in the Retrofit/Alteration category.
The Millennium Tower is a 58-story luxury condominium completed in 2009. Located in downtown San Francisco, the building is founded on piles bearing in dense sands approximately 90 ft below grade, underlain by soft Bay Area clay soils. Over the following decade, the structure experienced approximately 17 in. of settlement and 17 in. of tilt toward the northwest—far exceeding initial geotechnical predictions. To address these issues, SGH developed a technically innovative and less invasive retrofit solution that involved installing 18 new 500-ton piles along the building’s north and west sides, extending to bedrock to arrest further settlement and enable gradual recovery of tilt. The two-year effort was completed in September 2023 while the building remained occupied. Early monitoring results show that the retrofit has successfully stabilized settlement and initiated gradual tilt recovery, validating the design’s effectiveness.
“Delivering this retrofit required creative thinking and steadfast teamwork,” said SGH Consulting Principal Ron Hamburger, who led the project. “Despite the complexity and intense public attention, the project team remained focused on the technical issues and executed a solution that stabilized the structure and restored trust in its long-term performance.”
SGH partnered with the Millennium Tower Association, Slate Geotechnical Consultants, and Shimmick Construction to complete the project.
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