Structural Licensure Committee. Structural Engineers Certification Board. Structural Engineering Licensure Coalition. What are these groups? How are they connected? What do they do? Why is it important? …
Employees leave bosses, not companies. If you have worked long enough, it is a statement you have probably heard sometime during your career. The reason? It is true. According to a Gallup study, approximately 50% of employees that leave their company exit to get away from their boss. To make it even worse, recent Department of Labor statistics indicate that the average tenure of an employee in the U.S. is now only 1.5 years. That number is likely higher for engineering companies, but it is still an indicator of where we could be headed. …
My favorite toy as a child was an erector set. Not the fancy new ones that have the precut plastic panels and big rubber tires, but the old ones that were all metal, including the wheels. My favorite structures to build were buildings and bridges. Of course, this led to my desire to be a Civil/Structural Engineer, so I could design and build real buildings and bridges. …
As I enter the latter phases of my career, I reflect on changes in how structural design documents are developed, recorded, and used for facilities and bridges around the globe. I am a Baby Boomer, so the only constant in my career has been change. …
They do not teach business skills at the College of Engineering. At least they did not teach them at UCLA when I went there in the early 90s. They did a pretty good job of teaching me about things like pre-stressed concrete, AISC steel design, and shear/moment diagrams, but they did not go into things like liability and claims, how to transition from a project manager to a firm leader, and they definitely did not tell me that I could have a duty to defend someone even if no fault had been established. If they did, it might have been enough to scare me away from becoming a structural engineer. …
Leadership to Address the World’s Challenges
Who better than structural engineers (and civil engineers in general) have the skills, temperament, and understanding of the built environment to lead the next disruptive changes to advance society? …
Structural Engineering Emergency Response
As structural engineers, we make a difference in peoples’ lives every day as we help to ensure society’s health, safety, and welfare. This past year, many structural engineers took this responsibility to another level in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey (in Texas) and Irma (in Florida). …
According to Wikipedia, a New Year’s resolution is a tradition in which a person resolves to change an undesired trait or behavior, to accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their lives. According to Urban Dictionary, a New Year’s resolution is a goal that you propose then forget about the next day. With that in mind, I would like to offer nine New Year’s resolutions to improve your life as a structural engineer. Most of them you already know but, like any good resolution, you just need a gentle reminder. …
The extraordinary devastation left by storms, earthquakes, and wildfires in 2017 dominated the news media for months. Many of our colleagues around the globe were directly affected by these events but still rose to the challenge by volunteering as emergency responders or by joining teams to study and report on lessons learned. Whether impacted or not, structural engineers keep the public safe from disasters every day. …
Success is gratifying. We all strive for it on a daily basis in our professional and personal lives. When we achieve it, we should celebrate because it does not come often enough. One obstacle that accompanies success is that it then raises the bar for the next endeavor; we must reach the next rung on the ladder to meet even higher expectations. …