Ensign Engineering Wins Top 2025 CFSEI Design Excellence Award, Commercial Category, for Onset Financial

Featured image: Onset Financial HQ. Project profile courtesy of CFSEI. Photo courtesy of Axis Architects.

The 55,000-square-foot Onset Financial headquarters in St. George, Utah, integrates seamlessly with the surrounding natural desert landscape. The offices offer employees striking views of the neighboring Snow Canyon peaks.

The four-story structure’s thoughtful design incorporates subtle shifts in the floor orientation, creating distinct building elevations on every level. The exterior features zinc metal panels paired with an aluminum curtain wall with high-performing glazing system, which enables durability and energy efficiency in the region’s extreme climate.

To achieve the project’s architectural vision, Ensign Engineering & Land Surveying, Inc., a member of the Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute (CFSEI), and Peter King Corp., a drywall, metal stud framing and painting contractor, collaborated closely to deliver a custom cold-formed steel (CFS) stud design. Ensign’s design met the project’s complex structural and aesthetic demands. The coordination ensured the execution of a façade that is as functional as it is visually compelling.

The project received the Design Excellence First Place — Commercial honor in the 2025 CFSEI Awards presented by the Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute (CFSEI).

Onset Financial headquarters in St. George, Utah, is the 2025 CFSEI Design Excellence First Place Award, Commercial category, winner. (Photo courtesy of Axis Architects.)

Ensign Engineering & Land Surveying, Inc. collaborated with Peter King Corp. to deliver a custom cold-formed steel (CFS) stud design. (Photo courtesy of Peter King Corp.)

Ensign Engineering & Land Surveying’s goal was to create eye-catching cloud shapes. The firm’s solutions helped solve structural design challenges related to the ride’s curved and organic cloud shapes.

Design Challenges and Solutions

The unique building elevations of the Onset Financial headquarters posed significant challenges. The design features angled walls, isolated walls, ribbon windows, large soffits, expansive curtain wall systems and non-stacking floors, all of which required careful consideration of the façade’s load path. The façade needed to accommodate vertical deflection and lateral drift while maintaining the structural integrity of the secondary structure. Coordination with the design team and contractor was key to the project’s success.

One notable challenge involved the sloped walls throughout the building elevations. These walls required special design considerations, as vertical studs within the sloped portions had to be vertically supported by the floor above. Adjacent non-sloped walls were ground-supported, creating vertical joints between the two sections.

The Wing Wall Framing detail designed by Ensign Engineering shows a sloped bottom track that uses a custom vertically slotted clip connection. (Detail courtesy of Ensign Engineering.)

To address this, the sloped bottom track of the wall used a custom vertically slotted clip connection as shown in Detail 060. This connection proved out-of-plane support for the track while allowing vertical differential movement between the sloped and non-sloped wall sections. This solution facilitated typical and efficient construction throughout the project and provided an economical approach for the sloped wall areas.

Another significant challenge occurred at the glazed walls on each building. The two-story sloped side pop-outs at these large windows required vertical studs on three sides in areas that extended beyond the building’s floor system. Crucial coordination with the architect and structural engineer ensured proper support for the CFS framing.

Wide-flange beams were extended past the floor with custom bend plates to support the CFS framing on all three sides of the pop-out, significantly simplifying the installation of the stud wall. While bend plates are typically used as pour stops for concrete floors, in this case, they solely supported the steel stud walls.

Successful collaboration between Ensign and Pete King Corp. ensured the issues were resolved before the CFS installation, minimizing on-site adjustments.

The Onset Financial HQ project required innovative use of cold-formed steel (CFS) to address complex design challenges. (Photo courtesy of Axis Architects.)

Engineering the Inward Facing Windows

Additional challenges emerged above the large, glazed walls. Because the windows were set inward from the building edge, no perimeter beam was available to support the top of the glazing.

Ensign addressed this by designing a kicked drop stud to support both the aluminum panel fascia and the glass glazing. (See Detail 051.) Since the stud could not hang from the metal deck above, a CFS box beam was designed to span between perpendicular wind-flange beams.

This detail ensured an uninterrupted load path from the glazing system through the CFS structure to the primary steel, with the box beam positioned slightly below the metal deck to accommodate differential deflection.

The 051 window framing detail by Ensign Engineering shows how a cold-formed steel (CFS) box beam and steel stud kickers were used to handle inward facing windows where no perimeter beam was available to support the top of the glazing. (Detail courtesy of Ensign Engineering.)

The mid-construction photo shows the cold-formed steel (CFS) framing designed to support both the aluminum panel fascia and the glass glazing. (Photo courtesy of Peter King Corp.)

Cold-formed steel (CFS) framing played a key roll in achieving the architect’s geometric design intent for the Onset Financial HQ building. (Photo courtesy of Axis Architects.)

Solution for Cantilevered Guardrails

The building’s exterior incorporates balconies with sweeping views, thoughtfully designed to connect employees with the outdoors. However, these balconies presented another design challenge.

The initial design of the railings called for a cantilever stud wall supported only at the balcony floor level, with a glass railing attached to the top of the cold-formed steel wall. The total wall height of the assembly was approximately 5’-6”, and due to the varying slope and height of the stud wall, using HSS tubes for support was not feasible.

Instead, a moment-resisting connection to the concrete deck was required. Initially, the clips were directly anchored into the concrete deck, but the connection capacity was insufficient. After further coordination with the design team, the SEOR was able to provide embed plates to weld to the CFS studs, ensuring the system could adequately support the stud and glass railings. Detail 046 illustrates this unique design solution, showcasing the success of team collaboration.

Cantilevered guardrail framing called for a moment-resisting connection to the concrete deck. The SEOR provided embed plates to weld to the cold-formed steel (CFS) studs, ensuring adequate support got the stud and glass railings. (Detail courtesy of Ensign Engineering.)

Onset Financial’s balcony railings were attached to the top of a cantilever cold-formed steel (CFS)  stud wall supported only at the balcony floor level. (Photo courtesy of Axis Architects.)

CFS Role Was Crucial

This project required innovative solutions to address complex design challenges. Understanding the role of CFS in the overall design was crucial in meeting site-specific requirements. Through close coordination and creative problem-solving, the team successfully delivered a structural CFS wall system that met the project’s unique façade design and performance criteria.

Read the complete story and obtain the complete design diagrams for Ensign Engineering and Land Surveying’s 2024 CFSEI Creative Detail Award here.

Additional Resources

• eBook: Specifying Cold-Formed Steel Framing: A Guide for Architects and Engineers
• Insights and Inspiration Take Center Stage at 2025 CFSEI Expo in Raleigh
• SFIA Reveals 7 Winners of the 2023 Industry Project Awards in Online Ceremony