Muangsangop Seniwongse, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, president of Seniwongse International Consulting Engineers in Boston, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Seniwongse has worked and contributed to the engineering industry in the United States for the past 22 years, and for the 28 years prior he was based in 13 other countries internationally. His were usually the largest infrastructure projects in those respective countries. The completed engineering projects of 50 years cover all major disciplines/sectors of civil engineering and all types of infrastructure, facilities, and structural types.
His first three years of practice were in Australia with the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Authority of New South Wales, the Sydney Water Board, and the New South Wales Department of Main Roads. In 1974, he joined the School of Civil Engineering of the Prince of Songkla University, in Thailand, as Acting Head of the Department. He left his faculty post in 1978 to join Australian and U.S. international consulting firms to work on mega transportation infrastructure projects spanning all of Thailand. Twenty years on, transportation infrastructure in there, including Bangkok, have been modernized, and the country has attracted the most tourists in the world in the past few years.
Some of the mega projects he led in design and construction are the eastern line of Singapore Mass Rail Transit, the 40-km viaduct of the Second Stage Expressway in Bangkok, the Underground Rail Transit in Taipei, and major trunk roads in Malaysia, Brunei, Afghanistan, India, and Saudi Arabia.
Bringing innovation to practice, as early as 1986 Seniwongse introduced continuity slab or link slab to minimize deck expansion joints for the 40-km six-lane viaduct in Bangkok. That minimum joint concept has since been adopted in many countries. In that project, he also introduced a new Truck Loading for Thai Highways which has since been adopted in Thailand and some neighboring countries. Based on these two innovations, he was awarded a lifetime fellowship by the Board of Professional Engineers of Thailand.
In the U.S., while in practice with the Louis Berger Group, he led the construction phase service of the $400 million portion of concrete and steel viaduct interchanges of the Boston Central Artery Project, and the $100 million Green Line Transit Relocation Project of MBTA in Boston. Switching to the power industry in 2008 to 2016, as lead structural engineer for the Shaw Group (Stone and Webster International), he led the design of the new (and first) Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear power plant. The construction of the first four units have been completed in China, operated successfully since 2017.
Seniwongse earned his master of engineering science degree in structural engineering from the University of New South Wales, and his doctorate in civil engineering from Texas Tech University. His Ph.D. dissertation was on structural response to tornadoes and extreme winds.
