The real-world lessons and opportunities afforded by the competition, however, remained the same.

“It was pretty much like my senior capstone design project condensed into one weekend,” said Erin Bereyso, S.M.ASCE, a second-time Student Days attendee. “It was a lot of work but a lot of fun too.”

CI Student Days is a summer staple of the ASCE calendar, typically happening over the course of a long weekend as an in-person gathering of some of ASCE’s best and brightest civil engineering students for a series of presentations, networking events, and the team competition.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, last year’s event focused on webinars and did not include a team challenge. But this summer, with more planning time and a year’s experience of organizing virtual events, the program committee – chaired by Gabrielle Grompone, EIT, MSCE, A.M. ASCE – was able to develop a Student Days schedule that included a fully online heavy civil challenge and special features that took advantage of the virtual platform.

“Last year was like the beginning of being online,” said Jose Wu, S.M.ASCE, another second-time Student Days attendee. “I can say with certainty, nobody was used to the new normal yet. But probably because we have a little more experience now, this year was easier to work in the virtual setting.”

The 2021 Student Days featured three weeks of webinars (three per week complete with assignments for the student attendees) on topics including proposals, scheduling, construction management and value engineering, and estimating, among others.

The competition split the attendees into teams, requiring them over the course of about 72 hours to develop a written and oral real-world construction project proposal that considers local laws and regulations, surrounding residential and commercial areas, and traffic effects.

There were even planned curveballs thrown at the teams midway through the weekend.

“You have to build a proposal, but they keep giving you new information and circumstances. What if this happened? Or what would you do if this changed?” Wu said.

“That was definitely challenging. But it can happen in real life – suddenly the client wants to change something. It was very interesting, but I’m glad they did it that way.”

Bereyso, a 2021 ASCE New Face of Civil Engineering college honoree, starts graduate school next week at Virginia Tech, studying environmental engineering. She served as one of the team captains at Student Days and won the award for overall best speaker during the presentation portion of the competition.

“I was the only person in the Student Days competition who didn’t have any specifically construction background,” Bereyso said. “So that was intimidating going into it. But there were definitely things that I was able to take away from it that apply not only to construction but to project management in general.

“Developing those kinds of skills – like communication, especially in today’s virtual society – it was really good experience.”

And Wu, also a team captain, navigated the challenges of managing his group online over different time zones. His team, dubbed “Lancer,” earned the 2021 Student Days team challenge championship.

“I think whether we won or not, the team was still be proud of the work because we gave our best,” Wu said. “It was more about having the experience; that was the rewarding thing.”

He added, laughing a little, though, “It was still a nice feeling, winning the competition.”

Learn more about CI Student Days.

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The legislation would mark the largest U.S. infrastructure investment in generations; $550 billion over the next five years for the nation’s roads, bridges, rail, airports, clean water, and public transit – all infrastructure sectors that ASCE has been advocating for over the last three decades with its Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.

“I’m ecstatic. There’s nothing in my tenure with ASCE that compares to this,” said Paul Maron, P.E., M.ASCE, a project manager for Strand Associates in Louisville and a longtime infrastructure advocacy champion with the ASCE Kentucky Section.

“When it comes to reinvesting in our infrastructure, for so long we’ve just been doing the bare minimum, making very modest, incremental improvements. But this, I think, is a giant leap forward. And I hope this sets an expectation for more bills like this – not just as a response to a pandemic, but what we should be doing for our future generations going forward.”

The bill must pass the House of Representatives (with debate set to start as early as Aug. 23) before it would go before President Joe Biden to be signed into law. Still, passage in the Senate clears a huge roadblock toward realizing the kind of legislation ASCE members have been calling their representatives and senators about and attending legislative fly-ins to discuss for decades.

“Some of us with our group here in Kentucky, yeah, we gave ourselves a little pat on the back this week,” Maron said, with a laugh. “We’ve been meeting with our congressional delegation, following up with emails, really doing what we can to develop personal relationships with the staff, continuing to keep those consistent messages – not coming from a partisan position but helping as subject-matter experts.

“And I can’t say how much of a difference we made in getting this done, but I’d like to think we at least helped.”

Long-term effort

The first ASCE infrastructure report card grades dates back to 1988, when America’s infrastructure earned a C grade. Since then, the Society has issued seven more report cards, including the 2021 edition released this past March, and ramped up its overall advocacy initiative – including the Key Contact program, the annual fly-in events, Infrastructure Week partnerships, and a wide range of regularly released state report cards.

And while it may seem that those advocacy roads have all led to this summer’s infrastructure bill, there have been many legislative victories and signs of progress along the way – the Water Resources Development Act in 2016 and America’s Water Infrastructure Act in 2018, to name two recent examples.

Jim Pajk, P.E., M.ASCE, an assistant administrator of design and construction for the city of Columbus Department of Public Service, has been a stalwart of ASCE advocacy efforts with the Central Ohio Section for nearly 20 years and earned the ASCE Civil Engineer Advocate of the Year Award in 2016. He cited the 2019 Ohio legislation that increased the state’s gas tax as an important accomplishment. Pajk, though, is more apt to measure progress by the relationships he’s formed than the policies he’s influenced.

“I’ve always told people, it’s not that first year or that second year. But as you develop those contacts, moving forward, you see it change,” said Pajk, who was one of three ASCE members recently invited by CNN to attend a town-hall event with President Biden in Ohio.

“Maybe I get a call from Sen. [Rob] Portman’s office about something, or I get a call from Sen. Sherrod Brown asking for my thoughts. You get invited to attend certain meetings. You start developing those connections, and that’s when I think you start to feel like you’re making a difference.”

In West Virginia, Tabitha Lafferre, A.M.ASCE, made a unique contribution to the push for infrastructure investment by blending her role as a state report card co-chair and a civil engineering professor at Fairmont State University. She taught a class on the report card, and several of her students earned bylines in the 2020 Report Card for West Virginia’s Infrastructure.

“It’s very rewarding as both a civil engineer and an educator to help push this forward and be able to work with our nation’s leaders to better our infrastructure,” Lafferre said.

Perhaps not coincidentally, both West Virginia senators – Republican Shelley Moore Capito and Democrat Joe Manchin – played key roles in crafting the bipartisan infrastructure framework.

“It’s great to see our West Virginia senators investing so much of their time helping with a bipartisan solution for infrastructure,” Lafferre said. “From day one, we’ve been seeing both of them talk about infrastructure. We also have great representatives who we’ve talked with, and they’re very much on board with infrastructure investment. It’s been great to see how open they’ve all been, always willing to take a phone call from me or the ASCE West Virginia Section, reaching out to us for resources.”

Hope for the future

At a time in American life often defined by division, ASCE has focused its infrastructure advocacy work as a potential unifier, a nonpartisan point of emphasis. So it was notable that the infrastructure bill transcended party lines as it passed the Senate.

“It’s always been said that infrastructure is a bipartisan issue,” Pajk said. “And it’s nice to see senators working on something that’s important to the country, that we can find common ground on. It’s good to see that workability, that governing we used to have on issues that are important. That’s what gives me that hope.”

It’s hope that has sustained the ASCE members working toward this goal; hope that will continue to push the advocacy efforts forward.

“I think it’s just really encouraging that it’s actually happening,” Maron said. “I hope that Congress and the executive branch see the benefits of this kind of investment and realize that it’s not a one-off. There are true economic and social advantages to continue to invest in infrastructure at these kinds of levels.

“We’ve been talking about the need for a big infrastructure bill, a big reinvestment for decades. And it’s finally here.”

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The two organizations plan to run regional competitions at ASCE student symposia throughout North America with a national championship scheduled for May. The groups previously worked together on the competition but separated three years ago. The new partnership runs for an initial term of five years.

“With both AISC and ASCE committed to promoting safe, sustainable, and innovative practices and technologies, we are pleased to renew this partnership and join forces in developing, educating, and motivating the next generation of design and construction professionals,” said ASCE Executive Director Tom Smith.

“Our vision for all ASCE student symposia includes a portfolio of competitions and professional development opportunities that provide exceptional value to our student members. The steel bridge competition is a popular event, and our students will be thrilled to see it added to the symposia program.”

“This new agreement also provides a foundation for ASCE to build upon the successful North American competition through steel bridge competitions in other global regions,” Smith continued. “More than ever, civil engineering is a global practice. What better way to advance our profession than to promote global exchange at the collegiate level?” 

The organizations severed their longtime steel bridge partnership in 2018, meaning that the steel bridge competition was not an official ASCE student activity during the past three school years. During that time, ASCE created new Society-wide student competitions and built a new conference structure to better connect students with Society leaders and professional development opportunities.

The upcoming school year marks the launch of ASCE’s student symposia, which will now include the steel bridge competition in addition to the recently created events and competitions.

“Personally, I am very excited that our two organizations renewed their partnership,” said Scott Schiff, Ph.D., M.ASCE, a professor and undergraduate program director in the civil engineering department at Kansas State University and chair of the ASCE Committee on Student Conferences and Competitions.

“The Committee on Student Conferences and Competitions, with the support of the Committee on Student Members and the Board of Direction, has been actively engaged in reimagining student symposia to create flagship events that appeal to and provide exceptional value to ASCE student members.

“Having this renewed partnership allows the student steel bridge competition to be offered along with other established Society-wide competitions that span across multiple civil engineering disciplines. All these competitions provide opportunities for students to showcase their civil engineering knowledge, creativity, and ingenuity, as well as demonstrate teamwork, leadership, and communication skills.”

The student steel bridge competition began in 1987, challenging student teams to develop a scale-model steel bridge to fit a given hypothetical environment. Each team must determine how to design and fabricate a bridge and then plan for an efficient assembly under timed construction at the competition. Bridges are then load-tested and weighed.

The competition has long been a hallmark of the ASCE student experience and a formative learning experience for generations of civil engineers.

Tom Miller, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, associate professor of civil and construction engineering at Oregon State University and the school’s steel bridge team advisor for decades, remembers how the educational value of steel bridge showed up during his team’s very first competition nearly 30 years ago.

The Oregon State students were concerned that their bridge was too heavy and would take too long to construct, so they plotted drastic action.

“The judges that year had removed the lateral load test from the contest,” Miller said. “So, our team unanimously decided to remove the bracing of the top chord, seeing that as its main purpose.”

It seemed like a good fix until …

“As the bridge was loaded with the 2,500 pounds, the top chords of the arched truss buckled under the compression forces, and the bridge collapsed,” Miller said.

“As one student, Karl Birky, said, ‘I learned more in that few seconds when the bridge collapsed than in any of Dr. Miller’s classes!’”

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The Pennsylvania Turnpike was designated an ASCE landmark in 1988.  Here are five things you didn’t know about the Pennsylvania Turnpike:

1. The turnpike was built primarily along the right-of-way of a never completed railroad venture, the South Pennsylvania Railroad, including seven bored and abandoned tunnels.
2. The Pennsylvania Turnpike appeared in the Russian film Brother 2.
3. On the date it opened, Oct. 1, 1940, at midnight, traffic jams occurred along its length as thousands of people went for pleasure drives.
4. The turnpike had no enforced speed limit when it opened, except for the tunnels.
5. The turnpike has appeared in multiple songs, including George Vaughn Horton’s “Pennsylvania Turnpike, I Love You So,” Billy Joel’s “You’re My Home,” and Why’s? “Probable Cause.”

Members of ASCE’s History and Heritage Committee have been learning fun and interesting facts about HCELs around the world to share in the new “5 Things You Didn’t Know About …” series. As the committee continues to build an inventory of all HCEL projects, members of the committee and other volunteers have been visiting sites to photograph landmarks and ASCE plaques as well as assess their conditions. If interested in volunteering to help the committee record these landmarks, please contact committee chairman David Gilbert ([email protected]).

Learn more about the committee’s work and the ASCE landmark program.

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Specifically, ASCE’s improvised operating solutions and spending adjustments helped compensate for COVID-caused revenue declines in fiscal year 2021, resulting in what turned out to be an overall successful financial year. The board-approved fiscal year 2022 budgets continue these new operating concepts with an improved balance of revenues and expenses.

“We are in better shape than expected,” said ASCE President Jean-Louis Briaud, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE, Dist.M.ASCE. “The outlook is significantly better than last year, and the future looks brighter.”

Meanwhile, ASCE total membership, as reported to the board, has rebounded to levels 1.2% higher than pre-pandemic numbers. It’s a welcome sign as the Society has worked to pivot toward virtual events and other new resources that meet the everchanging needs created by the pandemic.

“I am so proud of all those who worked to accomplish this major result,” Briaud said. “From the staff to the volunteers, from the students to the life members, from the board members to the institute presidents, all have contributed to make this possible.

“However, we must not relax. The pandemic is not over. We must stay very vigilant as a Society to continue serving our members.”

Opportunities for collaboration

ASCE Construction Institute President Daniel Cook, P.E., P.Eng, S.E., M.ASCE, updated the board on the work of the Region and Institute Presidential Group, a collection of geographic region directors and institute leaders. The group’s list of priorities included:

• Interactive and collaborative opportunities

• Membership growth and retention

• Student transition

“Two years ago, I felt uneasy about perceived friction between those two groups. It did not make any sense as both the regions and the institutes, while very different, contribute equally to the broad success of ASCE,” Briaud said.

“So I created the RIPG to address this issue, and I am delighted to see how the two groups are so much more conscious of each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how willing they are to help each other grow. I really feel the progress and think that they will live happily ever after.”

In other streamlining efforts, the Task Committee to Review Organizational Efficiency presented a list of suggestions designed to improve the wide breadth of ASCE’s operations. Among the many ideas: centralizing and consolidating annual elections, creating a database for different Society groups’ calendars, and simplifying budget procedures.

Other meeting highlights

• The board voted to change the name of the ASCE Blue Sky Innovation Contest to the ASCE Innovation Contest, while making it a Society-wide competition, starting at the 2022 student symposia.

• The board approved revision of 57 public policy statements as brought by the Public Policy and Practice Committee.

• ASCE’s list of historic landmarks grew by three. The board voted to designate the Brooklyn Waterworks and the Pathfinder Dam in Alcova, Wyoming, as National Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks; and the Sydney Opera House in New South Wales, Australia, as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

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Anwar Saeed Akhtar, P.E., F.ASCE, chief engineer and vice president in Houston for Fugro, a multidiscipline international firm, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.

Akhtar’s professional career began in 1998 as a staff engineer at a small firm in Houston. During his career, he has progressed from staff and field engineer to chief engineer by taking on challenging projects and developing innovative project-specific solutions. He has contributed to the efficient design and stability of structures in the geotechnical services industry for over 23 years.

As chief engineer, he provides project guidance and supervision to geotechnical teams. Having managed teams consisting of a few geotechnical engineers to a department of over 50 professionals providing CMET services, Akhtar’s professional experience has been extensive in handling projects from design to construction. Along with serving as a technical resource to Fugro offices across Texas, he is also tasked with business development for all service lines and proposal submission for large projects. Anwar’s other geotechnical work involves various publications relating to electrical resistivity, geomaterials, and delineation of subsurface contamination using an electric cone penetrometer.

Over the years, Akhtar has been involved in the ASCE Houston Branch as chair of Geotechnical, Construction, and Honors Committees. He has also served as the branch’s vice president of technical programs. Other committees where Akhtar has served include those of the American Council of Engineering Companies (Houston branch) and North Houston Association. He was also affiliated with the Houston branch of TCEL/Geoprofessionals Servicing Texas, where he served on the board of directors and as secretary/treasurer, vice president, and president.

Outside of his professional career, Akhtar gives back to his community by volunteering his time to build a better community and living environment for himself, family, friends, and other Texans. He was a member of the MAS Katy Center Construction Committee in 2018 for the design and construction of a multipurpose hall and currently volunteers as a member of the AlHuda Center Construction Committee. Another volunteer endeavor is seeking time and monetary donations for public betterment initiatives.

Akhtar obtained his master’s degree in civil engineering (geotechnical engineering concentration) from Texas A&M University.

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Russell E. Tripp, P.E., F.ASCE, senior aviation engineer at CH2M Hill (now part of Jacobs), has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.

Tripp has more than 50 years of worldwide civil engineering design, construction, and management experience, and has been employed by engineering firms, land developers, construction contractors, and government agencies.

He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, with 28 years of Regular Army and Army Reserve service in a variety of engineer, special operations, and other assignments in the United States, Thailand, Germany, Vietnam, and Panama. After completing his Regular Army service in 1971, he used his G.I. Bill benefits for flight training, and he is a licensed commercial pilot with airplane, seaplane, and helicopter ratings.

Tripp’s aviation interest led to five years of service with the FAA, managing federal aid projects for airport improvements in Florida until 1979. Since that time his entire professional career has been in airport design, construction and related planning, and other consulting services. His work in the U.S. has included projects at public airports in Washington, Oregon, California, Utah, Texas, Kentucky, New York, and Florida. His foreign experience includes design, construction, and planning/evaluation work for public and military airports in The Philippines, Guam, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Dubai, Afghanistan, India, several Caribbean islands, and Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.

His ASCE participation began at the University of Cincinnati, where he was president of the student chapter, and he is a current member and former treasurer of the ASCE Miami-Dade Branch in Florida.

Tripp’s most unique experience was in 1997, when he represented CH2M Hill in a delegation of consultants visiting North Korea. The delegation evaluated improvements needed at an airfield as part of a then-anticipated internationally supported nuclear power plant replacement program. The delegation members traveled on North Korean aircraft and had direct working and social contact with North Korean officials. They also made escorted visits to several nonmilitary sites within the country.

Tripp’s college-level education includes a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Cincinnati, an MBA from Florida International University, and a diploma from the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.

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Born in Detroit and having moved to Chicago as a boy, Avery Brundage enrolled at the University of Illinois and graduated from the civil engineering program with honors in 1909. During college, Brundage played basketball and ran track, contributing to Illinois’ Western Conference championship track team during his senior year. Upon graduation, Brundage accepted a position as a construction superintendent for the Chicago architectural firm Holabird & Roche, where he supervised construction for one out of every 30 buildings that were constructed in Chicago during the time of his three-year tenure.

While he was working as a construction engineer, Brundage continued to run track as an amateur, including the 1912 Stockholm Olympics where he competed in discus and finishedsixth and 16th respectively, in the pentathlon and decathlon. In 1915, he founded the Avery Brundage Co., which was active in the Chicago construction industry until 1947. Among the structures built by his company was the (former) Marshfield Trust and Savings Bank, now known as the Brundage Building, which was completed in 1924 and designated a Chicago landmark in 2008.

During the 1910s, Avery Brundage sustained his track career, as he won the U.S. national all-round title on three occasions (1914, 1916, and 1918). By the 1920s, his penchant for athletics outshone his civil engineering, and in 1928 he became the president of the Amateur Athletic Union and succeeded Douglas MacArthur as president of the American Olympic Committee. Eight years later, July 30, 1936, Brundage was elected to the International Olympic Committee, a position that he held for 36 years, spanning the controversial 1936 Berlin Olympics and ill-fated 1972 Munich Olympics.

In 1952, Avery Brundage was named thefifth president of the International Olympic Committee, a position that he held for 20 years. Although better known for his Olympic leadership, Brundage left his civil engineering legacy in Chicago through his construction of a Ford Motor Co. assembly plant, the 23rd Street Viaduct, high-rise apartment buildings, the landmark Brundage Building, and the modernization of the LaSalle Hotel, which he owned and where he resided for many years. Avery Brundage died May 8, 1975, and is interred in Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery.

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The Society’s flagship event, the ASCE 2021 Convention, will once again deliver enlightening, even entertaining activities and events built around celebrating the greatness of civil engineering overall. This includes a closing speaker who will take attendees to Mars and back.

And this year, the virtual gathering is bringing more useful technical knowledge to the table with what ASCE is calling Tech Talks, a six-week series conducted by ASCE’s institutes and technical divisions that will kick off during the convention. Tech Talks is included with convention registration.

As was the case last year, the ASCE Convention is coming to participants instead of the other way around. The event happens Oct. 6-8, but the Tech Talks will be weekly. While it’s hard to replicate some in-person activities, the online format will include virtual networking events.

Built on the success of last year’s Virtual Technical Conference, Tech Talks will be geared to multidisciplinary topics, from smart building solutions to objective resilience and then some. Organized and led by top technical global leaders, Tech Talks will be conducted on an innovative, interactive platform. Participants will be able to advance their knowledge in their specialty, gain insights from advances in other disciplines, and earn as many as 15.5 PDHs toward license renewal.

Objective resilience is among the first topics of the Tech Talks and will be organized by the Engineering Mechanics Institute the week of the convention. Attendees will learn practical applications drawn from an upcoming, extensive four-volume manual of practice on the subject.

The manual of practice “is a major initiative led by the chair of the EMI Objective Resilience Committee, Mohammed Ettouney, Ph.D., P.E., F.AEI, Dist.M.ASCE, that started in 2015,” said EMI’s staff director Amar Chaker. The “massive document will be published as four separate, free-standing books, focusing on policies and strategies; objective processes; technology; and applications.”

The potential PDHs possible from Tech Talks will come on top of the 8.5 PDHs that can be earned in convention sessions. Before the convention, attendees can take part in what is being called an Innovation Bootcamp, which will teach you how to build collaborative teams that fuel innovation-oriented firms and capitalize on pioneering products and services.

After convention participants’ minds are filled with new approaches, the closing keynote speaker will take them for a ride aboard the Mars Perseverance Rover. Moogega “Moo” Cooper, Ph.D., is part of the crew at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that helped the rover set down successfully on the Red Planet in February.

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Glenn Bell, P.E., S.E., C.Eng, F.SEI, Dist.M.ASCE, and Andrew Herrmann, P.E., F.SEI, Pres.12.ASCE, started CROSS-US (Collaborative Reporting on Structural Safety) in 2019 to collect, review, and publish issues and incidents regarding structural safety.

Its work has never felt so relevant.

“The recent disaster at the Surfside condominium underscores CROSS’ mission,” Bell said. “By careful and continuous study of failures, near misses, and safety incidents we can avoid tragedies like this.

“This should be our profession’s call to action to contribute to and learn from the CROSS system.”

Modeled on the British CROSS-UK system, CROSS-US accepts reports from any professionals who work with or have knowledge of structural safety issues. The reports are anonymized to keep the submitter confidential. CROSS-US’s expert panel then reviews and annotates the report. Then, following a legal review, CROSS-US publishes the report on its website.

Two years in, CROSS-US has a new website with a streamlined system for searching and accessing reports.

Bell and Herrmann recently spoke with Civil Engineering Source about their work with CROSS-US.

Civil Engineering Source: Why do you think this kind of collaborative reporting is so essential to changing the profession?

Andrew Herrmann: “In the United States, engineers are inhibited by their insurance companies and lawyers. So, if you happen to make a mistake or if you have something that’s not working well, you’re inhibited from talking about it. So, with CROSS, the confidentiality means that things can be brought to light so that other people can learn from mistakes. That’s the importance of it; that’s the beauty of it.”

Glenn Bell: “What we’re trying to do is get information that is usually very closely held by individuals and get it into the public in a shared and analyzed way. Andy has this saying, ‘Better to learn from others’ mistakes than to continue to make your own.’ And we know from the study of failures that if you don’t share information, we’ll only continue to make the same mistakes.

“The culture change in the profession is to collaborate, to share information freely, and really focus on improving structural safety by learning from past issues.”

Source: Do you feel that the industry in general is more open or interested in that kind of CROSS network of sharing than it may have been in the past?

Bell: “I think they are definitely more interested in the learning part. I think people understand the value in studying the type of information that CROSS puts out there. People are seeing it now as an ethical obligation to share information, so the interest is building.

“CROSS has been operational in the UK for 16 years now, so it’s more deeply imbedded in the culture there than it is yet in the U.S. But we’re seeing more people willing to share their own information and experiences.

Herrmann: “One of the nice things about Great Britain is that their Institution of Structural Engineers uses CROSS as part of its professional development – to actually look at other people’s mistakes so they can learn from them.”

Bell: “We’d love to get to the point where our professional-development hours are awarded and recognized in studying CROSS materials. It should be automatic reading for everybody.”

Source: We’re about two years since CROSS-US launched, a little over a year since the first publication of reports. Can you give us a status update on how the system has progressed?

Bell: “We now have over two dozen reports in the system that have been analyzed and published. All of them are really excellent learning lessons. We’ve gotten very good feedback on the value of the reports and the lessons learned.

“The more people see the CROSS system working well and see that the confidential nature of the system works and is protected, the more confidence we’re building to publish more reports. This is exactly the way it happened in the U.K. as well.

“As leaders of CROSS, Andy and I are really saying that we all have an ethical obligation to contribute to the system and share information. It’s part of our obligation as professional engineers to help improve practice and advance safety.

“And this is a very direct and powerful way of doing that.”

Learn more about CROSS-US, including how you can access the reports or contribute information of your own, at cross-safety.org.

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A number of Fu’s milestone advancements were adopted by AASHTO’s Manual of Bridge Evaluation (MBE) 2018 in a completely revised Section 7, “Fatigue Evaluation of Steel Bridges.” These advancements include a new concept of using field inspection as a proof test to update remaining-fatigue-life estimates. This approach used structural reliability theory to ensure safety of bridges. Along with other original work, this important concept was pioneered by Fu in several publications. MBE is the mandatory and governing code for evaluating the safety and remaining life of all United States roadway bridges.

Fu’s new concepts and approaches were first implemented in the 2015 interim Revisions of the BME and have been practiced nationwide since then. They have helped bridge structural engineers of this country, and in many cases saved a significant amount of resources where overconservatively negative remaining fatigue life is encountered and optimum posting rules are needed.

The Ernest E. Howard Award is given to a member of the Society who has made a definite contribution to the advancement of structural engineering through research, planning, design, or construction.

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Dashti is honored for her work in advancing the state of the art in evaluating and improving the seismic performance of structures on liquefiable soil deposits. She has excelled in producing high-quality research, primarily in the areas of the influence of liquefaction on structures founded on shallow foundations, and seismic soil-structure interaction of underground structures. Her over 45 articles are published in the highest-quality journals in the field. The vast majority are authored with her Ph.D. students, postdoctoral scholars, and colleagues at the University of Colorado, and cover a wide range of topics – physical modeling studies, numerical methods, earthquake ground motion characterization, innovative sensing technologies, etc.

Dashti’s annual citation count has exploded, nearly doubling from 2017 to 2019. Many of her grants come from very competitive sources such as the National Science Foundation. Her work itself is also helping change the practice of earthquake engineering in terms of the interactions between geotechnical and structural engineers.

Lin is recognized for research that has led to significant advances in understanding risks associated with hurricanes and their impact on coastal infrastructure. She was the first to quantify tropical cyclone (TC) storm surge flood hazards in a changing climate, employing climate and sea-level-rise projections, TC simulations, and high-resolution hydrodynamic modeling – see, e.g., her signature papers by Lin et al. in Nature Climate Change (2012) and Proceedings of the Nation Academy of Sciences (2016).

She recently extended these methods and developed flood hazard maps for the entire U.S. East and Gulf Coasts considering the current and future-projected climates, providing insights into the spatial and temporal variation of future-flood risks.

Mauter is honored for her pioneering work on advancing systems, processes, and materials for energy-efficient water desalination and fit-for-purpose reuse, and for her visionary leadership as the research director of the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI). She is the principle investigator of the Water and Energy Efficiency for the Environment (WE3Lab) at Stanford University and the research director of the National Alliance for Water Innovation. Her research advances the energy efficiency of desalination through innovation in water treatment technology, optimization of water management practices, and redesign of water policies.

Ongoing research efforts include (1) developing automated, precise, robust, intensified, modular, and electrified (A-PRIME) water desalination technologies to support a circular water economy; (2) addressing the water constraints to deep decarbonization by quantifying the water requirements of energy systems and developing new technologies for high-salinity brine treatment; and (3) supporting the design and enforcement of water-energy-food policies (e.g., Effluent Limitation Guidelines, the Clean Power Plan, CA Sustainable Groundwater Management Act). These interconnected and complementary research topics integrate Mauter’s disciplinary background in civil and environmental engineering with her postdoctoral training in public policy and her recent passion for using satellite data to inform high-resolution engineering and public policy solutions. Her past research has shaped the field in important ways, including rethinking where and how water treatment technologies are deployed, redefining the inputs to water desalination processes, and re-envisioning membrane materials for enhanced process performance.

Taflanidis is recognized for enhancing the resilience of communities to natural hazards such as hurricanes and earthquakes through decision-support tools and comprehensive risk assessment frameworks that leverage the integration of advanced statistical computing and machine learning methods. His work in surrogate modeling has transformed coastal probabilistic risk assessment. USACE now uses the numerical codes developed by his group for all products they develop for coastal risk estimation. The New Jersey Department of Community Affairs is promoting the use of the storm hazard projection tool developed by Taflanidis in planning and emergency management, and both FEMA and NOAA have recently made strategic decisions to move in similar directions using the machine-learning methodologies that he has promoted in ENH.

Taflanidis’s work in risk-conscious design has developed new methodologies for design of vibration protective devices utilizing multiple life-cycle performance metrics. His ability to bridge the machine learning and NHE communities is enabling the development of advanced UQ tools for the NHERI SimCenter, promoting advanced computational simulation across the NHE community, including regional loss assessment.

Xu is honored for his significant contributions in advancing life-cycle environmental impact assessment of industrial systems. He has made groundbreaking contributions in understanding life-cycle environmental impacts of industrial systems, focusing on both empirical analysis and methodological development. His empirical research has investigated life-cycle environmental impacts of biofuels, electric vehicles, and automated vehicles to guide technology development for avoiding unintended environmental consequences.

His methodological work has developed computational methods to incorporate human behavioral dynamics and data-driven approaches to estimate missing data in life-cycle assessment, which has significant potential to transform the practice of life-cycle assessment in civil engineering and beyond. Today, Xu is recognized as one of the world leaders in life-cycle assessment for industrial systems.

The Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prizes are awarded to members of the Society, in any grade, for notable achievements in research related to civil engineering.  Preference is given to younger members (generally under 40 years of age) of early accomplishment who can be expected to continue fruitful careers in research.

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All seven of the CE Department’s required curriculum courses have content that is relevant to ABET’s student outcome 4, “an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.”

In addition to coursework, the program promotes professionalism, licensure, and ethics topics in the student organizations and their activities. The students are extremely active in ASCE, Chi Epsilon, Chartered Institute of Building, Concrete Canoe, Deep Foundation Institute, Engineers Without Borders, the New York Water Environment Association, Steel Bridge, and the Structural Engineers Association of New York. Many of these organizations regularly host networking and professional development activities for all CE majors, and also practice professionalism skills through the projects or competitions of the organization.

The Walter LeFevre Award recognizes academic institutions for their outstanding actions in promoting licensure, ethics, and professionalism.  

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Amabili’s exceptional research contributions span several areas of dynamics, solid mechanics, and fluid-structure interaction – in particular, in (1) the development of higher-order nonlinear shell theories with thickness deformation, (2) dynamics of laminated glass plates under blast load, (3) identification of tensile forces on tie rods in ancient monuments, and (4) vibration of nuclear reactor internals.

In 2008 Amabili wrote the impressive monograph Nonlinear Vibrations and Stability of Shells and Plates, published by Cambridge University Press; it has already received 956 citations and is unanimously considered the most authoritative book on the subject. In 2018 a second book by Amabili appeared, again published by the prestigious Cambridge University Press, titled Nonlinear Mechanics of Shells and Plates in Composite, Soft and Biological Materials, a subject of high topical interest.

The Raymond D. Mindlin Medal is awarded to an individual in recognition of outstanding research contributions to applied solid mechanics.

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Zhang is at the College of Civil Engineering at Hunan University.

Lu is at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. 

The paper resolves a century-long issue on what the “effective stress” for soils is, which was introduced by Karl von Terzaghi in 1921 and has been a cornerstone of geotechnical engineering ever since.

The Norman Medal is bestowed upon the author or authors of a paper that is judged worthy of special commendation for its merit as a contribution to engineering science. 

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The paper is recognized for its exceptional importance in that it informs the emerging field of wastewater-based epidemiology. Indeed, the knowledge of virus fate and removal in treatment systems is key for the efforts directed at the environmental surveillance, identification, and prediction of viral outbreaks. Xagoraraki’s recent research is at the forefront of this broad initiative. Needless to say, the work is exceptionally timely and important now when we face the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Xagoraraki’s recognition by the research community as one of the pioneers in this area (with first impactful publications dating back to “prepandemic” times) lends additional value to the paper and its message. The benefits of the review extend beyond informing our response to catastrophic events such as COVID-19 and related public health crises. In a broader sense, the review brings to the fore the need for paradigm-shifting approaches to the design of wastewater treatment plants – a venerable field of research and practice that is ripe for a “rethink.” One can argue convincingly that virus removal should be one of design criteria for wastewater treatment plants. This can only be possible based on a robust understanding of virus removal mechanisms under a range of source water qualities and treatment conditions.  

O’Brien is a postdoctoral researcher and Xagoraraki is associate professor at Michigan State University. 

The ASCE State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering Award is presented to the individual, individuals, or committee that has prepared, for the benefit of the profession, the most outstanding paper that reviews and interprets state-of-the-art scientific and technical information.

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Vestroni’s academic and professional career spans 50 years. His research during these years has made a significant impact in the fields of structural mechanics, dynamics and nonlinear vibrations, engineering education, and mentoring of graduate and postgraduate students through institutional leadership positions and international organizational activities. He also influenced a generation of engineers and technicians through his critical contributions to the standard and codes while also promoting innovation in Italian institutions.

He received a summa cum laude Master of Science in Structural Engineering from the University of Rome La Sapienza in 1970, and began his academic career as a research assistant in the School of Engineering there. In 1977 he joined the University of L’Aquila, where he was appointed associate professor of structural dynamics in 1983 and full professor in 1986. He served as the coordinator of the Ph.D. program in structural engineering at Sapienza University as a full professor from 1988 to 2002. In 1994 he joined the university’s School of Engineering as a full professor and in 1998 was appointed head of the Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering for three running terms.

In 2007, he was elected dean of the faculty of engineering and served as dean until 2016. In 2003-2010, he was director of the International Master’s Program in Analysis and Control of Vibrations in Civil and Industrial Applications. In 2013 he was elected a member of the Instituto Lombardo, Accademia di Scienze e Lettere, Milano, Italy, and in 2015 he was elected a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, in Salzburg, Austria. In 2018, he was nominated Emeritus Professor by the Senate of Sapienza University.

The Theodore von Karman Medal is presented to an individual in recognition of distinguished achievements in engineering mechanics that are applicable to any branch of civil engineering.

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Lack of access to independent and effective end-to-end (E2E) transportation and mobility has life-altering implications for people with physical disabilities (PPD). Research has consistently shown that mobility constraints in PPD reduce access to education, employment, and healthcare; exacerbate physical and mental stress leading to other chronic morbidities; and impose a significant burden on families, caregivers, the healthcare system, and society. Collectively, the unrealized potential of PPD and their missed contributions to society are substantial.  Independent transportation and mobility in PPD notably enhances their quality of life by allowing social inclusion and promoting self-esteem while reducing caregiver burden. Despite significant technological advances in the last few decades, PPD who rely on wheeled mobility devices continue to face significant challenges when independently navigating inside complex indoor building environments.

Several technological solutions have been explored to address this issue in previous work. For example, vision-based techniques that utilize fiducial markers as visual cues for assisted navigation have received particular attention because of their cost-effectiveness, reconfigurability, and ease of installation. Although such previous work addressed indoor localization for assisted navigation, it did not adequately address the fundamental aspects of indoor path planning, particularly in the context of considering human preferences or physical constraints present in the built environment.

The study presented in the awarded paper addresses these key research gaps by developing fundamental rules for creating an indoor attribute-loaded graph network and a marker network map, developing a generic algorithm for determining optimal paths (instead of shortest paths only) from attribute-loaded networks and integrating the findings within an interactive user interface (UI). A scenario analysis followed by a usability study in a real physical environment was conducted to evaluate the navigation interface. The results strongly demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed navigation system and provided design insights for improving the usability and performance of the proposed approach. The research presented in this paper has developed a game-changing capability that has the potential of significantly improving the mobility of PPD in indoor buildings and other built environments.  

Mantha is visiting assistant professor at University of Sharjah, UAE; Menassa is an associate professor at the University of Michigan; Kamat is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan; and D’Souza is an assistant professor at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

The Arthur M. Wellington Prize is awarded to the author or authors of a paper on transportation on land, on the water, in the air, or on foundations, and closely related subjects.

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Yeh is a professor of civil and construction engineering and an adjunct professor in the College of Earth, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, both positions at the Oregon State University. He has had a long, productive, and impactful career in coastal engineering, especially in the area of tsunami science, engineering, and mitigation. He is being recognized for his broad and deep research contributions to coastal engineering science. Through his collaborative and interdisciplinary laboratory experiments and field studies, Yeh has helped spread our knowledge of coastal effects of tsunami to the general public. He is also instrumental in promoting interdisciplinary collaborative research in the coastal community.

Yeh’s innovative contributions include the following:

Advances in Tsunami Processes and Modeling. Tsunami hazards impacts are critical to harbor and coastal engineering design, particularly around the Pacific basin. Yeh’s theoretical, observational, and practical contributions in the areas of tsunami inundation, forces on structures, and erosion have contributed greatly to the coastal engineering profession’s ability to understand, model, and design for tsunami-based risk. His work has been adopted by FEMA to improve tsunami evacuation, structure design, and decision support. The lab and field data he has collected have served as benchmarks for community modeling efforts.  Yeh has been a long-time leader in the tsunami research field, organizing numerous workshops, serving on postevent investigation teams, leading research efforts, and collaborating broadly. He received the Hamaguchi Award in 2018 for his tsunami research contributions to coastal resilience.

Nonlinear Waves and Circulation. In addition to Yeh’s extensive research focused on tsunamis, he has also contributed to the theoretical and numerical modeling advances in nonlinear wave and circulation processes. The importance and scope of these contributions are reflected in the range of topics that he has published in top journals in the coastal engineering and science field and his nearly 5,000 citations.

Yeh has contributed extensively to the advancement of coastal engineering, directly benefiting coastal projects throughout the world. He has focused not only on theoretical advancements, but has built innovative tools that are applied to practical projects. He has published 10 book chapters and 90 journal articles along with numerous conference papers and reports, given 200 invited lectures, and served the community through journal editorship, organizing conferences and workshops, and teaching.

The John G. Moffatt–Frank E. Nichol Harbor and Coastal Engineering Award is given to a member of ASCE who has made definite contributions in the field of harbor and coastal engineering in the form of either written presentations or notable performance, and who serves to recognize new ideas and concepts that can be efficiently implemented to expand the engineering or construction techniques available for the harbor and coastal projects.

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Li has substantially impacted the field of smart structures technology in numerous ways. She has made seminal contributions to the area of structural health monitoring (SHM), and was the first to propose data science and engineering in that field. She also developed a series of machine-learning-based (ML-based) condition assessment approaches, which is a completely new approach enabling a wealth of monitoring data to be used. She has authored a book, Theory of Data Science and Engineering for SHM, and the proposed algorithms and approaches contained there have been  applied to evaluate the conditions and identify damage for more than 70 large bridges and buildings, e.g., the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, the Jiashao Bridge, and the National Aquatics Center.

She extended her research on SHM to the wind response of long-span bridges and is conducting cutting-edge studies in ML-based wind engineering. Li was the first to propose the general solution of partial/ordinary differential equations (PDE/ODE) using reinforced learning algorithms, ML-based anisotropy turbulence models, and ML-based prediction models for the flow field pressure on bluff bodies, all of which are very fundamental theories in wind engineering.

Li is a forerunner in research of self-sensing concrete using nanomaterial additives and was the first to find the crystallization of C-S-H (main gel in concrete) on the surface of nano-TiO2 and graphene. Her five papers on the topic have been cited 2,276 times in total.  

The George W. Housner Structural and Monitoring Medal recognizes outstanding research contributions to the broad field of structural control and health monitoring. 

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Williams is president and CEO of the civil engineering design and planning firm Graham Associates Inc., and has served as the mayor of Arlington since 2015. He was the civil engineer on many landmark projects in Arlington, such as AT&T Stadium, Glove Life Park, Parks Mall, IH-30 Three Bridges, and River Legacy Living Science Center.

In his engineering capacity Williams has managed the planning and layout of all the roadways and infrastructure in the entertainment district of Arlington, which includes the Ballpark and Cowboys Stadium. Under his direction, Graham Associates also planned the Nebraska Furniture Mart and related development for the City of the Colony.

He has had the privilege of working in cities and counties all over the metroplex and truly enjoys building communities through the work of engineering. He is a gifted speaker and communicator with an ability to anticipate challenges while casting a vision. He is also one of the leading economic development professional in the State of Texas. These and other skills have been recognized by Texas Tech University, who made Williams a Distinguished College of Engineering alumnus.

The Outstanding Public Official Award (formerly known as Civil Government Award) recognizes those members of the engineering profession who have rendered meritorious service in elective or appointive positions in government.

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Withiam is the editor of GEOSTRATA. He steers the periodical in providing practice-oriented content that has led many geotechnical engineers to recognize the quarterly as a top ASCE member value. GEOSTRATA was this year’s recipient of the Magazine of the Year award from the American Society of Business Publications Editors.

Pearson is recognized for championing the Society’s leadership in advancing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in the civil engineering profession, including the creation of MOSAIC, and for tireless advocacy of JEDI within and outside of ASCE.

The ASCE President’s Medal recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of eminent engineers to the profession, the Society, or the public.

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Barry is recognized for leading an inclusive and future-focused process to revise the ASCE Code of Ethics, the first such comprehensive revision in nearly 50 years.

Lipomanis is recognized for strengthening the Society’s support and engagement for students via leadership of the Student Presidential Group and cross-organizational collaboration.

Jacobson is recognized for strengthening the Society’s support and engagement for students via leadership of the Student Presidential Group and cross-organizational collaboration.

The William H. Wisely American Civil Engineer Award recognizes individuals or groups of individuals who are members of ASCE and who have made continuing efforts to promote appreciation for the history, tradition, developments, and technical and professional activities of the Society.

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The prize is awarded annually for the most well-written papers on professional ethics. This year’s paper topic was, During the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses and universities shut down and/or imposed other stringent measures to combat the spread of the virus. How should the civil engineering profession respond to this situation and what are our ethical responsibilities associated with civil engineering–related operations such as offices, universities, construction sites, exam centers, and transit systems in response to the pandemic?

The Committee on Student Members (CSM) reviewed 78 submissions and found the paper written by ASCE Student Member Elyce Pimentel, titled “Societal Ethics in Civil Engineering During the COVID-19 Pandemic,”to be well-written and her approach to the assigned topic to be insightful.

The Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students is awarded to the author or authors of a paper on professional ethics. Each year the specific topic of the contest is selected by the ASCE Committee on Student Services.

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Chen is a geotechnical engineer at Shell Global Solutions, Houston; Gilbert is the Brunswick-Abernathy Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; Ku is principal engineer at DNV in Katy, Texas; Jiun-Yih Chen is senior consultant at Golder Associates Inc. in Houston; and Marshall is a consultant in Campbell, California.

The paper explores the appropriateness of and implicit bias in the American Petroleum Institute (API) design guidelines for fixed offshore platforms. The significance of this work includes the following:

• It demonstrates the importance of the integration of a multidisciplinary collaboration in adequately assessing the safety margin and design practice for fixed offshore platforms – that is, a holistic system performance view by assessing the loads (metocean engineering), superstructure (structural engineering), and foundation (geotechnical engineering) together.
• It has provided the key load and resistance statistics for developing the newest load and resistance factor design guideline for fixed offshore platforms, API RP2A-LRFD 2nd  edition (2019): Recommended Practice for Planning, Designing, and Constructing Fixed Offshore Platforms–Load and Resistance Factor Design, 2019.
• It provides guidelines and essential inputs for assessing the reliability of existing structures, which helps regulators and operators’ decision-making about extending design lives and retrofitting structures to balance the safety and cost.
• It is motivating and guiding efforts to improve design practice by updating the methods used to predict lateral pile capacity and axial pile capacity in sand. Both of these issues are now addressed in draft API/ISO documents.
• It has motivated the introduction of an offshore platform system design (both jacket superstructures and the pile foundation systems) in addition to component check in the design of new offshore structures, and has shown the historical component-based design leads to pile foundations being less likely to fail than superstructures in a hurricane.

The J. James R. Croes Medal is presented to the author or authors of a paper that is judged worthy of the award and to be next in order of merit to the paper to which the Norman Medal is awarded.

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While Stein has contributed to many research areas in engineering mechanics, the main theme of his research has revolved around efforts to elevate the understanding and modeling of soils and general porous media whose response to loading is inherently complex, being generally inelastic, hysteretic, and stress-path and stress-state dependent. What distinguishes him most from many other geomechanics researchers is his tremendous breadth of knowledge in the physical, theoretical, experimental, as well as practical, aspects of many geomechanics and engineering problems.

His innate ability to see and integrate critical elements and insights from different angles is particularly extraordinary. He always has a sharp sense of where more research or development is the most fruitful and how to get there with systematic methods and sound physics. Equipped with his unusually acute physical insights of real geomaterial behavior and his strong mechanics acumen, Stein has made numerous significant contributions to computational geomechanics as well.

His low-gravity/effective stress experiments on soil in space, past lunar soil mechanics studies, and his current involvement in Martian exploration for NASA are great illustrations of Stein’s scientific prowess and how he has helped expand the reach of civil engineering to other serious scientific explorations. Stein serves as a great model for our next generation of engineering mechanics researchers and is an admired colleague to many in our community.

The Maurice A. Biot Medal was established to recognize the lifetime achievement of Dr. Maurice A. Biot and is awarded to an individual who has made outstanding research contributions to the mechanics of porous materials.

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Wei-Haas’ piece was written in response to the Sanford and Edenville dam failures in Midland, Michigan, in May 2020. While the piece illuminated the issues each dam had leading up to their eventual failures, it also expanded on dam deterioration as a nationwide problem due to underfunding, lack of proper oversight, and a general unawareness of the condition of America’s dams among the public. Her article analyzed the percentage of dams listed as high-hazard potential, the age of dams in comparison to their design life (many are well beyond their 50-year design lives), and the investment gap facing dams in need of repair.

Wei-Haas does an excellent job explaining in layman’s terms the condition of dams, which tend to be overshadowed by roads, bridges, and transmission lines whenever infrastructure is discussed, despite their vast impact on local communities, large metropolises, and natural environments.

In 1994, ASCE established the Excellence in Journalism Award to honor newspaper journalists for outstanding articles that enhance public understanding of the role and impact of civil engineering in designing solutions for clean water, transportation, the environment, and other public works projects. In 2006, the award was expanded to include journalists and producers from English-language, general-interest regional and national newspapers, radio and television stations, magazines, and electronic and web-based news outlets.

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But, in true civil engineering fashion, ASCE strives each year to quantify the “best places” for civil engineers to work and live.

It’s the annual ASCE Best Places for Civil Engineers index.

The 2021 edition derives from the index’s most robust formula yet – a combination of data from ASCE’s 2020 Salary Report; job information from Naylor Associations Solutions drawn from June 14, 2019, to June 14, 2020; and cost of living statistics from the Council for Community and Economic Research.

Read a full exploration of the data and trends in Civil Engineering magazine or peruse ASCE’s 2021 Top 10 “Best Places” list:

10. Austin-San Marcos, Texas

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 115.9

Civil Engineering Job Index: 101.8

Cost of Living Index: 82.4

Overall score: 135.3

“The engineering job climate in Austin mirrors the housing market. Employees on the job hunt are garnering top-dollar salaries. And it has become very competitive for employers to lure top talent.” – Bradley L. East, M.S., P.E., M.ASCE, director of operations, Polaris Forensics, Inc., Austin, and president, ASCE Austin Branch

9. Philadelphia

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 84.1

Civil Engineering Job Index: 146.3

Cost of Living Index: 94.7

Overall core: 135.6

“The constant in Philadelphia is transportation infrastructure: roads, bridges, and transit. We have ‘retirees’ working two or three days a week — that tells you what the growth in job opportunities is here. Many of us more seasoned engineers would like to consider full retirement but can’t, given the availability of work and need for experienced staff. We are now making offers to juniors in college just to get them in. We bring them in as part-time employees or co-op workers until they get their degree. And then they hopefully go full time.” – Robert M. Wright, P.E., M.ASCE, project manager at McMahon Associates, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, and a former president of ASCE’s Philadelphia Section

8. Atlanta

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 92.7

Civil Engineering Job Index: 139.3

Cost of Living Index: 87.3

Overall score: 144.7

“Nearly every engineering firm I cross paths with is looking to hire. We have interesting problems to solve locally. … There are excellent parks and greenways and many highly rated school systems. It is a great place to raise a family and do meaningful work.” – Katherine Gurd, P.E., CFM, F.ASCE, division director of stormwater services in Gwinnett County, Georgia’s Department of Water Resources

7. New York City

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 111.9

Civil Engineering Job Index: 205.9

Cost of Living Index: 162.7

Overall score: 155.1

“New York City will reinvent itself post-COVID as it has so many times before in its history. The greater NYC region excels at growth and reinvention, and this translates into limitless opportunities for enterprising engineers.” – James Starace, P.E., M.ASCE, chief of engineering for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

6. Chicago

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 105.9

Civil Engineering Job Index: 167.0

Cost of Living Index: 103.3

Overall score: 169.6

“Chicago is an amazing city full of options and opportunities, both personal and professional. There are a large number of civil engineering companies in the Chicago area – firms of all sizes, specializing in all aspects of civil engineering – making it easy for any engineer to find the right professional fit for them.” – Sandra Lynn Homola, P.E., M.ASCE, department manager for water resources at EXP US Services Inc., Chicago, and treasurer, ASCE Illinois Section

5. Washington, D.C.

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 108.8

Civil Engineering Job Index: 205.8

Cost of Living Index: 128.5

Overall score: 186.1

“The population has grown tremendously from 2010 to 2020, so engineers are needed to design infrastructure to meet demands. For a city so steeped in American history with its monuments and classic street names, Washington, D.C. is incredibly forward looking as well. Projects focusing on clean energy are on the rise. For example, government agencies are focusing on a transition to zero-emission vehicles, including buses. This transformation comes with a bevy of policy changes and infrastructure needs.

“And with the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (i.e., the DMV) so close to one another that an engineer could easily find themselves in all three places in the span of one workday. Each locale has clients with unique challenges to solve. It is essentially an engineer’s playground in that regard!” – Jameelah Carol Muhammad Ingram, P.E., M.ASCE, lead structural engineer, WSP, Washington, D.C., and vice president, ASCE National Capital Section

4. Dallas

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 102.8

Civil Engineering Job Index: 176.3

Cost of Living Index: 92.4

Overall score: 186.6

“Dallas is booming right now. There is a ton of growth in the area, especially in the northern suburbs. All of this growth means that civil engineers are needed everywhere. We need more roads, more utilities, more housing, more offices, more stores, and more schools. This means that there is work aplenty for civil engineers. Plus, Texas offers lots of benefits when it comes to standard of living.” – Jonathan Brower, P.E., M.ASCE, associate, L.A. Fuess Partners, Dallas, and president, ASCE Dallas Branch

3. Denver

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 100.2

Civil Engineering Job Index: 222.9

Cost of Living Index: 95.2

Overall score: 227.9

“The city and county have been pushing to increase multi-modal travel, with a large focus on providing equitable transportation and adding bicycle lanes. This has only accelerated through the pandemic with the addition of many mixed-use streets.

“It also seems that the state and city understand how important civil engineers are to the economy, and salaries have had a large improvement relative to the cost of living in the last six years I’ve been in Denver.” – Aaron L. Leopold, P.E., M.ASCE, senior geotechnical engineer, Shannon & Wilson, Denver, and president, ASCE Denver Branch

2. Los Angeles

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 117.5

Civil Engineering Job Index: 244.6

Cost of Living Index: 125.5

Overall score: 236.5

“There is real opportunity to make L.A. more resilient to the effects of climate change and more equitable through infrastructure projects that create opportunity for all – improving our region for generations to come. To work with cutting-edge technologies; to be in a place that has historically been at the forefront of new architecture, engineering, and construction processes; to learn quickly and grow. It’s an exciting place to be a civil engineer!” – Kelli Bernard, executive vice president and national cities lead, AECOM

1. Houston

2020 ASCE Salary Report score: 138.3

Civil Engineering Job Index: 207.2

Cost of Living Index: 81.8

Overall score: 263.6

“We’re seeing a lot of growth. When I started in 2001, we had one office, in Houston, and barely had 100 employees. Now we have 15 offices across Texas and another six across the southeast and 880 employees. I can’t believe how much the entire region is growing.” – Sean P. Merrell, P.E., PTOE, F.ASCE, senior project manager, BGE Inc., Frisco, Texas, and ASCE Region 6 governor and Texas Section president

Read the full Best Places 2021 article in Civil Engineering magazine.

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After a remarkable weekend of success for the students from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, at the ASCE 2021 Virtual Concrete Canoe Competition+, Ramírez Cuebas explained her fellow students’ accomplishments like this: resilience.

“The students who are here right now in Puerto Rico, we’re familiar with having to be resilient,” said Ramírez Cuebas, co-captain of the UPR Mayagüez sustainable solutions team, along with Adrián D. Colón Ortíz.

“We’ve been hit by hurricanes. We’ve been hit by earthquakes. And then right after that ended, we got the COVID situation that we’re all going through. So I think those previous events already gave us endurance and the ability to keep on working hard no matter what came up.”

The resilience of the Mayagüez students resulted in not one, but two Society-wide student competition championships during the ASCE 2021 Virtual Concrete Canoe Competition+, hosted online June 25-27 by ASCE and the University of Wisconsin–Platteville. While the University of Florida clinched the 2021 concrete canoe championship, UPR Mayagüez won both the ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition and the ASCE Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute Surveying Competition.

“It feels amazing,” said Gabriela A. García López, captain of the Mayagüez surveying team. “It’s a surprise for us. We worked hard and said, ‘OK, we want to win.’ It’s amazing now that we actually did.”

This year marked the first for the ASCE UESI Surveying Competition as a Society-wide event. Student teams had to complete two tasks as accurately as possible – one a topographic mapping project and the other a differential and profile leveling with engineering design project.

García López credited her Mayagüez professors and mentors: “In the surveying competition, we applied everything we’ve learned through university. I think we were very well prepared.”

The ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition, meanwhile, challenged student teams to design an outdoor recreation area that both educates users on sustainable construction and allows for socially distant activities in an outdoor setting.

The teams were judged on three areas: employment of sustainability concepts (including an Envision checklist), their design proposals, and an interview presentation.

“Our team prioritized creating social equity,” said Ramírez Cuebas, noting their proposal’s genderless bathrooms. “We were very conscious of that pillar in the project. I think it’s very important that when you design for people it’s not just one specific box. There are so many cultures and abilities and preferences. And as sustainable-mindset engineers, that is something that we have to take care of.”

This marks the first time the school has won any kind of international or national competition title. The Mayagüez double championships are all the more impressive given that the 2020-21 school year was unlike any they had experienced. Many of their team meetings had to be virtual. The surveying team often met deep into the early morning hours to work on their projects.

“All of us had a lot of other responsibilities, so we were very limited in our schedule,” said Alexander Cruz Noriega, surveying team member and ASCE student chapter president. “But we found a way.”

As if the two competition titles were not enough, UPR Mayagüez also won the 2021 R. John Craig Legacy Competition, a new event that asked schools to produce a short video detailing how participation in the concrete canoe competition has positively affected alumni.

Clearly, the UPR Mayaguez Student Chapter is doing something right.

“I think we like to tell a good story,” Cruz Noriega said. “We’re suckers for a good story, and we know everyone else is too. So we focus on sharing how we make a project and explaining it in the simplest way possible.

“And the civil engineering department here is fairly small. So, a lot of us knew each other from before.

“I think part of the special sauce at UPRM is that bond that we all have.”

ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition top 3 finishers

First place: University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez

Second place: Hohai University

Third place: Louisiana Tech University

ASCE Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute Surveying Competition top 3 finishers

First place: University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez

Second place: Cincinnati State and Technical Community College

Third place (tie): Bradley University and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Learn more about ASCE’s student competitions.

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Dennis has contributed to two significant efforts, the promotion of an updated National Spatial Reference System and the elimination of the U.S. Survey Foot. His workshops were well-known prior to his return to academia to complete a doctorate. He serves on the boards of several geospatial organizations promoting geodesy, among whom is the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Through his work as a geodesist at NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey, he assists in developing products and services that define, maintain, and provide access to the NSRS. In 2011 the State of Oregon passed a law declaring an updated coordinate system based on Dennis’ work. By way of presentations and workshops on various aspects of geodesy he continues to entertain and educate his audience. This work benefits local, state, and federal agencies, including the emergency response community.

The Surveying and Mapping Award recognizes contributions to the advancement of surveying and mapping either in teaching, writing, research, planning, design, construction, or management.

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The program connected ASCE leaders from around the world to learn more about Society resources and develop strategies for membership recruitment and retention, student transition, and maximizing your elected roles.

Melissa Wheeler Black, M.ASCE, and Lauren Swett, P.E., M.ASCE, of ASCE’s Leader Training Committee, helped run the event. The agenda also featured talks from ASCE President Jean-Louis Briaud, P.E., Ph.D., D.GE, Dist.M.ASCE ; President-Elect Dennis Truax, Ph.D., P.E., DEE, D.WRE, F.ASCE, ASCE Executive Director Tom Smith ENV SP, CAE, F.ASCE, and other ASCE staff members.

Fifty-five people attended, including members from 15 different countries.

Other local news from around ASCE:

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Hear from inspiring speakers, engage with passionate civil engineers across the globe, gain insights into seven multi-disciplinary focus areas, and earn PDHs along the way. The conference’s virtual format features cross-cutting and concurrent sessions to customize your experience. The best part? You’ll get to do it all wherever you are!

Your event registration also offers the opportunity to participate in a pre-conference Innovation Bootcamp. It also includes special access to the ASCE Blue Sky Innovation Contest, the Opal Awards Gala, and ASCE Tech Talks – the Society’s newest six-week series covering modern civil engineering challenges and opportunities.

Register online by Aug. 25 to save $100 on registration.

Watch more ASCE videos.

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Jones, Ph.D., P.E., Dist.M.ASCE, served on the ASCE Board of Direction from 1970 to 1971 and was founding chair of the Standing Committee on Capacity Building of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations.

He also was an executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers and the American Society for Engineering Education, as well as a stint as president of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. 

In 1987 Jones became the 23rd president of the University of Delaware and engaged the campus in developing a five-year plan called Project Vision. His academic career included service as a faculty member at MIT, department chair at Ohio State University, dean at University of Massachusetts Amherst, and academic vice president at Boston University. After leaving Delaware, he went on to serve as founding president of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and as senior adviser at Khalifa University, both in Abu Dhabi, UAE. 

After retiring, Jones continued consulting extensively abroad, promoting capacity building through engineering education and economic development in countries such as Russia, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia.

Jones earned three degrees in civil engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (later Carnegie Mellon University). He liked to keep abreast of global affairs by attending programs at the Cosmos Club, participating in the Fairfax County Master Gardener’s Program, and taking advantage of the performing arts around Washington, D.C.

He also loved trips and travel, and even the extensive planning that they required. Over the past 15 years, he and his wife, Beth, went to the Galapagos, Antarctica, the Arctic, Cambodia, Syria, Nigeria, Egypt, Scotland, and the Amazon.

Jones had recently served on the council of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Vienna, Virginia. His family said he is remembered most for his love and laughter, and an inclination toward silliness when with his young daughters and granddaughter.

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He spent his career specializing in port work, both engineering and management, and it was while working for the Port of Long Beach (the city of his birth) that he designed the first container terminal on the West Coast.

Vickers, P.E., F.ASCE, worked for the Port of San Francisco from 1964 to 1979, retiring as chief engineer. Many port projects were completed during his tenure, including Piers 27, 80, 94, and 96 as well as the construction of BART. He was also involved in the construction and permitting process for Pier 39.

In 1979, Vickers was recruited by the Pasadena-based engineering firm Ralph M. Parsons. His first assignment was to plan, design, and construct a 23-berth port facility on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. Later assignments took him to Hong Kong, Borneo, South Korea, London, Qatar, and Honolulu.

A World War II veteran, Vickers served in the U.S. Navy as an electronic technician mate. After the war, he earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles, and later a master’s in industrial relations.

A Life Member of ASCE, Vickers was also a member of the Structural Engineers Association and the American Association of Port Authorities. Among his survivors are six great-grandchildren.

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The Eiffel Tower? The Brooklyn Bridge? The Grand Coulee Dam? All of the above?

ASCE has designated more than 200 projects as Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks.

Civil engineers took to ASCE Collaborate recently to share stories about their favorites. Here are some highlights from that discussion (and be sure to log in and contribute your favorites):

Heidi Wallace, P.E., M.ASCE

Tulsa, Oklahoma

“I didn’t realize ASCE had landmarks until I was in Spain with my dad. We were in Segovia in 2019, looking at the aqueduct, and as we went to walk up the steps I noticed that the plaque said ‘ASCE.’

“I made sure to take a picture of it … . I highly recommend taking the trip if you have the chance. It was incredible to see how precise the construction was with a nearly constant slope considering the terrain changes and the materials being used.”

René Vidales, P.E., M.ASCE

San Diego

“The University Heights Water Tower in San Diego obtained ASCE Local Historic Engineering Landmark status in 2015, with local leaders in attendance. Originally built in 1924, a riveted steel tank raised on 12 steel girders high above San Diego’s early streetcar suburbs, it held more than 1 million gallons of water for a growing city. Now the water tower has become a hallmark for the neighborhood.”

Mitchell Winkler, P.E., M.ASCE

Houston

“Growing up, I spent countless weekends with my father and sometimes mother and siblings exploring the remnants of the Middlesex Canal. The canal, opened in 1803, connected textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Boston Harbor.

“It operated for about 50 years before being replaced by rail. It’s been recognized by ASCE with this claim to fame: The Middlesex Canal is one of the oldest man-made waterways in the United States. The canal served as a model for the later Erie Canal.

“My father remains active in the Middlesex Canal Association, while my brother has started leading walks along different sections that remain preserved today.”

Join the conversation on ASCE Collaborate.

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Having no formal education after the age of nine, Ellis Chesbrough, at 15, became a surveyor for the city of Baltimore, through his father’s job as a surveyor for the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. By the later 1840s, Chesbrough was in Boston where he engineered much of the city’s water system, including the Cochituate Aqueduct and Brookline reservoir. In 1851 he was the sole commissioner of the Water Works and was named the first city engineer.

The city of Chicago, founded in 1833 with a population of 200, saw rapid growth in its first two decades due to its position as a transportation hub and its economic allure to rural Americans and immigrants from abroad. Twenty years later, with a population greater than 60,000 and flood-prone topography, the circumstances demanded improved sanitary conditions as standing water and a lack of drainage infrastructure contributed to six consecutive years of epidemic outbreaks. The topography, just 4 feet above the elevation of Lake Michigan, not only inhibited natural drainage but limited the ability to install engineered drainage systems. The Chicago Board of Sewage Commissioners selected Ellis Chesbrough to solve Chicago’s public health crisis.

Chesbrough designed and constructed a tunnel extending 2 miles into Lake Michigan, beyond the point where the water had been fouled. Then Chesbrough devised a plan to build a sewer system above ground and fill the grade over the sewers, while raising buildings as much as 10 feet to accommodate them. For the next decade, the first comprehensive sewer system in the United States, the “Chesbrough sewers,” were constructed. During this time, engineers displayed their inventiveness by raising buildings, rows, and blocks of structures as tall as six stories, many of which remained occupied as commerce continued during the lifting.

Ellis Chesbrough served ASCE as president in 1878, and in the following year resigned his position as Chicago’s public works commissioner. Through his civil engineering work, the sanitary and structural ingenuity that he envisioned elevated Chicago, not only physically out of the muck but culturally into a world-class city.

Reuben Hull, P.E., PMP, M.ASCE, is civil regional manager for LaBella Associates in Albany, New York, and a self-made historian who has penned numerous articles on civil engineering history. An active ASCE member, Hull is a corresponding member and former chair of the History and Heritage Committee, serves as vice president of the Mohawk-Hudson Section, served as president of the New Hampshire Section, 1999-2000, and was named New Hampshire Young Engineer of the Year in 1997.

Follow his daily Civil Engineering Almanac series on Twitter: @ThisDayInCEHist.

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This article first appeared in the July/August 2021 issue of Civil Engineering.

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In ASCE’s Best Places for Civil Engineers 2021, some things have remained the same — and some have changed. As was the case in 2020, Houston, Los Angeles, and Denver take the highest spots in our top 10 list. But the No. 4 position — occupied last year by the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region — has been overtaken by Dallas, which moved up significantly from 10th place last year. Notably, a third Texas metropolitan region — the Austin/San Marcos area — moved into the top 10 for the first time.

Another city — Philadelphia — also made the top 10 list for the first time. And both Seattle and the Research Triangle area of North Carolina dropped out of the top 10 — to, respectively, positions 12 and 20. 

Of course, no such list can ever be exhaustive, and the right place for any given civil engineer is personal and subjective. But our annual index considers the important fundamentals: job openings for civil engineers, cost of living, and the results of ASCE’s exclusive civil engineering salary survey. From this data, the cities with the most promising outlook for civil engineers are determined. See below.

Everything is bigger in Texas
Why is the Lone Star State so well represented in the top 10 — with cities in the first, fourth, and 10th positions? Sean P. Merrell, P.E., PTOE, RAS, F.ASCE, who is a senior project manager for BGE Inc. in Frisco, Texas, as well as ASCE’s Region 6 governor and the Texas Section president, has a theory: “Texas is very business-friendly and open to growth,” he says. “In general, the state is against too much regulation and has low taxes. The houses are affordable. And we have a lot of good universities, and a lot of graduating engineering students want to stay in Texas.”

Homes are being built at a rapid clip in all three cities, Merrell notes. “And that brings road construction, water and power plants, and commercial and entertainment development,” he says.

“Also, in all three of these cities, there has been a lot of growth in taking existing development that hasn’t worked out and redeveloping it.”

For its part, the Harris County Flood Control District, which includes Houston, is pursuing more than 65 projects related to flood control in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, according to the HCFCD website. (Read “Engineers help prepare for hurricane season.”)

Dallas, meanwhile, is in the process of upgrading some of its many intersections and overpasses as well as building extensions to its Dallas Area Rapid Transit light-rail line, already the longest light-rail line in the country. And Austin is preparing for the arrival of a massive Tesla Cybertruck and battery plant as well as a new Amazon fulfilment center.

And there seems to be no limit to these cities’ expansion potential, with their suburbs outpacing their downtowns in terms of population growth, according to the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. Frisco, where Merrell works, was the fastest-growing city in the United States from 2010 to 2020, according to Kinder. Moreover, each suburb is seeking to establish its own “brand” distinct from, but still tangential to, its nuclear city, Merrell notes. In fact, at least in Texas, the term “suburb” may no longer be acceptable. “Frisco, for example, doesn’t want to be known as a suburb of Dallas,” Merrell says. “The Dallas Cowboys just opened a new headquarters here; where there used to be empty fields, now there are 25-story buildings. It’s like a new city core just popped up.”

Dallas, meanwhile, is in the process of upgrading some of its many intersections and overpasses as well as building extensions to its Dallas Area Rapid Transit light-rail line.

With all this growth, jobs for civil engineers in these metropolitan areas should remain plentiful. “Before last year (when COVID-19 struck), we always had trouble finding enough good candidates because there are so many companies here looking,” Merrell says. And now that the pandemic seems to be waning, at least in the United States, Merrell expects clients to resume their pre-pandemic spending. “We think next year, as long as things keep going the way they are right now, (clients) will be full steam ahead on a lot of their plans.”

LA’s story
Ports, rivers, highways, skyscrapers — and earthquakes. At No. 2 on the list again this year, Los Angeles has all this and more to generate plenty of high-paying jobs for civil engineers. And right now, the city has additional impetus for construction: the 2028 Olympics. From the Santa Monica State Beach west of the city, to Lake Perris to the east, dozens of existing sites will be used for the Olympic Games, many with at least temporary modifications required.

And with venues spread across nearly 100 mi, the area of greatest need will be transportation. “A big focus is on how athletes and tourists will travel around LA because many of the locations are miles apart,” explains Ruwanka Purasinghe, EIT, a civil engineering associate at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and president of ASCE’s Metropolitan Los Angeles Branch. Purasinghe points out that the Los Angeles Metro is aggressively pursuing its “Twenty Eight by ’28 Initiative,” which targets 28 transportation projects that must be completed before the games. These include new subway lines, expansions to express lanes, and supporting infrastructure that will continue to deliver benefits long after the Olympic torch has been extinguished.

Ports, rivers, highways, skyscrapers — and earthquakes. At No. 2 on the list again this year, Los Angeles has all this and more to generate plenty of high-paying jobs.

And there’s more. Kelli Bernard, the executive vice president and national cities lead for Los Angeles-based AECOM, says the Olympics have “created a sense of urgency for many infrastructure projects, including the modernization program at Los Angeles (International) Airport.” The last time the city hosted the Olympics, in 1984, student housing was used to lodge athletes, and that will again be the case. Residences at UCLA and the University of Southern California will need to be expanded for this purpose.

Power and water remain issues for the city as well. “We have a large focus on replacing aging infrastructure and growing our local water sources through increased groundwater remediation, stormwater capture, and the use of recycled water,” says Purasinghe. The LADWP’s efforts to improve local water supplies’ resiliency and reliability — called the Operation NEXT project — aims to recycle 100% of Los Angeles’ wastewater by 2035.

“On our power side,” Purasinghe says, “we have a goal to reach 70% renewable energy by 2035.” The agency will accomplish this by expanding solar, wind, and hydroelectric options as well as increasing energy storage capacities and upgrading the region’s transmission system.

All these goals are driving a booming job market for civil engineers. “We’re hiring!” Bernard says, noting that AECOM is specifically seeking more experienced engineers. “There’s real opportunity for those in advanced levels of their careers. The majority of civil engineering firms in LA are very busy and short on staff. If you’re qualified, passionate, and want to work on projects that really make a difference, this is a great time to explore Los Angeles.”

Denver shines
Ask Alex Jiang, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE — a transportation engineer with Jacobs in Denver and the president of ASCE’s Denver Younger Member Group — what makes the Mile High City a great place for civil engineers, and you’ll hear about everything from bridges and highways to dams, schools, and mass transit. The 2020 Report Card for Colorado’s Infrastructure gave the state a C-, indicating that there is much work to be done throughout the state, Jiang says. “The exciting news is that the leaders in Colorado are aware of this situation, and they are making laws to make things better,” Jiang says.

Chief among those policy efforts is a proposal released in March to spend $4 billion on transportation projects across the state of Colorado over the next decade. By raising fuel taxes and increasing fees on electric vehicles and ride-sharing services, the state hopes to invest in infrastructure that will improve roadways, reduce congestion, electrify municipal vehicles, and extend mass transit options.

There is plenty for everyone to do in, and like about, Denver.

“The City and County of Denver (have) been pushing to increase multimodal travel, with a big focus on providing equitable transportation and adding bicycle lanes,” says Aaron L. Leopold, P.E., M.ASCE, a senior geotechnical engineer for Shannon & Wilson in Denver and the president of ASCE’s Denver Branch. “This has only accelerated through the pandemic with the addition of many mixed-use streets.

“And every day, it appears that a Front Range rail line from Fort Collins to Pueblo gets closer to becoming a reality.”

And construction at the Denver International Airport is ongoing. After a disagreement with a contractor, DIA took over a $770 million project aimed at overhauling its Great Hall at Jeppesen Terminal — the facility under the iconic tentlike roof — in 2019. Since then, the project has taken off. Phase 1, creating new ticketing areas to handle projected passenger increases, will be completed by the end of this year, and the security-focused phase 2 will continue until 2024. “They are continuously working on improving and maintaining the airport,” Jiang says. “Aviation engineers shouldn’t worry about finding a job here.”

And neither should engineers in water-related fields, Leopold says. “Multiple large drinking water and stormwater projects have also been pushing forward in Denver, including Denver Water’s Northwater Treatment Plant and its Gross Reservoir Expansion,” he says. “Climate change and continued population growth have accelerated the need to preserve the water that the state provides to most of the western U.S. while also maintaining the beauty of the Colorado River. To that end, Denver voters have established a new tax that will generate $20 to $40 million to combat climate change and economic disparity in Denver.”

Renewable energy projects are also in the offing. “Colorado is famous for two of nature’s gifts — sunlight and wind,” Jiang says. “And government and private sectors are trying to take advantage of them both. I don’t think it will be hard for energy engineers to call Colorado home.”

In fact, there is plenty for everyone to do in, and like about, Denver; Jiang and Leopold mention the adage that Denver boasts 300 sunny days a year. Jiang says the moderate temperatures and low humidity mean “it’s easy to breathe here through all seasons and perfect for indoor and outdoor activities all year-round.” Mountains, concerts, snow sports, craft beer, and four major league sports teams to root for are among the best parts of living in Denver, Jiang says.

Capital ideas
Like many places, the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area — comprising the District of Columbia as well as parts of Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia — is preparing for post-pandemic life, primarily by reexamining transportation priorities. For years, the region has been among the most traffic-congested during its morning and afternoon rush hours, which often turn into three-hour-long affairs. And the city’s transportation situation is complicated by the fact that the District, Virginia, and Maryland — known colloquially as the DMV — all operate their own transit systems in addition to being served by the Metro subways and buses operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

A new plan, though, aims to connect Maryland Area Regional Commuter’s passenger rail service with the northern routes of the Virginia Railway Express to create a seamless, one-seat experience for riders commuting to and from the suburbs. And WMATA recently approved $4.7 billion in spending to enable it to resume full service and complete safety repairs and reliability improvements as the pandemic eases. What’s more, the Metro’s Silver Line subway extension to Dulles International Airport is a project still in progress, aiming for an early 2022 opening. This is spawning tremendous residential and mixed-use development along the route.

“There are significant transportation challenges to solve here,” says Robert Victor, P.E., F.ASCE, the newly promoted senior vice president and mid-Atlantic operating unit manager at Dewberry, which is based in one of the District’s most populous satellite cities — Fairfax, Virginia. “Incorporating all modes — cars, public transit, freight rail, bikes, pedestrians — into our regional planning and design is a real need and a focus of our public agencies here.”

Like many places, the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area is preparing for post-pandemic life, primarily by reexamining transportation priorities.

The region also plans to take a “more environmentally friendly approach” to water delivery, wastewater treatment, and stormwater and watershed management, he says. “Considering our location relative to the ocean and to tidal-influenced waterways, sea level rise and coastal resilience are becoming more and more important here,” Victor says. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam recently tapped Dewberry to develop a coastal resilience master plan, a project-based road map to be delivered before the end of the year.

“Projects focusing on clean energy are on the rise in Washington, D.C.,” adds Jameelah Muhammad Ingram, P.E. M.ASCE, a lead structural engineer at WSP and the vice president of ASCE’s National Capital Section. “For example, government agencies are focusing on a transition to zero-emission vehicles, including buses. And when that happens, existing bus facilities must be upgraded. Powering buses by way of electricity involves modifications to the grid and utility infrastructure.”

For this reason, Ingram says, “Tangible projects will continue to grow as agencies move from planning studies to action and progress toward a sustainable future.”

What else might make the busy DMV region attractive to civil engineers? “Location, population density, and cool projects,” Victor says. “The mid-Atlantic is a national or regional hub for many engineering and architecture firms, and it has a critical mass of professional opportunities in the private and public sectors.”

And whether engineers prefer modest, local projects or regional megaprojects, the DMV has it all. “There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of large and small projects of real community significance,” Victor says. “And it’s also one of the few places where you can work on construction projects with a more than billion-dollar price tag.”

Chicago lights up
Like so many cities, Chicago is planning for its future, and that means no shortage of work for civil engineers in the Windy City. In 2018, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning adopted an initiative called ON TO 2050 that “guides transportation investments and frames regional priorities (for) development, the environment, the economy, and other issues affecting quality of life,” according to the CMAP website.

The initiative calls for spending $475 million on at least 70 projects in and around Chicago, including roadway and intersection improvements, train station reconstruction, rail crossing grade separations, and bus electrification and route improvements. The plan also aims to ensure safe nonmotorized transportation options for residents and improve air quality, among other goals.

“Chicago is committed to maintaining its distinction as a world-class city, and constant infrastructure improvements are key in reaching that goal,” says Sandra Lynn Homola, P.E., M.ASCE, a department manager for water resources at EXP US Services Inc. and the treasurer of the ASCE Illinois section. “The state has recently signed the Rebuild Illinois capital plan, and that will make $45 billion worth of investments in roads, bridges, railroads, universities, and state facilities over the next six years.”

Transportation is not all that is moving forward in Chicago. Multiuse development is happening at various locations.

Investment is also continuing in the O’Hare International Airport Modernization Program, the Chicago Transit Authority’s many train line and station renovations, and the Regional Transportation Authority’s commuter train lines and stations, Homola notes. “CenterPoint Intermodal Center in the southwest part of the Chicago metro region is the largest master-planned inland port in North America,” she says, “and they are projecting the freight demand to double over the next 20 years.”

But transportation is not all that is moving forward in Chicago. Multiuse development is happening at various locations, including The 78 Chicago and Lincoln Yards. The 78 Chicago is an entirely new neighborhood along the Chicago River that will be anchored by the University of Illinois Discovery Partners Institute, a technology hub dedicated to developing tech talent, fostering applied research and development, and launching new businesses, according to the DPI website.

Lincoln Yards, master-planned by native firm SOM, will connect Chicagoans to more than 50 acres of riverfront in the city’s most iconic neighborhoods: Bucktown, Wicker Park, and Lincoln Park. And where multiuse development flourishes, infrastructure follows. “Chicago is investing in new park space and recreational facilities while continuing its ongoing efforts to line or replace aging sewers and water mains throughout the city,” Homola says.

All this work, plus plenty of activities and cultural events and many civil engineering employers to choose from, makes Chicago a great place for civil engineers, especially those just starting out, Homola says. “There appear to be more job openings for civil engineers than in past years, and there is a particular need for younger engineers in the range of zero to five years of experience.”

New York’s state of mind
“The New York City area is always growing and reinventing itself.” That statement, from James Starace, P.E., M.ASCE, the chief of engineering for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, may never be more true than in the post-pandemic era.

For example, through its Open Streets program, the city’s department of transportation mandated limited or no vehicular access to certain streets during the pandemic so that residents could get outdoors and local businesses could thrive. Now that much is returning to pre-pandemic status in the city — Broadway is set to reopen in September — many of those roads will again be devoted to traffic. But not all of them.

Activists in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, for example, succeeded in keeping a swath of 34th Street closed to cars, according to an article in qns.com. And on the Open Streets website, the city’s department of transportation says it “will work with interested community partners to develop operations plans” that combine safe community access with the traffic needs of the city.

That kind of creative thinking — the same spirit that recently drove such innovative infrastructure as the High Line, the Shed, and the reinvention of the Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station and Tammany Hall — is precisely what makes the Big Apple so vibrant. (Read “Tammany Rising.”)

And what keeps the city moving, of course, is its massive network of transportation infrastructure.

“The airports, commuter trains, subways, bridges, tunnels, and ports are critical to the region’s economic viability,” Starace says. And while the pandemic may have slowed some construction in the region last year, many projects are progressing, he says. “A new LaGuardia Airport terminal opened during the summer of 2020, and the construction of a new terminal at Newark (New Jersey) Liberty International Airport continued, with a completion forecast for 2022.”

And what keeps New York city moving, of course, is its massive network of transportation infrastructure.

And many of the nation’s oldest and most revered bridges are being replaced or refurbished, including the Goethals, the Bayonne, and the Tappan Zee (which was replaced by the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge). “On the 90-year-old George Washington Bridge, the critical work of replacing all 592 suspender ropes continued, with the north side of the world’s busiest bridge completed in April,” Starace says.

“In the coming years, the region will continue to move forward with infrastructure projects in just about every major sector,” he says. “Many of these projects are large-scale investments to renew aging assets, including the redevelopments of the Port Authority Bus Terminal and John F. Kennedy International Airport.” The Port Authority is also moving forward with a replacement of the elevated railway, called AirTrain, at Newark Liberty and is actively pursuing the addition of such a system at LaGuardia.

The metro area will need the creativity of younger civil engineers to keep it competitive, Starace says. “We need the new generation of civil engineers to bring fresh ideas, embrace 21st-century technology, and take the region and the country into the future.” And in New York, as in other cities, younger engineers should come prepared to incorporate sustainability and resiliency in all they do.

“New York City, and the region that surrounds it, is a global economic and cultural hub,” Starace points out. “But it is also very much a city of bricks and mortar. Our built legacy includes some of the greatest engineering landmarks in the world. Civil engineers are the stewards of these assets.

“So I anticipate that the New York City region will remain a destination for top engineering talent for decades to come.”

Atlanta heats up
Atlanta has become the heart of a regional hub for well-financed high-tech startups, according to TechCrunch.com, at least in part because of the region’s many technical universities — including Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, and Emory — as well as its historically black colleges — Morehouse and Spelman. These startups will attract educated employees to high-paying jobs, and that bodes well for high-end development in and around the city.

“We are seeing lots of new development and redevelopment across the metro Atlanta area, and there are all types of infrastructure needs to support that ongoing growth,” says Katherine Gurd, P.E., CFM, F.ASCE, the division director of stormwater services in Gwinnett County’s Department of Water Resources. “For example, as areas densify, older sewers need to be replaced with larger-capacity sewers, and we are seeing sewers expanded to areas that previously did not have (them).”

And with one of the busiest airports in the world and an extensive highway network in need of maintenance and upgrades, there will be no shortage of jobs for transportation engineers either.

In 2015, Georgia’s House Bill 170 created annual fees on alternative-fuel vehicles and heavy trucks, and those fees are funding more than 2,500 mi in roadway resurfacing, 188 bridge replacements, 300 bridge rehabilitation and maintenance projects, and hundreds of traffic safety projects, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission. “With the passage of H.B. 170 in 2015, Georgia gained around $1 billion in additional transportation funds each year,” Gurd says. “We have been in a huge transportation boom ever since.”

Moreover, Georgia is planning the nation’s first trucks-only interstate lanes, an expansion to Interstate 75 from McDonough — just south of Atlanta — to Macon. In April, the Georgia Department of Transportation announced a virtual forum with contractors interested in the 41 mi, two-lane expansion.

“Atlanta is an engineering hub for the Southeast,” Gurd says. “Every major firm has an office here.” And with major sports teams, arts, culture, entertainment, and such attractions as the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and the Georgia Aquarium — recently expanded to include sharks that can be viewed from a diving cage — Atlanta has much to offer.

“The Atlanta Regional Commission estimates that metro Atlanta will add another 2.9 million people and 1.2 million jobs by 2050,” Gurd says. “More people (means) more infrastructure and smarter development. Civil engineers are key to designing the infrastructure that will allow for that growth.”

Philadelphia rings in
Seattle and the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina (known as the Research Triangle) were bumped off the top 10 list this year by Philadelphia and Austin. Like many cities, Philadelphia is seeing a resurgence of private development in its downtown core. That, in turn, is boosting urban infrastructure projects.

“There are private developments and structures going up as well as agency work,” says Robert M. Wright, P.E., M.ASCE, a project manager at McMahon Associates in the suburb of Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, and a past president of ASCE’s Philadelphia Section. “I don’t think any civil engineers are hurting for work in Philadelphia right now.”

The city is leveraging its location along the Delaware River with mixed-use developments, including one at the South Philadelphia Navy Yard and one at Penn’s Landing. The 109-acre Navy Yard expansion will include residences for the first time — mainly apartments in restored older buildings — along with restaurants, shops, offices, and technology labs. Plans for Penn’s Landing — long known for its recreational attractions and nightlife — call for a new 11.5-acre park and civic space, an architecturally distinctive pedestrian bridge, and a 2 mi on-road extension of the Delaware River Trail.

Philadelphia is seeing a resurgence of private development in its downtown core. That, in turn, is boosting urban infrastructure projects.

Meanwhile, the city is continuing work on its 25-year program to reduce stormwater flows into its combined sewer system, called Green City, Clean Waters. The initiative emphasizes the use of green stormwater infrastructure. “That is a huge program in the city’s water department right now,” Wright says.

In fact, so much is happening in the City of Brotherly Love that even during the pandemic, Wright says, work did not slow for long. “By last fall we were back to where we were in terms of workload,” he says. As restrictions continue to be lifted, he expects work to increase to the point that competitors may target the region’s “best and brightest” employees. “We see a possible feeding frenzy,” Wright says.

To be closer to clients and attract younger engineers, McMahon recently opened a small office in the city’s core business district, Center City. And Wright says his firm is not alone; other suburban firms — and even companies from as far away as New York City — have done the same. “The big city agencies are all in Center City, so a lot of firms have opened offices there, even if they are just small offices,” Wright says.

The moves appeal to millennial engineers, he says. Four of McMahon’s younger employees moved from the suburbs to the city when the company opened its Center City office. “It’s where the action is,” he says. “And they can walk, Uber, or skateboard to work.”

Other cities that ranked highly in this year’s Best Places for Civil Engineers, Nos. 11-20, are, respectively: Seattle; Phoenix; Minneapolis; Boston; Sacramento, California; Tampa, Florida; Kansas City (Missouri and Kansas); Orlando, Florida; the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill region of North Carolina; and Newark, New Jersey. Want to discuss why your hometown is the best place to be a civil engineer? Start a discussion at collaborate.asce.org.

This article first appeared in the July/August 2021 issue of Civil Engineering.

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Civil engineers execute remarkable projects to protect the public’s health, safety, and welfare. Some are clearly visible and impressive to the naked eye, such as skyscrapers or large bridges. Some are less impressive by their scale but beautiful by their elegance. And some are simply buried like tunnels or underappreciated like sewer systems. In the mid-1990s, ASCE designated the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

There is little doubt that what we build is mind-boggling at times and gives us a tremendous sense of pride to be civil engineers. So here, in no particular order, is a list we might choose from today.

1. Burj Khalifa, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2009). Tallest building in the world with a height of 827 meters and foundations going 55 meters deep. It settled only 50 millimeters.

2. Tower of Pisa, Pisa, Italy (late 1300s). One of the most well-known and successful failures in geotechnical engineering.

3. Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco (1937). An elegant suspension bridge that set a main span record length of 1.6 kilometers in 1937. It took nearly 30 years before that record was surpassed.

4. Eiffel Tower, Paris (1889). Built for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, this 300-meter-tall tower is attractive because of its elegance and harmonic lines. Although, geotechnical engineers might think of it as a big, beautiful drill rig.

5. St. Isaac’s Cathedral, St. Petersburg, Russia (1858). This massive cathedral is most impressive because of its grandiose allure. It was built on soft clay and settled about 1 meter.

6. Channel Tunnel, linking England and France (1994). Tunneling teams started on opposite sides of the English Channel, and through civil engineering magic, they met in the middle 30 meters under the sea.

7. Three Gorges Dam, near Yichang, China (2006). This is the largest dam in the world in terms of hydroelectric power generated. This concrete dam, standing 2.3 kilometers long and 175 meters high, slowed the Earth’s rotation because of its size.

8. Netherlands North Sea Protection Works, southwest Netherlands (1997). A well-thought-out network of protection barriers against the sea when a storm surge combines with high tide. Some are large rotating gates, some have vertical gates, and all are optimized for safety and cost.

9. Panama Canal, Panama City (1914). This timesaving and cost-saving ship route project faced very difficult slope stability problems as well as worker health problems. It remains one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world with a recent expansion.

10. Kansai International Airport, Osaka, Japan (opened in 1994 and expanded in 2007). Building an international airport offshore in 20 meters of water on very soft soil was the challenge. The project was a success with a 36-meter runway on fill that settled 14 meters.

11. Empire State Building, New York City (1931). This American cultural icon is 443 meters high, has 102 stories, and at the time, was the tallest building in the world. And it was built in only 13 months!

12. Itaipu Dam, near Foz doIguacu, Brazil, and Ciudad del Este, Paraguay (1984). This two-country concrete dam is 225 meters high and 7.2 kilometers long. It’s the second-largest hydropower production dam in the world.

13. CN Tower, Toronto (1976). This majestic, slender, and elegant structure is 553 meters tall with a revolving restaurant. It held the height record for a long time.

14. Sydney Opera House, Sydney (1973). This building’s iconic shell-like shape defines the landscape of the Sydney Harbor while the 2,000-seat concert hall manages to create an intimate atmosphere.

15. Washington Monument, Washington, D.C. (1885). This symbolic freestanding column honoring George Washington, America’s first president, was saved by an ingenious foundation engineer who avoided creating the leaning monument of Washington. 

These are only some of the magnificent projects that civil engineers built throughout the world. Each year, ASCE recognizes the best civil engineering projects through the Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement honor awards. 

So, have you chosen your top seven yet? Here are the ones ASCE chose in 1997: 3, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, and 13. Regardless of which ones you chose, I hope you’ll agree with me that we should be very proud to be civil engineers.   

If you have questions or comments, please email me at [email protected].

This article first appeared in the July/August 2021 issue of Civil Engineering.

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But with COVID-related travel restrictions lifting around the world, it’s finally the right time to feature the next installment.

And this year’s list of ASCE beach reads is especially suited for the beach bum with a passion for civil engineering history.

The 2021 ASCE beach reads:

Benjamin Wright: Father of American Civil Engineering

Author Steven M. Pennington details the life of a man who, in 1839, participated in organizational meetings of what would become the American Society of Civil Engineers, the very organization that in 1970 designated him the “Father of American Civil Engineering.”

Learn more.

Hans Albert Einstein: His Life as a Pioneering Engineer

In this biography, authors Robert Ettema and Cornelia Mutel engagingly describe the work of one man’s quest to understand and unravel the complexities of rivers.

Learn more.

Engineering Iron and Stone: Understanding Structural Analysis and Design Methods of the Late 19th Century

Drawing on his career-long fascination with how structural engineers do their work, author Thomas Boothby presents a comprehensive explanation of the empirical, graphical, and analytical design techniques used during the late 1800s in constructing buildings and bridges of wood, stone, brick, and iron.

Learn more.

Washington Roebling’s Father: A Memoir of John A. Roebling

Between 1893 and 1907, Washington Roebling wrote about his father’s life, character, career, and achievements with candor and intimate family details. Part biography, part memoir, Washington Roebling’s Father makes available for the first time the text of this remarkable manuscript, edited by Donald Sayenga, an internationally recognized authority on the history of wire rope.

Learn more.

Karl Terzaghi: The Engineer as Artist

One of the leading civil engineers of the 20th century, Terzaghi is widely known as the father of soil mechanics. This narrative, authored by Richard E. Goodman, shows Terzaghi’s struggle to understand the phenomena observed on many major engineering projects.

Learn more.

Engineering Legends: Great American Civil Engineers

Behind every great American civil engineering accomplishment, there is a great American civil engineer.

Written by Richard G. Weingardt and with a foreword by Henry Petroski, Engineering Legends provides a unique view into the history and progress of 32 great American civil engineers from the 1700s to the present.

Learn more.

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The early 20th century American endeavor to improve roadways and connect communities across the country had its genesis with cyclists, who founded the Good Roads Movement in 1880. By the turn of the century, automobile use eclipsed cycling, and motorists took the lead in the Good Road Movement. By 1912, improved roadway surfaces were still primarily an urban feature as interstate commerce and intercity transportation were dominated by railroads. “Farm to market” and other rural roads were mostly dirt or gravel, subject to muddy and dusty conditions, depending on the weather. Some were maintained by townships and counties, but many were the responsibility of the residents who lived along them.

Among the enthusiasts for roadway improvements was Carl Fisher, an early manufacturer of auto parts and an investor in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In September 1912, Fisher started to promote his vision of a continuous east-west highway, running coast-to-coast across the United States. His idea gained support and within a month had pledges for 10% of the estimated $10 million cost. The group chose the name Lincoln Highway, to honor one of Fisher’s heroes.

On July 1, 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association was established with a goal of building a stable highway from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. Less than a month later, the Loyal Order of the Moose dedicated the Mooseheart community in Illinois. They agreed to pave and donate three quarters of a mile of the Lincoln Highway, adjacent to their Children’s Home, the first paved section of the highway. The first section of the Lincoln Highway to be completed and dedicated was Newark to Jersey City, New Jersey, dedicated on Dec. 13, 1913.

The first official length of the Lincoln Highway was 3,389 miles and within a decade, it had been shortened to 3,142 miles. By the 1940s, named routes were replaced by numbered routes and the Lincoln Highway Association faded, but in 1992, it was reactivated for the purpose of promoting the highway and preserving its heritage, which was instrumental in developing today’s American highway transportation system.

Reuben Hull, P.E., PMP, M.ASCE, is civil regional manager for LaBella Associates in Albany, New York, and a self-made historian who has penned numerous articles on civil engineering history. An active ASCE member, Hull is a corresponding member and former chair of the History and Heritage Committee, serves as vice president of the Mohawk-Hudson Section, served as president of the New Hampshire Section, 1999-2000, and was named New Hampshire Young Engineer of the Year in 1997.

Follow his daily Civil Engineering Almanac series on Twitter: @ThisDayInCEHist.

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At least in the world of concrete canoe.

The last time ASCE crowned a champion of its Society-wide concrete canoe competition, the University of Florida won the title in June 2019.

Two very complicated years later, the winner of the 2021 Society-wide concrete canoe competition, hosted online, June 25-27, by ASCE and the University of Wisconsin–Platteville … you guessed it, those very same Florida Gators.

“I mean, I started crying I was so excited,” said Suzanna Barna, a co-project manager for the University of Florida team, after hearing her team’s name announced during the virtual awards ceremony Sunday evening. “It’s been an incredibly difficult situation. Nobody going into this knows how to handle it. It’s very strange. It’s just been a whole year in the making, and it’s really nice to see it pay off.”

In some ways, it was actually two years in the making. Florida and teams from schools around the world were set to compete in 2020 competitions when the COVID-19 pandemic forced ASCE to cancel the spring’s events.

The 2021 competition was the first in a virtual format. No in-person travel to the host school, the University of Wisconsin–Platteville. No canoe races.

Instead, teams were judged on their oral presentations, technical proposals, and enhanced focus area reports that allowed them to add inventive elements to their projects.

All of which meant very different processes and approaches for the teams.

“It was really important that we try to keep as much normalcy as possible,” said Barna, quick to credit the entire team and faculty. “With such a weird year, we were trying to be considerate of health and safety protocols, but we also wanted to make sure it was still fun, and that we were still advancing technically and addressing everything that the competition was asking of us. And maintaining that University of Florida legacy we have going on with our family of alumni.”

The University of Florida canoe – the Polligator, named for its theme of pollination and honeybees – placed Top 3 in all three categories: second in the technical proposal category, second for technical presentation, and third for enhanced focus areas.

The top five overall standings included the University of California, Los Angeles in fifth place, Tongji University in fourth, the University of Washington in third, Youngstown State, which fielded the competition’s first all-female team, in second, and Florida in first.

“This year, because you didn’t have that opportunity to travel – which is an incentive for a lot of people to join canoe and go through the rigors of this competition – or have that opportunity to socialize and go to a new place, to get to the end and win it, it’s worth everything,” said Florida team co-project manager Mauricio Medina.

Florida also earned the ASCE Can-Do Champion Award for the school that most embraced the social and collaborative aspects of the weekend’s program.

The University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez won the R. John Craig Award for its video submission, detailing the positive contributions of concrete canoe competition.

UCLA won the award for best technical proposal. The University of Washington took first place in the technical presentation category. Tongji University won both the Innovation Award and first place for its enhanced focus areas. The Clemson University team, which volunteered to change presentation time slots to accommodate another school, won the Spirit of the Competition Award.

Medina said his Florida team started brainstorming ways to navigate what they already assumed would be a virtual 2021 landscape last spring when the 2020 competition was canceled. The Gators came up with what they called a technician program, a means of giving everyone on the team a specific role so that member retention and teamwork thrived even when the work couldn’t happen in the same room.

“We were able to really bond with each other and maintain those relationships throughout the year, staying connected online,” Barna said. “Something that I think is so intertwined within our program is the friendships that form. It’s a club that we do that means so much more for us. It’s just natural that you want to do well for the person sitting next to you and make each other proud and do your best for each other.”

Medina called it a concrete canoe family – a University of Florida family that won championships on both ends of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s our family away from home,” Medina said. “A lot of us are not from Gainesville originally. Our families are somewhere else. So we tend to try to fill that gap with something, and concrete canoe fits perfectly.”

View the complete results of the ASCE 2021 Society-wide concrete canoe competition.

Read more about the other ASCE competitions from the weekend.

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Philip S. Hashimoto, P.E., F.ASCE, a senior principal with Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.

Hashimoto has devoted essentially his entire 40-year professional career to ensuring public safety through the seismic assessment of commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs) and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear facilities that were constructed well before the advent of modern seismic design criteria. He has performed seismic evaluations of numerous NPPs in the United States and other countries. In particular, he has been extensively engaged in seismic probabilistic risk assessment of NPPs for earthquakes well beyond their original design basis, starting from the original studies in the late 1970s to the present time. 

The objective of seismic probability risk assessment (SPRA) is to provide realistic estimates of seismic-induced damage to NPPs to ensure that the risk to the public is understood. Hashimoto has advanced the state of the art in SPRA by developing and implementing novel methods for seismic evaluation of critical structures, systems, and components. He has also been responsible for seismic evaluations of numerous DOE nuclear facilities in the light of current seismic design criteria, including facilities originally constructed in the 1940s. The results of these studies have been used by DOE to determine whether the facilities are still safe to operate or if upgrades are necessary.

Hashimoto performed research into damping of structures based on collection and analysis of data obtained from buildings and test specimens experiencing dynamic response. The results of this research forms the basis for USNRC Regulatory Guide 1.61, Damping Values for Seismic Design of Nuclear Power Plants. For the Electric Power Research Institute, he collected and analyzed data on the performance of anchored flat-bottom fluid storage tanks that experienced actual earthquakes.

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Scott A. Ashford, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, the Kearney Dean of Engineering at Oregon State University, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.

Under Ashford’s leadership, the College of Engineering has seen total enrollment grow by nearly 50 percent. He now oversees the 10th-largest engineering program in the U.S., with nearly 10,000 students and 445 faculty and staff. During his time as dean, the number of degrees conferred has increased over 75 percent, and overall graduation rates are up by 20 percent. The college’s research enterprise is also thriving, with 70 percent growth in funding awards.

Ashford has led the College in the creation of an inclusive environment where women are empowered to succeed. Adopting innovative approaches to cultural transformation, he has reimagined and reinvented practices in recruitment, hiring, faculty advancement, and promotion and tenure. The result has been unprecedented progress in the cultivation of a diverse faculty generally and, specifically, in the representation of and support for women. Since 2014, the college has doubled the number of female faculty, now numbering more than 50. Oregon State now ranks among the top three public Carnegie Foundation R1 universities in percentage of engineering faculty who are women.

As an engineer and a researcher, Ashford has made numerous technical contributions to the profession, particularly in earthquake geotechnical engineering. His research has focused on enhancing public safety and reducing potential economic loss worldwide from earthquake and coastal hazards through cross-disciplinary research. His latest efforts are targeted at improving the resilience of the lifeline systems in the Pacific Northwest to better withstand attack from the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

His most cited work is one on topographic amplification of steep slopes and the resulting effects on slope stability. This work has led to better understanding of coastal erosion through the use of lidar, and it has changed conventional wisdom on the source of sand on Southern California beaches. Other substantial technical contributions are in the behavior of deep foundations, particularly in blast-induced liquefied soil.

In 2006, Ashford earned the rank of professor at the University of California, San Diego. He became head of the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State in 2007 and has served as dean of the College of Engineering since 2014. He also worked in private industry for seven years – mostly with CH2M HILL. Appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate, Ashford also serves as a governing board member of the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI).

He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Oregon State and master’s and doctoral degrees in geotechnical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Jesse L. Beaver, P.E., F.ASCE, a leader in the field of underground utility engineering, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.

Beaver is currently a principal, division head, and director of Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Engineering. He has contributed to the field through his expertise in soil-structure interaction with buried structures, structural materials, and bridge construction.

He serves with several professional organizations, including as the chair of the Transportation Research Board Standing Committee AFB70 on Culverts, Buried Bridges, and Hydraulic Structures; chair of ASTM Committee F17.65 on Plastic Pipes for Land Drainage; voting member of ASTM Committee A05 on Corrugated Metal Pipes for Land Drainage; voting member of AWWA Committee on Polyolefin Pressure Pipes; voting member of ACI Committee 345 on Concrete Bridge Construction; and instructor for the ASCE Seminar on Design of Buried Pipes.

Beaver is a registered professional engineer in 26 U.S. States and six Canadian Provinces and a veteran of the United States Army.

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Deepa Samanthika Liyanapathirana, Ph.D., F.ASCE, an associate professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Western Sydney (Australia), has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.

Liyanapathirana’s academic career began in 1992 as an assistant lecturer at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. She then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sydney for five years before moving to University of Wollongong as a lecturer in 2003, her passion for research and educating the younger generation having led her to solidify a career in academia.

Her research is focused on computational geomechanics and she has extensively published in the areas of column-supported embankments, soil liquefaction and its effects on pile foundations during seismic loading, pile driving dynamics, ground vibrations induced during constructions activities, the effect of ground deformations during deep excavations on pile foundations, structured soil behavior, and ground characterization using ambient vibrations. These research projects were funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery and Linkage research grant schemes.

Liyanapathirana’s research has been recognized internationally. In 2007 she received ASCE’s Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award for her published research on soil liquefaction and its effects on pile foundations. In 2013, she was the recipient of the Australian Geomechanics Award for research on column-supported embankments. She also received the Outstanding Reviewer Award from the Computers and Geotechnics in 2015 for her submission of high-quality review reports to that journal.

For the past 20 years she has been a reviewer for many geotechnical engineering journals published by ASCE, the Institution of Civil Engineers–UK, Canadian Geotechnical Society, Elsevier, and the Japanese Geotechnical Society. She works closely with the industry, always formulating research projects with practical benefits in terms of cost, safety, and reliability. She has successfully completed consulting projects for Coffey Geotechnics, Transport for NSW, Cardno Pty Ltd, and EIC Activities Pty Ltd. Her teaching is integrated with current industry practices, and she received the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning while working at the University of Wollongong in 2008.

Liyanapathirana has served on various university-level committees related to both teaching and research, and promotes better mentoring practices for early-career academics. She is also enthusiastic about encouraging female students to choose engineering as a career; her work with the Women of Wisdom group at Western Sydney University helps increase the retention of female undergraduate engineering students. The Institution of Engineers, Australia, appointed her as a fellow in 2019.

Liyanapathirana completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Moratuwa, in Sri Lanka, in 1991. She earned her doctoral degree from the University of Western Australia in 1999.

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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.  

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Paul Voiles, P.E., PTP, F.ASCE, senior managing director, transportation, at Binkley & Barfield Inc. in Houston, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.

Voiles has over 22 years of experience in the engineering industry, encompassing civil engineering management, design, and marketing for a wide variety of projects, among them highway, port, rail, transit, airport, utility, and municipal facilities. He has successfully managed projects from conceptual/schematic phase through design and construction for various public agencies and private clients. At Binkley & Barfield, he oversees the firm’s transportation practice including planning and design of mobility improvement projects across the state of Texas. He is precertified by the Texas Department of Transportation in 22 work categories and is Local Government Project Procedures Qualified.

He has served ASCE as Houston Branch president, Texas Section director, and on numerous other board and committee positions. He has also served other organizations such as the Asian American Engineers and Architects (AAEA), the Economic Alliance Houston Port Region, and the Eastwood Civic Association in similar roles. While serving as ASCE Houston Branch President in 2012, he oversaw the release of the first-ever comprehensive Report Card for Houston Area Infrastructure at an event that included a panel discussion by local officials moderated by Ernie Manouse, of Houston PBS.

Voiles was presented the ASCE Edmund Friedman Young Engineer Award for Professional Achievement at the Houston Branch (2010) and Society (2011) levels; the ASCE Daniel W. Mead Prize for Younger Members at the Houston Branch, Texas Section, and Society levels (all in 2010); and the AAEA Young Engineer of the Year Award (2011).

He is a proud University of Kansas Jayhawk (e’99), a licensed professional engineer in the state of Texas, and a certified Professional Transportation Planner.

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Bellandra B. Foster, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, president and owner of BBFoster Consulting, PC, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.

Foster’s company provides professional services to public and private sector clients in the field of civil engineering, including facilities management, program management, quality control, site safety, and utility coordination.

She began her career as a structural engineer with Bechtel Power Corporation in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She transitioned from structural engineering to infrastructure and transportation engineering as a design engineer with the Oakland County Road Commission (MI) and with positions in design, construction, and utilities/permits with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). She was appointed by Mayor Maynard Jackson as the Director of Highways and Streets for the City of Atlanta Department of Public Works.  

Foster and her companies have received several local and national-level awards and accolades for contributions to the field of civil engineering and entrepreneurship, among them the USDOT Minority Business Enterprise of the Year, MDOT DBE of the Year, National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Award for Outstanding Entrepreneur, Michigan Chronicle Woman of Excellence, Dwight D. Eisenhower Fellow, King-Chavez-Parks Fellow, Great Lakes Center for Truck and Transit Research Scholar, profiles in Black Enterprise and Essence, and Initiation into the Order of the Engineer.

Her philanthropic and volunteer contributions include founding the Michigan State University Benefield-Foster Spartan Scholarship, donating a renovated home to Grace Centers of Hope (Pontiac, Michigan), serving two terms on the Michigan State University College of Civil Engineering Advisory Board as well as the College of Engineering Alumni Advisory Board, and serving as a member on the Michigan State University Broad Executive Forum Board. In 2019 she was appointed to the Guilford County (NC) transportation board. 

In addition to her leadership and technical contributions, Foster volunteers to support the development of future leaders by serving as an ASCE Mentor/Coach and as a Queen’s University (NC) McColl School of Business Leadership Coach. She is a board member with the ASCE North Carolina Section Northern Branch, serving as the liaison to North Carolina A&T State University, where she desires to disseminate her knowledge and experience as an engineer, entrepreneur, and author to assist students with their transition into great professional careers in their chosen area of expertise. Foster’s own mentors have included Charles S. Davis, James Dragun, Alphonso Williams, and her father, George Benefield Jr.   

Foster is an International Coach Federation (ICF) ACC Certified Coach, is OSHA 30 certified, and has obtained her Construction Management Diploma from North Carolina State University. Her publications include For Love and Money: Seven Guidelines for Achieving Success in Your Home and Business.

She received her bachelor’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from Michigan State University, her master’s degree in civil engineering from Wayne State University, and her doctorate in civil engineering from Michigan State University. She is a licensed professional engineer in Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina.

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Mark Rohrbach, P.E., F.ASCE, owner and manager of the engineering design firm RAM GeoServices, near Seattle, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.

Rohrbach’s focus on the technical side is solving unique and challenging (often contractor-side) geotechnical and geostructural design problems. He has been involved with seven soft ground tunnels, two hard rock tunnels, two potash/salt mines, and countless shoring and ground improvement design projects.

His participation in ASCE began in 2001 when he was a student and has continued nearly uninterrupted for more than 20 years. He is a two-term past president of ASCE’s Tacoma/Olympia Section (2010-2012), a former director of technical committees for the Seattle Section (2018-2020), and has held nearly every position within the Seattle Chapter of the Geo-Institute (GI, which includes his most recent and current position as Seattle GI chapter advisor).

In 2007 Rohrbach received the ASCE Seattle Section’s Outstanding Project award for his work on the Silver Reef Hotel / Casino Expansion in Ferndale, Washington. This project required rapid design and construction of a six-story cast-in-place concrete hotel on liquefiable soils overlaying very soft, highly compressible soils, where more than 12 inches of settlement was anticipated.

He grew up in a very rural area of Buck Township, Pennsylvania. Shortly after graduating high school, he entered the Army, where he served over five years as an Airborne Ranger and later as a commissioned engineering officer. Following active-duty military service, he earned an MSCE (soil mechanics) degree from the University of Washington.

Away from work, Rohrbach serves as a foster parent and has provided in-home but nonpermanent care for more than a dozen abused or neglected children. He is also a FIFA-Licensed soccer referee.

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