Bridging the Gap Pioneers Wanted!

Fresh New Cities On and Off Shore Published by ken maschke under infrastructure,International Experiences,Research Post by regular contributor Rafael Gomes de Oliveira. The need for civil engineers to become more involved in policy making affairs ha s been a recurring theme in ASCE publications and communications. CEs can interj ect relevant data regarding infrastructure development in the political discours e and effect decisions that will impact their profession and personal lives. If participation in the domestic political scene is too mundane for you, a pioneeri ng alternative might be to join the leadership team of new city project, either on or off the continental land masses! Let us start with the off shore option. While the concept of seasteading, the es tablishment of fully functioning, self-governing communities at high seas, has b een around for a little while, it has only recently picked up steam. Following t heir foundation in 2008, the Seasteading Institute, a non-profit directed toward research on the seasteading field, received a million dollar donation from the Thiel Foundation and was able to likewise increase their research and publicity efforts [1]. Along with other contributions, this action represents an important indication that the seasteading idea has the potential to be more than just a f ad. Seasteading is not to be confused with offshore work stations, which are also be ing considered as a way to bypass visa issues and facilitate the acquisition of international entrepreneurial talent. Blueseed, a startup community to be locate d off the coast of San Francisco, has emerged as the most popular offshore work station example. Seasteads aim to be more self-sufficient and attract a more long-term population , but they need engineering pioneers in order to solve the required technical ch allenges and advance their goal of building new models of governance. That s where civil engineers come in. According to George Petrie, smaller seasteads are expe cted to appear in the next couple of years while Metropolisteads (get it? Like, re ally big seasteads) are due to be completed in the next 20 to 30 years [2]. If y ou believe Mr. Petrie, now would be the time to start your research and begin co nnecting with the seasteading industry. Otherwise insert generic joke about missi ng the boat Out of all engineering professionals, aside from naval engineers, CEs seems to h ave the best matching skill set to succeed in this new venture both as designers and as citizen-leaders. So, why not? Another urban alternate gaining prominence is the concept of charter cities. Cha rter cities are governed by the city s own charter instead of state and national l aws. The denizens of the new cities have the freedom to elaborate and modify the city s administration according to the norms stipulated on the founding charter. This type of governance allow the people to choose how they want to be ruled bas ed mainly on preference instead of leaving that important decision to factors su ch as place of birth and complicated bureaucratic change. Charter cities open-gov ernments will compete with each other in order to attract new inhabitants by inc rementally offering better working and living conditions. Rule of law, fairness, and a lack of corruption leads to more economic growth than low taxes, says Patri Friedman [3]. Paul Romer, economist and entrepreneur, is one of the biggest advocates for this charter city model of governance. He details his ideas in this insightful TED v ideo. Romer identifies the success of Hong Kong as a special economic zone and p

rojects the opportunity for special development to other regions. Again, this is an incredible opportunity for civil engineers to make an impact around the worl d. They can aid in the conceptualization and execution of the infrastructure and suprastructure of these new cities, while along the way creating better living conditions for current and future generations. These ideas are far from perfect. They still need a great deal of developing bef ore becoming truly viable (if they ever become viable at all). Issues range in a reas such as environmental impact, non-virtual piracy, dangerous weather conditi ons, neo-colonialism, engineering and self-sufficiency challenges, untried gover ning and economic models, cultural shock, etc. Nonetheless, as with the opening of space to private interests, they are exciting concepts that will need researc h and input from civil engineering professionals in order to overcome severe obs tacles. Almost all of us have at some point pondered the question, if you could build a n ew society on a deserted island, what would you do differently? and daydreamed ab out the numerous potential outcomes. In the near future that thought can go from being mere conjecture to a startling reality. Wood Solutions Fair Published by ken maschke under Projects,Sustainability I recently attended the Wood Solutions fair sponsored by Woodworks.org. It was r eally good; I wood go again. Cheesy as it may sound, I was really excited about the free seminars and complimentary lunch. Judging by the number of attendees, I apparently wasn t the only one enthusiastic to learn about the latest in wood desi gn. The crowd was approximately 50/50 engineers and architects. This also made t he event a nice networking opportunity. The first session that I attended was presented by a representative from Woodwor ks, an organization sponsored by a conglomeration of wood industry to promote th e use of wood as a construction material for multi-family and commercial buildin gs. The presenter set the stage nicely for the rest of the day by providing an o verview of the many new structural wood products now available. This introductio n was necessary in order to decode all the acronyms used by the industry, like L VLs Laminated Veneer Lumber, CLT Cross Laminated Timber, SIPs Structural Insulat ed Panels. Wood composites, like LVLs and PSLs, aren t necessary new technologies, but I did learn how similar products have been improved in order to take very heavy loads. Greater load resistance is achieved by using adhesives to create a composite of smaller, high-strength wood strips. I attended one session that profiled severa l projects in which retail podiums, typically constructed from concrete, were bu ilt instead with wood. High performance wood composites were essential to transf er the heavy loads from the residential towers above. Cross Laminated Timber seems like such an obvious idea that you ll wonder why it t ook so long to catch on. These are structural wood panels that can be used for w alls, flooring, or roofing. The panels are constructed by joining multiple layer s of 1x or 2x boards together in alternating directions. The result is a structu ral panel that spans two ways, similar to concrete, and can be erected with a cr ane, very similar to precast concrete. To date, only a couple of CLT buildings h ave been constructed in the States, but it is growing in popularity in Canada an d is widely used in Europe. Builders love the speed at which such CLT buildings can be constructed. One speaker described how a small urban commercial building was erected in less than one week. Structural Insulated Panels combine the structural qualities of wood with the th ermal performance of insulation. These products are at the forefront of energy p erformance and sustainable design. One speaker even discussed how an organic str

aw-based insulation could be used in the wood sandwich. The keys to effectively using SIPs include careful installation and proper sealing. If installed properl y, SIPs can even achieve the nearly hermetically sealed airflow requirements speci fied by the Passive Haus Institute. However, failure to take due care during ere ction can result in moisture accumulation within the sandwich. That s another reas on why the solid CLT construction has growing appeal. I left with the realization that the wood industry now offers many innovative pr oducts that make it a competitive design choice for all types of buildings. Wood has many construction advantages including ready availability, contractor famil iarity, and quick erection. The renewable nature of the material is also desirab le from a sustainability standpoint. I hope to have to opportunity to work with the architects in attendance to construct more wood structures. Frank Lloyd Wright Structural Engineer? Published by ken maschke under Amazing Structures This summer guest contributor Kyle Vansice interned with Thornton Tomasetti in C hicago. He used some of his free time to explore Chicago s rich architectural hist ory, including works by acclaimed architect Frank Lloyd Wright (see also Desert Design). Kyle is now completing his master s degree at Iowa State University. Many people have been captivated by Frank Lloyd Wright and respect his advanceme nt of the prairie style of architecture, an obvious forebear of contemporary arc hitecture. Mr. Wright pioneered sudden and dramatic departures from the design p rinciples of his time, ultimately changing the course of architectural history. However, based on high profile repairs required to some of Wright s most iconic st ructures, a structural engineer might wonder whether Mr. Wright s new philosophy o f design was matched with significant improvement in the way building structures are engineered. I believe the answer is mixed and subjective. Upon first glance, Wright s innovatio ns in geometry and plan seem to require a broad new approach to structure. The P rairie Style comprises a horizontal, somewhat sprawling, layout, which exploits the use of the cantilevers and split-levels. The use of such structural elements may seem like evidence that Wright innovated a new engineering to achieve his d esigns. However, I believe that Mr. Wright more likely stretched the existing co nstruction techniques past their previous limits, possibly to a degree that dimi nished the factor of safety. On a recent visit to Wright s early home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, I was a ble to see firsthand his attention to detail. His ability to stretch both space and materiality past convention is partly what made him such a transformative Ar chitect. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to experience Frank Llo yd Wright s working studio during his most productive years. It is clear that Wright understood the concept of holistic design as every space is a well-integrated piece of the overall plan. Every element fulfills a defini te purpose. The plan flows congruently from space to space. This leads the occupant to feel as if they are being guided and encouraged to take a certain course through thei r journey, one that is thoroughly calculated and developed by Wright in order to reveal the true wonder of his design. When entering the home, the first step is one of discontent and curiosity, as you find yourself in a humble entrance room with low ceilings and menial dcor. But as you walk up the staircase and step foo t on the main floor, the plan brilliantly opens up and widens, and a subtle sens e of relief takes over you as you are reassured of Wright s clever genius

From there, the path is constant and flowing and as you move through the house, you slowly notice the integration of each room with the prior and with the next room you step into. There are subtle differences, but it is clear that Wright un derstood what took years for the rest of the Architecture community to grasp tha t the building program should not be a reckless composition of individual and in dependent spaces, but rather it should be developed as a homogenous whole with d iversity throughout. Unfortunately, Mr. Wright s genius in architectural design wa s not matched by his understanding of engineering principles. I believe the engineering behind his designs did not meet the exacting standards typical of a Frank Lloyd Wright space. Mr. Wright believed that the structures of his day were large, bulky, and overly engineered. He felt that it was possibl e to challenge conventional wisdom and beat back some of the conservatism in str uctural design. I think it is also true to say that while he knew existing limit s were antiquated, he did not fully appreciate the actual physical constraints t hat his designs surpassed. The tour guide at Wright s home and studio told me that most of Mr. Wright s structu res had required significant rehabilitation due to technical deficiencies. The h ome and studio was no exception. A good example of the need for structural remediation can be found in Mr. Wright s riverside masterpiece, Falling Water. The iconic cantilevered portions of the h ome had at one point deflected close to seven-inches over their fifteen foot spa n, and analysis of the structure has revealed that the as-built design had place d these cantilevers dangerously close to their failure limits. Post-tensioning w as eventually required to restore these portions back to their intended elevatio n and to prevent the sort of catastrophic collapse deemed inevitable (Tyler Meek , Fallingwater: Restoration and Structural Reinforcement). Other well-known examples of Wright s imprudence in engineering include the Guggen heim in New York and Taliesin; both of which encountered significant structural rehabilitation in order to restore serviceability and prevent failure. This post is certainly a critique of a brilliant man with talents ahead of his t ime. I believe that Wright s fierce independence and immense vision led him to cre ate timeless architecture, but they also clouded his engineering judgment. While I wish to emulate his ambition to effect and inspire change, I also recognize t hat physical limits do exist. Mr. Wright s designs can, however, serve as useful t ools in learning how to push engineering boundaries. Engineering is as much art as it is science. It allows us to understand our world, and thus how we expand a nd change it. Students of structures, like myself, can learn from Mr. Wright, as our generation will continue his work to define, expand, and change the future of building design. Kyle Vansice I should be able to figure out this new program Published by ken maschke under Early Career Experiences,management ASCE-SEI Logo Recently I had to edit a graphic banner for the SEI Sustainability Committee web site that I m currently responsible for maintaining. The task was simple enough; I just needed to take the typical SEI logo and add some text to identify the spec ific committee. We recently upgraded our home computer to an iMac, so I had to c omplete this task without the simple but reliable Paint program that has been my go-to graphic editor for so many years. After a quick web search, I found a fre e open source alternative for Mac called Gimp.

Gimp is much more like Photoshop than Paint and works on a lot of similar princi ples, like using layers and filters to edit images. Never a graphic artist, all of those features were new to me. Frustrated by the not-so-intuitive interface, I actually had to read the online instructions. After about two hours of researc h and experimentation, I was finally able to add the necessary lines of text to the graphic. I ve always prided myself on being able to figure out new computer programs at lea st well enough to get the job done. Learning new programs on your own is a neces sary skill for this generation s engineers. A new hire will be expected to learn p robably a dozen different design and analysis, modeling, and productivity progra ms in their first year. With some luck, they will have seen some similar softwar e at school, but the functional details are bound to be different. It s important to be a self-learner, because there will be no time for a formal training sessio n. That s just the way it is. Lately, I feel like I ve been slipping. New essential programs appear on the scene all the time. Even when you achieve competency on one platform, an update is gu aranteed to shift everything around. Shortcut keys and right-click commands are bound to be reversed in each different program. One of my most complicated projects requires frequently switching between the ar chitect s model in Rhino, our structural model in Revit, and the analytical model in SAP 2000. The zoom, rotate, and pan hot keys are different in each one. I end up spending half my time floundering with the navigation each time I change pla tforms. And now that I ve been using Revit as the standard drawing production plat form, I use AutoCAD about as fast as chiseling a stone tablet. My new managerial responsibilities also reduce my exposure to our entire softwar e catalogue. I used to complain that my managers didn t even know how to print fro m our drafting programs. Now, I have found myself emailing basic AutoCAD files t o my staff to have plotted for me. I think I owe some old bosses an apology. I h ope to maintain competence in the basic programs, but I can see that it will tak e a special effort on my part to stay current. I now find that my most pressing challenge is teaching my staff how drawings sho uld look and what aspects of the project require detailed analysis. While it s pos sible to get up to speed on modeling software quite quickly, it takes years of e xperience to understand what information needs to be conveyed in the drawings an d how that is best illustrated. Contrary to modeling software advertisements, th e best way to draw a detail is seldom with the most realistic illustration. Stru ctural drafting is a particular art form that identifies critical information wi thout providing superfluous information that distracts from the important detail s. We ve learned, that even when taking live sections in Revit, it s best to sketch over the live elements with detail lines. It s more like cartooning that painting a still life. Sometimes you need realism in your drawings; sometimes you just need to add some text to a graphic. Sometimes a design problem requires detailed analysis; somet imes experience dictates that a plate is more than enough. Sometimes you need to learn a new program; sometimes you can ask a new hire to do the heavy lifting. B eing an efficient, effective engineer requires constant learning and knowing whe n a simple solution is good enough. I ll continue trying to learn new programs, bu t I m going to need a little more help now. Learn More Pay Less: The Open Badge Education Published by ken maschke under Education Post by regular contributor Rafael Gomes de Oliveira. Education is, without a doubt, one of most important aspects of a person s life. P

eople may differ in which topics they find important to learn, but everyone is c urious and enjoys learning to some degree. Since the dawn of human history, the knowledge, values, and skills of the previous generation have been passed on to the next through demonstration, stories, drawings, songs, and other means of exp ression. The educational process is both incremental and differential, with each subsequent generation choosing what to keep and what to discard, and incorporat ing new knowledge and insight of their own to the mix. Don t let schooling interfere with your education. ~Mark Twain The open academics concept utilizes the vast information resources available on the Internet. Formal schooling was developed as a method to standardize and accelerate this pa ssing of information. Since knowledge implies a competitive advantage, education and literacy was, for a very long time, a privilege of the elite/ruling classes . Gutenberg s invention of the printing press in 1440 was a major breakthrough for the spreading of ideas around the world. We ve come a long way since then, but th e traditional schooling format can still be limiting in terms of scope, diversit y, and pace of learning. In recent years, the Internet has expanded our options to include free online education as a technological alternative to traditional s chooling, allowing students to develop their own curriculum and method of studyi ng. The Internet access, enjoyed by over 2 billion people, provides a portal to more educational resources one can possibly absorb in a lifetime. You have probably already heard of Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare, and TED (ed ucational in its own way), which serve as great outside-the-classroom learning t ools. The number, quality and diversity of sources are rapidly growing in order to adapt to all needs and tastes. Thus, we arrive at the concept of an open badg e education. The Mozilla Open Badges Project is a platform for people to catalog and organize the skills and experience they acquire outside the traditional edu cational setting. The platform itself is not critical; you could catalog and org anize your knowledge in a spreadsheet file. The concept of all-around non-tradit ional learning is revolutionary. By offering an accredited system for recording online learning students may be a ble to reduce higher education costs. On March 5th 2012, MIT launched their MITx project with a class on circuits and electronics. The goal of the project is not only to offer the material being tau ght in MIT classes (which they already did through the OpenCourseWare), but it a lso to alloww students from all over the world to actively participate and earn certificates of successful completion after the end of the course. This fall sem ester, the list of courses on the edX platform will grow to include classes from Harvard and UC Berkley as well. Topics range from public health to artificial i ntelligence. Out of the 150,000+ who started the MIT MOOC back in March, only ab out 7,000 obtained the certificate of successful completion. This shows that stu dents should not expect an easy ride from their open education. If this trend continues, we should expect more and more classes being offered an d more and more students being empowered through technology around the world at all levels. Just last week I showed my 12 year old nephew here in Brazil all the se links to top level education resources. He will probably not grasp Harvard-le vel computer science content yet, but he will be exposed to all sorts of new ide as and concepts that will influence the direction of his life. My nephew is now aware that the reality of a world-class education is a matter of choice for him. We are currently having fun working on a maze-style game on the Scratch program ming platform.

The downside of all this access to such an insurmountable mountain of informatio n is the potential to become overwhelmed with irrelevant noise. A healthy inform ation diet needs to accompany the learning process in order for it to produce be neficial results. If that risk of too-much-information is deftly managed, we are left with a progressive, forward-looking educational system capable of thorough ly preparing each new generation in a decentralized, personalized fashion while still keeping key critical skills as foundations. Will this new open information age allow students to escape rising educational c osts and life-long debt (indentured servitude)? Will the people who partake in s uch a new form of non-traditional education be allowed to become licensed profes sional engineers if they are able to demonstrate their technical capabilities? W e will soon find out those answers, but I hope that they are both a resounding Y ES! So, get started on your own open badge education by learning and teaching as wel l. This can also be a great way to meet new people and socialize. Here are some recommendations: Do It Yourself: http://www.instructables.com/ https://diy.org/ http://makeprojects.com/ Universities: https://www.edx.org/ http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm http://oyc.yale.edu/ https://www.coursera.org/ Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses http://www.academicearth.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ http://www.plos.org/ Other Sources: http://www.quora.com/ http://www.arduino.cc/ http://www.skillshare.com/ http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ http://www.codecademy.com/ http://www.udacity.com/ http://singularityu.org/ http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page http://www.projectpolymath.org/ (http://resources.polymathlectures.org/Talks/How ToLearnEverything/) The Art of Living: http://vimeo.com/channels/228809/page:1 A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. ~Robert A. Heinlein

5 reasons why people change but management doesn t Published by ken maschke under Early Career Experiences,management My team s management structure has been shaken up over the past couple of months. First, I received a promotion to the associate level. I m now much more involved w ith setting fees for our work and responsible for keeping projects on budget. On top of the new role, one of my direct supervisors is transferring to another of fice. With no obvious replacements for his job, I expect to pick up some of the slack. This could be an opportunity or a workload that I m unprepared for. At leas t, I should have the authority to implement some policies that improve office li fe, right? I have not been shy about sharing my ideas for improving management. Thankfully, my managers politely listened to my thoughts even if they weren t implemented. I figured I d have my chance to change business one day. Faced with this opportunity , I now realize how difficult it is to implement idealistic changes to office pr ocedure. Based on my admittedly limited experience here are some hindrances to r unning the office of your dreams. 1) Managers don t know what they re doing. Until stepping into this new role, I had foolishly been one to consider experience overrated. When it comes to negotiatin g fees with clients or dealing with out of left field questions from the project t eam, there is no substitute for experience. A new hire on my team recently expre ssed that he couldn t wait until he had my level of experience, when he wouldn t be doing calculations for the first time. I laughed and said I longed for the time when I knew what the problem was and that it had a correct solution. He can expe ct more last minute calculation and drawing revisions as we struggle to keep the client happy. 2) Fees are too low. I write two to four fee proposals each week. It s rare for my principal to agree with my estimates, which are based on the effort required to complete the project. Getting the job means guessing what fee the client will a ccept. In one recent example, the client requested a 40% reduction from our init ial proposal. We would have taken the hit to keep the client if they hadn t also r efused to pay any amount of retainer. Had we won the job, you can bet that I wou ld have been pressing my staff to work the job in part with unpaid overtime. 3) Everything takes time. I assume that most consulting engineering companies, l ike mine, expect their engineering staff to remain 100% billable. All those time codes that you re required to use actually mean something. Overhead time is caref ully tracked. Managers are sometimes chastised when their staff fails to meet th e target billable utilization. All those wonderful side projects, like developin g standard spreadsheets or writing procedural manuals, detract from billable tim e. That s why you re encouraged to take on such tasks on your own time. 4) The multiplier is all-important. A corollary to item three, the project budge t is even more closely monitored. The project multiplier is computed by dividing current billings by the total labor cost to date. A high multiplier means a mor e profitable project. A certain number is required just to break even, depending on your company s overhead costs (including employee benefits, property rent, mar keting, etc). This metric is an objective measure of the manager s performance, fa irly or not. Even with deadlines looming, I have declined to add staff to my pro jects in order to control labor costs. I also try to staff the most efficient en gineers on my projects. 5) It s the business culture. Firms all have their own corporate culture. Whether they re large or small, employee owned or publicly traded, downtown or in the subu rbs all have effect. Some policies just won t work at your company. A colleague re cently explained his experience working temporarily out of another company s offic e (it was not an engineering firm). They regularly had cocktails at lunch, beer in the refrigerator, and Friday afternoons off for golfing. Sound too good to be

true? See points one through four for the economic impact. I know we couldn t imp lement any of these ideas, if just because of the corporate culture. Even allowi ng alcohol consumption during the work day would be off-putting to a number of o ur staff members with a sense of sober responsibility to their work or who for o ther reasons choose not to imbibe. After hour events are totally fine though. I never would have thought that I d be the buzz-kill on such ideas. I m learning that some things are the way they are for good reason. It s not total c oincidence that business operate the way they do and that while personnel will c hange, management seems to remain the same. There are a number of factors that p lace stress on managers and lead them to use staff in the way they do. I have a lot to learn about my new position. In time, hopefully I ll be able to navigate th is strange new world and become more effective and accommodating for my staff. Precast Concrete Plant Tour Published by ken maschke under Amazing Structures,Early Career Experiences Last Friday I took a few hours from my normal schedule to attend a precast concr ete plant tour. The opportunity was sponsored by the local ASCE-SEI chapter. It is always interesting to see how the products we specify are manufactured. Preca st concrete is particularly interesting to me, because they produce entire struc tural elements that enable lego-style modular construction. Dukane Precast Plant in Plainfield, IL Precast construction is extremely common in parking garages, but the technology can be applied to all types of construction. It is the standard in many European countries, because it enables quick on-site construction and reduces expensive field labor. The controlled process by which precast concrete is produced offers many potential benefits from quality control to sustainability. New precast pro ducts take advantage of the construction technique to embed wall insulation and finishes that allow concrete construction to approach the efficiency of stud wal l construction. That s good news for sustainability and design of homes in hurrica ne-prone regions. The tour was offered by Dukane Precast, headquartered in Naperville, Illinois, a suburb just outside Chicago. They were eager to show off their newest state-ofthe-art plant. It was constructed at the height of the building boom a few years ago but has since been running at minimal capacity. Precast Panel Automated Drying Rack System Expecting continued industry growth Dukane made a special effort to develop a pl ant to maximize productivity, inspired by the assembly line concept. They call t heir design a circular system. A roller system allows the large concrete form ta bles to be shuffled around the facility in a circular pattern. At one stage, wor kers will add the rebar and inserts. Then the form is sent over the the prestres sing position. Note that many precast concrete sections are pre-tensioned for st ructural performance and incidental shipping loads. The form proceeds through co ncrete placement, consolidation via shaking tables, curing compound application, and then to the temperature controlled curing room. The massive forms are lifted into drying racks via a massive crane. They system is reminiscent of an automated car storage facility utilized in some dense urban areas. When operating at full capacity, our guide noted that they don t have to h eat the room, because so much heat energy is released by the curing concrete pan els. When the elements have achieved enough strength they are retrieved from the curing racks and forwarded into the debonding room. Another crane hoists the pa nel from the form and a patented device flips the panels on their side for easie r shipment. Dukane realized that flipping the panels on their end would allow sh ippers to avoid applying for wide load certifications when shipping the product.

Storage Yard If the ultimate job site is not yet ready to receive the finished panel, the fac tory can store a high volume of product in their yard. When developing the facil ity, Dukane experimented with a special ceramic product to serve as lightweight roofing. This ultimately proved unsuccessful, so, today, the open web roof joist remain uncovered, and the yard is open air. I have to admire the risk taking to evaluate an experimental product. The entire facility was apparently a proving ground for creative use of structural precast. The factory walls are comprised of standard double-tee beams. About two-thirds up, the webs are coped and an ind ustrial crane rail is supported. The roof is the same double-tee section. The op erations manager was very satisfied by the performance of the building. He empha sized the thermal mass of the concrete, which moderates the heat gain of the bui lding over the day. I really enjoyed the tour. It s always nice to where the products, that we structu ral engineers specify, are produced. It was also encouraging to know that there are still engineers out there taking risks on their own property, hoping to furt her advance the construction industry. I would encourage all engineers to get ou t to the field or the fabrication plants as often as possible. It brings extra p erspective to design decisions. What it takes to get the job done Published by ken maschke under Early Career Experiences He gave a 110%. The phrase is one of my biggest pet peeves. For one, it s factually impossible. While it may glorify nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic, it can be co unter productive to direct too much effort in one direction. From a manager s pers pective, 110% ought to mean their staff is working overtime another discussion o ften had on this blog. But the thesis of this blog is that over-committing resou rces on a project can have negative consequences for the budget and the final wo rk product. Ideally, you would always go the extra mile for your clients. Unfortunately, mos t consultants work to a budget and share staff with other projects. Employees mu st be properly utilized and clients expectations must be managed in order for a project to stay profitable. In my first roles as a project manager, I tried to b e uber responsive. While this tact did help me build strong relationships with t he entire design team, it strained my staff and depleted our budget. Despite the extra work, it never felt like we were getting ahead. Then, even as major deadl ines approached, we even had dial down the effort in order to stay in budget and allow staff to meet responsibilities on other projects. As a younger engineer, I got so frustrated by mad scrambles right before deadlin es. Late changes also drove me crazy. These situations remain uncomfortable, but I m becoming more accepting of these facts of design life. It s too easy to direct all the blame to the architects. They are managing a very complex system, coordi nating input from the owner, the other consultants, and the permitting bodies. H elping the architect navigate the coordination process is the most effective thi ng that consultants can do to minimize deadline scrambles. Sometimes there s nothing you can do to avoid a late rush of design changes. For t hat reason, many seasoned project managers take a relaxed approach to the early project phases. Construction documents need not be 100% complete until the build ing is under construction. On renovation projects we can even expect many change s during construction, as the actual conditions can vary a great deal from the e arly assumptions. Even the permitting process can be initiated with incomplete d ocuments. Sometimes it s best not to go overboard, because the peer reviewer may v eto a particular design approach. I always explain the permitting process as an unpredictable journey during witch any manner of comments can be raised, but all

can be resolved through give and take. I give my clients 100%, but the percentage necessarily varies over time. Early o n I can provide structural insight and guide them though the permitting process. As milestone deadlines approach I expect to put in extra time and ramp up staff ing, but I can only do that if we ve taken a measured approach in the interim. In the end, the design work always gets done, and construction is completed. The mo st important thing is to be present and able to act when major issues come up. S o don t worry about working 110% on my team, just do what it takes to get the job done. First things first: technical competency Published by ken maschke under Disciplines I ve written several blogs recently about the cutting edge of structural design. W hile it s true that new modeling software and analytical techniques are changing t he occupation, it remains extremely important to have a solid understanding of b asic principles. If anything, implementing the fancy new software techniques req uire an even more thorough knowledge of first principles, because there are few assurances that the initial output is at all valid. Again, it s the season of new hires and summer internships. Over the past few year s, I have noticed that young engineers have a better aptitude for software use a nd programming. However, many of the same young engineers do not appear to have the same familiarity with traditional hand calculation. Now, I ve long argued agai nst old-timers that would suggest that all computer analysis be backed up with h and calculations, but I do find myself becoming more critical of younger enginee rs and their computer modeling. I ve become that guy that always saying, that just doesn t look right. I encourage my junior staff to use computer models to analyze any condition beyo nd the classic simply supported, uniformly loaded beam. It s beneficial for them a nd me to view the resulting behavior visually. The results are worthless, though , if the boundary conditions, connectivity, and loads are input incorrectly. Whe n you re reviewing the work of someone else, that s where an engineers intuition com es into play. If the members seem too small, they probably are, and the input wa s messed up. Despite all the advances in materials and analysis, structures stil l largely comply with the theories of proportion that were the underpinnings of architecture all the way back to the Middle Ages. First you identify that something doesn t look right, but where is the problem. Th e next thing I always do is ask to see the deflected shape. It always stuns me w hen new engineers report a finished design to me before having looked at the way t he structure deflects. I always thought that was the coolest output from the com puter program. You can typically identify modeling errors right away by seeing o f any members are flying off into space or if the the structure is moving far mo re than anyone would find comfortable to experience. RISA 3D is one of my favorite analysis tools, because the output is conveniently shown graphically. It also has the added benefit of refusing to run any ill-con ditioned or unstable model. Well, duh. Other programs, like SAP2000, do find way s to run these bad models, leaving engineers to judge whether the 1000 lines of calculation errors are meaningful or not. It must be said, that for complicated schematic designs, I sometimes turn to SAP and let it chuck through error-fraugh t routines in order to determine whether there s any potential in an early design. But when you re doing permit calculations, you shouldn t be taking such risks. RISA s refusal to run is my first line of defense against bad models. Unfortunately, I can recount several occasions where a young engineer has report ed to me that RISA wasn t working, because it wouldn t run the model. It s embarrassin g to have an experience engineer take 5 seconds with your model and report that

you ve missed a constraint. Always assume that the problem is in your model and no t the program. Oh, how I wished the program was error-prone when as a grad stude nt, I had to compute the complicated analyses by hand and compare against the co mputer result. When a model is built correctly, it s more infinitely more reliable than pages of complicated hand calculations. So while I write at length about the cutting edge of structural design, that s not to say that basics aren t important. It s also my opinion that the basics don t reall y sink in after just one or two undergraduate courses. For me the knowledge took time to absorb. Grad school helped; teaching other people helped more; years of experience were absolutely essential. Young engineers should take time to fully understand the underpinnings of advanced modeling and analysis. Fortunately, ma ny mistakes are easy to spot by managers. Unfortunately, you re going to hear abou t those mistakes on you annual review. The worst review to get is that you strug gle with basic concepts. That reputation is very hard to shake, so be meticulous in your calculations and models. The most amazing design programs are only as g ood as the engineer that uses them. What s your experience with computer programs? Are you in the hand calculation only crowd? How often do you use canned design programs? Do find them fraught with erro rs, or do you find the error typically lies with the user input? How quickly do you think the industry is changing? Please leave your comments below. The hours argument Published by ken maschke under Uncategorized In early March I published an article about the number of hours that civil engin eers work per week. To encourage a conversation, I posed the question to the ASC E LinkedIn community. The response has been overwhelming. Over 160 posts have be en added to the discussion thread making very interesting observations about pro fessional commitment and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Something of an argument as played out between engineers who feel that extra hou rs (+40) are necessary to do the job, and engineers should accept the long days provided that they are adequately compensated. A second faction, has argued that overtime is not a foregone conclusion if engineers spend their time efficiently . Besides, there are more important things in life, like spending time with your family. Full disclosure: I find myself leaning toward the latter argument, howe ver, there was a time in my career where I was unfazed by 50+ hour workweeks. My suspicion is that many people participating in the LinkedIn discussion would ad mit to a similar change-of-heart over time. I believe that there has been a substantial oversight in the discussion. While w e ve debated whether all time spent at work is spent on work, we have not given si milar consideration to whether time spent outside of work has a bearing on work performance or the profession. Although, my work hours have declined in recent y ears, my time spent considering professional issues has probably increased. I ve u sed more time away from the office to participate in several ASCE committees and regularly contribute to this blog. A couple of years ago, I began working with a local artist on some concepts for a solar power generating art installation. I v e also taught structural engineering classes at a local university and mentored prospective engineers. I have found all of these activities to be personally ful filling and ultimately beneficial to my profession. Had I spent that extra time in the office, I may have earned my employer some extra fee, but the real value of those hours would not have been realized. Another concern of mine about working long hours is the time lost for unconsciou s contemplation and creative exploration. Numerous studies have shown that creat ive breakthroughs require unstructured time for the mind to relax. The new book, Imagine by Jonah Lehrer, cites the science behind creativity and implores reade rs to take time out. It s also important for engineers to practice some right-brai

n thinking by participating in art, music, or other creative hobbies. I ve also re cently dabbled in meditation, and I can confirm that there really is something e ffective in the act of clearing your mind of thought. How do you spend time outside of work? Have you ever had an ah-ha moment after wal king away from a problem? When are you at your most creative? Please share your comments below. Master say to young grasshopper, it s all about the data. Part 2. Published by ken maschke under Early Career Experiences,Projects Structural optimization, genetic algorithms, generative modeling and parametric design are the new buzzwords of the structural design industry. They ve quickly re placed such old fashioned concepts as building information modeling (BIM), 3D CA D, and electronic delivery. The last generation of digital tools has opened the doors to many new and potentially transformative ways of using data to design st ructures. To stay on the cutting edge of the industry requires learning more sof tware and applying more programming knowledge. Way back when I entered the workforce, in 2004, most drawings were being drafted in 2D CAD. At the time, my company wasn t yet using paper space in AutoCAD to set up drawing sheets. 3D modeling was very cumbersome and seldom delivered to the client. On the analysis front, finite element programs were widely used, but the ir graphic user interfaces were still pretty difficult to use. My first employer primarily used a 2D analytical program, so we were required to set up multiple 2D models with corresponding boundary conditions in order to approximate a 3D st ructure. There was virtually no link between analytical models and the CAD files used to create construction documents (CDs). Building information modeling promised to change the industry, and it has. Model ing in 3D is commonplace, both for analytical models and for CDs. Although BIM h asn t quite lived up to the hype about seamless transfer between the two model typ es, most of the software packages can at least transfer a DXF type file with cen terlines back and forth. We still not reliably able to transfer all the load and modeling data between models, so iterative chances still require a lot of work in both models. Lately, many of our architectural clients have begun using a 3D modeling program called Rhino. I first used the software in college to design my ASCE concrete c anoe. It has long been used by industrial designers because of its ability to dr aw complex non-linear shapes. This gives architects a lot of freedom to model bu ildings that would have been unheard of in the days of hand drafting. It also ma kes structural engineers jobs a lot more difficult. Modeling such complex shapes typically requires finite element analysis (FEA) of shell elements. We ve had to learn how to use Rhino to manipulate architectural m odels for import into our analysis models. This has required an education in the differences between solids, surfaces, and polylines and a trial-and-error proce ss of figuring out what the analysis program can handle. Often we ve found that th e shells are too complex for the analysis programs to automatically mesh. Subdiv iding the structure into many small elements is a basic principle of FEA. Most o f the time, the built-in Rhino tools could do the job. All this manipulation is incredibly time consuming, and every time you go back i nto the model to make a small geometric change there s a serious risk of creating some type of discontinuity that will mess up the analysis. Then some architects introduced us to a Rhino plug-in called Grasshopper. Grasshopper is like a graph ical programming language for manipulating the drawing tools in Rhino. Since Gra sshopper was developed explicitly for Rhino, it integrated Rhinos built-in tools with the power to automate model generation. Savvy Grasshopper programmers can

use the tool to automatically construct near-complete structural building models by turning a few input dials, like number of stories, bay spacing, story height. You can even program in rudimentary calculation so member sizes update according ly with increasing spans. Initially, I used Grasshopper for the basic purpose of rationally meshing comple x surfaces. On a particularly ambitious project planned as part of a city-in-the -sea in Dubai, the architects on the team helped us develop a Grasshopper routin e that would automatically generate an external diagrid structure around the swo oping surfaces of a 50-story hotel building. It would have taken us weeks to dra w in the structure manually; we only had days before a structural concept needed to be presented. I was able to take the diagrid generated by the architects and import it into my analysis program, SAP 2000, and estimate the member sizes. La ter we exported the data back out to Revit Structure, input the designed sizes i n the 3D model, added some floor trusses, and delivered a rendered isometric vie w of the structure for inclusion on the architect s presentation board I have since used Grasshopper to auto-generate a complex space frame structure. We had been working with architects on a plan to put a new glass-clad ballroom o n top of an existing 8-story podium. However, because of the space usage below, we were extremely constrained in the location of new columns to support the roof . As the deadline for a concept design approached, we struggled to find a viable solution. The idea of a space frame came to me, but I was nervous to present su ch a solution without doing my homework. I quickly generated the geometry in Gra sshopper and exported it my analysis program, RISA 3D. The next day I had a solu tion ready to present to my boss and the client. The future of generative modeling is very exciting. Imagine writing a custom alg orithm for a project that allows the architect to see, in real time, how their d ecisions impact structural efficiency. Engineers with my company have created su ch a model based on data about the embodied carbon in common building materials. Their program will show the optimal efficiency for a generic building, then the design team to change the parameters to see how revisions to column placement, restrictions on floor depth, or increasing the number of stories might impact th e sustainability of the building. Rhino is also testing its own BIM functionality. This would allow additional mem ber information, like material thickness, to be tagged to surfaces and lines. I ve seen a demo where this functionality is combined with Grasshopper and a FEA pro gram to perform a real time structural optimization. You could literally have th e program cycle through forms and member properties to find the optimal design. I can imagine a future where structural engineers spend most of their time writi ng front-end algorithms and checking output, while the iterative design process is outsourced to the computer. This is a scary though to some, but perhaps no worse than existing doubts about the current reliance on canned computer analysis programs. Anyway, there s no doub t that computers will never have the creative ability to solve problems like hum ans, right? Well, some engineers are experimenting with genetic algorithms that attempt to implement such creative thought. In some cases an evolutionary proces s is applied where seemingly random outcomes are introduced, compete, and grow u ntil a superior solution is found. Seeing how far the profession has come in ess, none of these far-fetched ideas seem ightly discerning to think of all the new n order to stay on top. Consider also the ble design plus all the traditional stuff ifelong learning, you bet. just my first eight years in the busin beyond the realm of possibility. It s sl programs and skills I ll have to learn i new vocabulary developing for sustaina a structural engineer needs to know. L

It s all about the data Published by ken maschke under Uncategorized Attention aspiring structural engineers: I hope you paid attention in your fresh man year programming courses. On recent projects, I have found myself laboring o ver programming algorighms and stressing how to manage large amounts of data. So me really cool advancements in modeling software enable structural engineers to utilize data that was previously discarded but how to manage all that new inform ation. There are two emerging trends in particular that I believe will strong in fluence the future of the industry. In the first half of this blog series I ll des cribe a Forensic Information Model (FIM). For some years now, BIM (Building Information Modeling) has been the buzz word d u jour. The principle of the technology is that modeled items can can contain at tributes. Until recently, that additional tagged data was mostly just used to de fine geometry. In CAD (hand drafting for that matter) a drawn line is just pixel s on the screen (ink on the page), but a BIM element is a beam with a specific c ross section, joined to connecting members, placed on a certain level within the building. This additional information makes the 3D computer modeling environmen t much more user friendly. Cutting sections on plan now only requires a few mous e clicks. This process doesn t necessarily make drafting any more efficient as now there is a whole lot more data to be managed. BIM software has caught on largely because of the opportunity it presents for 3D visualization and rendering. Some steel detailers also have the capacity to imp ort the models into their connection modeling software. This process expedites d etailing and reduces some human error in plan reading. BIM software developers h ave long promised integration with analysis programs as well. We ve had more diffi culty with this data transfer and conventionally only expect to get the basic ge ometry to port accurately. This is where the programming geniuses come in. Experts in my company have devel oped their own programming tool that can extract or insert additional data in th e building information model. They call it the parameter explorer. On a basic le vel, this tool can be used to populate a column schedule from a formatted spread sheet. If you think outside the box, however, there is much information that you might want to tag in a model, i.e. urls, photos, calculations, field data, etc. Our Building Performance group has used this technology to develop a Forensic I nformation Model (FIM). We can now create 3D structural models and tag forensic information to individua l members photos, inspection notes, shop drawings, etc. On large scale projects, the data is archived in a database program. Custom attributes are created in th e 3D model associated with the database information. The parameter explorer prov ides the link between the model and the data. Another homemade viewer program ca n be worked up to provide a user interface friendly enough for even a lawyer to use. A FIM model was generated to organize data related to the collapse of the I35W b ridge in Minneapolis, MN My boss recently presented our company s use of FIM at the 2012 Structures Congres s in Chicago. He described how the technique was applied to the Minneapolis I35W bridge collapse investigation. FIM was also used to reconstruct the path of a f alling dumpster that caused extensive damage to a high rise in New York City. Th e talk is summarized in a recent ENR article, Structural Engineers Learn Lessons from Failures through Virtual Databases. The end result of a FIM model looks super cool and the name just sounds really i ntelligent too. However, the programming behind the veneer is serious stuff, and managing all the data is a thankless job. Only a handful of people in the compa

ny really know how to set up the whole system from start to finish. Though there are those of us that know enough about one part or another to be really dangero us. Those with the knowledge of the modeling platforms (Revit, Catia, etc.), the database software (Access), and the programming language (VBA) are very valuabl e to the team. Emerging trends in digital product delivery require management of lots of data. Transferring model data between visualization and analytical software requires c omplex data manipulation. The companies and individuals that learn how to handle this data will be more efficient and able to offer more objective evidence that their designs are better. Job Search Tips from the Front Line Published by ken maschke under Uncategorized My sister, Nancy, graduated from Virginia Tech with a Masters degree in bio-syst ems engineering this winter. Naturally, she came to her big brother for job-hunt ing tips. At first navigating the market was a struggle, but eventually, and wit h her own strategies in play, my sister landed several highly sought after inter views. Breaking news! Nancy just accepted a position with CH2MHill.

Nancy Maschke in front of the Agricultural Engineering building at Virginia Tech Job searching is not fun. It is not glamorous. I can think of a thousand things I would rather be doing. When people say that searching for a job is a full time job, they are not kidding. I have been looking for several months now and have been through it all: career fairs, email tag, phone calls, Skype sessions, and t he all-important on-site interview. Along the way I have received a lot of advic e and have learned a variety of skills in an effort to land that job offer. First and foremost, make an Excel spreadsheet to track your progress. Succeeding in this job market will mean applying at dozens of firms. Include in your list: the company name, position applied for, location, website, date you applied, da te the advertisement closes (if known), and a position description. With my degree in Biological Systems Engineering, I could apply for a wide varie ty of positions, including water resources engineer, environmental scientist, an d agriculture specialist. My list helped me to remember what exactly I applied f or when a company called. On the phone, you want to be confident. Refer to your spreadsheet so you know about the company on the line and what position you appl ied for. It is embarrassing and unprofessional to ask, who are you again? Knowing what previous positions and companies you e search. You definitely do not wan to waste time twice. If you have not found that perfect job in companies you have previously applied to and see Let you spreadsheet be your guide. applied for may help narrow th applying for the same position a month or two, go back to the if something new has come up.

Once you have created a spreadsheet, you are ready to begin your search. There a re many different ways to learn about open positions. Over and over again I ve heard about the importance of networking. Finding someone to get you a foot in the door is key. Even though I ve never considered networkin g my cup of tea, I have benefited from connections with former classmates [and h er well connected brother J ]. Online search engines such as Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, Monster.com, etc. are a great start. These sites list a lot of the same jobs, so often only looking a t one is necessary. Job boards provided by professional societies can be great,

because then you know that every position is in your field. I also found smaller search engines geared toward my field very beneficial. Specialized jobs are oft en not listed on popular job sites. CyberSierra.com is a great resource for the environmental field. Lastly, if you are just looking in a particular locale, do not be afraid to Google or use YellowPages.com to search for companies. Smaller companies are not as likely to list their positions on job sites, but they will still list job openings on their website. Career fairs are tricky because all of your peers give their resume to the same handful of companies. Therefore you must make yourself stand out in a good way. One easy way to stand out is to read the company s poster before stepping up. Find one thing that you are interested in maybe it s one step outside your curriculum. Your interest in the details of that company will differentiate your interview. For example, while speaking with one environmental engineering company, I menti oned that I was interested in the policy behind the environmental sampling techn iques. Once I said that, the recruiter was very interested. The next day I got t he call for a second interview. Here s some nontraditional advice you might not pick up elsewhere. Let your phone go to voicemail if you don t know the number. A company recruiter will typically leave their name and the position you applied for. Before calling back, refer to your jobs spreadsheet. Do a little research, and then call the company back. Do not assume that they are calling you up JUST to set up an interview. Sometimes companies will ask you questions right away. Every time you speak with someone, it is an interview. In my opinion, it is better to be fully prepared than to pi ck up the phone at first contact. That said you should get back with the company the same day. I hope my tips a little outside of the regular be professional and always talk wi th a smile obviousness will be useful for everyone seeking a career in this unste ady job market. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, when you are asked if you can do a job, tell em, Certainly I can! Then get busy and find out how to do it. Time Out! Published by ken maschke under Early Career Experiences,Travel Over the past several weeks I have been putting in long days at the office, goin g in on weekends, and bringing home work in an effort to meet a permit submissio n deadline for a large adaptive reuse project. As the deadline approached, my st ress increased. I dreaded last-minute changes by the architect. Small mistakes b y my overworked team felt like insurmountable obstacles. When the submission dat e came, we pulled together and submitted the best product we could, knowing that there would be many more stress-inducing deadlines before construction actually started. I took the next day off in a long time. a beautiful Tuesday. It was the best stay-cation I ve had

Ping Tom Park Chicago I slept in until 8:00 but awoke with more energy than on most work days. First, I helped get my daughter ready for daycare and walked the dog. After a relaxed b reakfast, I took my car in for an oil change. On the way, I stopped at the Veriz on store to inquire about new wireless options and swung by my storage unit to r etrieve my mountain bike. Before noon, I had traversed town and accomplished sev eral errands, and I relished the opportunity to take care of my needs instead of some client s. My sister happened to be in town, so we planned an afternoon adventure together. After some quick bike maintenance, we would ride down the lakeshore path to Chi natown for a refreshing bubble tea. It was the perfect day for a ride: 75-degree

s in mid-March is unheard of for Chicago! The bike ride was the perfect antidote to a month of work-induced stress. Chinatown Gate, Chicago At the end of the day, I reflected on my relaxing but productive day. The day se emed longer than most. It was almost strange to mark the passing of time by feel ing the sun move across the sky. Most days at work, I m so swamped that I sit down at my desk 8:00, stare into the computer screen, and then Shoot! How can it be 5 :00 already? Where do the days go? I reassure my wife that I m better than most engineers about getting home at reaso nable hours. At least, that s what I tell myself. I don t have a company issued Blac kberry, and I do not check company email from home unless I m working from home. Eve n so, the gravitational pull of the office is strong. Getting up to leave at the end of the day is often physically difficult, like removing Golem s precious ring . Let s hope the consequence of failure isn t so ugly. Perhaps feeling some of the same pressures to stay late and remain connected to work at all times, a colleague recently sent me a link to an article in the New York Times titled The Joy of Quiet. The author describes his own efforts to stay disconnected in order to be more present. One of the more interesting notions i s that guests to some of the most exclusive luxury vacations actually pay a prem ium to escape TV and Internet access. The central paradox of the machines that h ave made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot each us how to make the best use of them. Chicago River South Branch I returned to work on Wednesday. I d like to say that I solved many problems with the enlightenment that a day of rest can bring. Actually, I spent almost the ent ire day responding to emails; my sent count at the end of the day was over 50. A t least at lunch, I had the wherewithal to skip the lunch-n-learn in the confere nce room and take in some more sun on the plaza. What would you do with one day off? Do you ever shut out your work life entirely ? How do you manage stressful projects? Would you pay extra for the privilege no t to receive an Internet signal? Please leave your comments below. Creative and Inventive Published by ken maschke under Amazing Structures This week we re featuring another guest blogger. Michael Murphy is a graduate stud ent at the University of Illinois. He is pursuing a Masters of Architecture with structures option. The degree will allow him to eventually pursue Illinois lice nsure in both architecture and engineering. Michael is therefore particularly in terested in how different mindsets interact to produce elegant designs. * * *

Engineers and architects are both problem solvers, but the processes they employ to solve problems differ. In An Engineer Imagines, Peter Rice, structural desig ner of the Sydney Opera House and the Pompidou Centre, analyzes the problem solv ing procedures of engineers and architects. Based on his work on high profile pr ojects, Rice concludes that there is a fundamental difference not only in the wo rk of architects and engineers but also in the way the two professions work. Arc hitects work in the subjective; engineers seek to transform a problem into one t hat can be solved objectively. The architect s response is primarily creative, whi le an engineer s response is essentially inventive. (Rice 1996)

Sydney Opera House On the Sydney Opera house project, Rice was incorporated into the team after Dan ish architect Jrn Utzon won the competition with his striking wave-like design. Working with Utzon, Rice s engineers made the design constructible by rationalizin g each of the shells as being cut from the same sphere, which allowed for a stan dard unit to be used in construction of the signature shells. This inventive re sponse provided an objective means to construct Utzon s subjectively creative desi gn. Later, Rice worked with architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano early in the d esign of the famous Pompidou Centre in Paris, France. The creative team did not really expect to win the competition, so the effort was treated as a chance to explore ideas. Rice s contribution can be seen in the exposed structural detailin g of the project, particularly the gerberette and the double boom beam. The architectural design called for long beam spans in both the interior exhibit ion spaces and the exterior circulation corridors. Long span trusses were design ed to carry load to the exterior columns. In a conventional truss-to-column conn ection some amount of eccentricity, and therefore bending moment, is to be expec ted. Such bending would necessitate larger columns. Rice felt he had found a sol ution to the common problem. To counteract the one-sided load on the columns, the re are cantilevered bracket projections mounted on them, so called gerberettes, which, with the help of prestressed vertical stays, elicit an equal but opposite action in the columns. Ideally, the final result is moment-free columns withou t large tensile stress, but with extra compressive stress added (Eggen & Sandaker 1995). Rice described the design of the gerberette as an architectural decision that only an engineer could make. Gerberette Pompidou Centre Similarly, the 45 meter-spanning double boom beams were engineered with aestheti cs in mind. Rice designed the beams with slender chords and diagonal members sp aced so light passing between the booms would lighten their visual impact very co nsiderably, and that lightness was of vital importance to a beam spanning 45 met ers and penetrating into the space. The choice of material was critical to forming the creative members. Rice specif ied cast steel, which had not been used since Victorian times, in part to give t he structure a human feel and introduce a sense of scale. He felt that the proc ess of casting steel created a sort of relationship between the observer, the fa bricator, and the designer. As a result, the building feels to be at built to t he scale of its pieces rather than the scale of the whole. Double Boom Beams The success of the Pompidou project can be attributed to three things. The two collaborating architects effectively communicated their design intentions to the engineering team and remained consistent throughout the design process. Second, the structural engineer put his imagination to work in designing special system s to achieve the architectural intent. Finally, the use of cast steel as a build ing material enabled the fabrication of these highly efficient members. This extraordinary structure like the Sydney Opera House and Pompidou Centre are made possible by the right combination of architectural creativity and structur al innovation. Peter Rice combined his understanding of physical behavior with a keen sense of building scale to help his architectural partners realize buildin gs that offer visitors a sense of interaction with the built environment. The ex ample that Rice sets by his most enduring works is that engineers must be equall y inventive as their architectural peers.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy the following books. Rice, P. (1996), An Engineer Imagines, Artemis, London. Balmond, C. (2002), Informal, Prestel Verlag, New York. Eggen, A.P., Sandaker, B.N. (1995), Steel, Structure, and Architecture, Watson-G uptill Publications, New York. Norberg-Schultz, C. (1995). The Backbone of Freedom, Steel, Structure, and Archit ecture, Watson- Guptil Publications, New York. Levin, M. (2003), Form Follows Form, Santiago Calatrava: The Architect s Studio, Arv inius Forlag AB, Stockholm, Sweden. Ali, M.M. (2001), Evolution of Concrete Skyscrapers: from Ingalls to Jin Mao, Ele ctronic Journal of Stuctural Engineering, Vol. 1, No.1 (2001) 2-14. Auden, W.A., (1948), The Dyers Hand, Random House, New York. So much to do, so little time Published by ken maschke under Early Career Experiences,Supercharge Your Career My current project is currently in an intensive coordination phase. Each of the last several Tuesday s the design team has meet to resolve numerous conflicts in t he design. The structural design must accommodate many unforeseen issues, includ ing: large mechanical duct openings through load-bearing walls, below-slab condu it and plumbing lines, site dewatering, restricted construction access at the pr operty line, value engineering options, etc. Our coordination meetings begin at 8:00. I have yet to leave earlier than 1:30. With so many structural conditions, I really have to be on the entire time. By the end of the meeting, I m exhausted and hungry. When I get back to the office, I ch eck my email, do a few side calculations for other projects, check in with my bo ss, and somewhere in between try to download the gist of the morning meeting to my team. As we discuss how to proceed with the work, I must repeat myself or sta rt speaking in circles, because I get some pretty strange looks from my colleagu es. I finally realized what these meetings were doing to my concentration, when, at the end of the day, I approached another colleague whose name had come up in the earlier coordination meeting. Edward, Who? I began, Ed Peck is going to call you.

my colleague responded quizzically. I shot back, somewhat annoyed. I knew

Ed Peck, you know the architect from Boston, they had spoken not too long ago. Did you say Beck? Can you spell the name?

Of course! I played along, P-E-C-K! And then it hit me. Edward Peck is the name of my colleague, the one I d been speaking to the whole time. Boy, I really felt sil ly. I chalked it up to having so much to do and so little time; I couldn t concent rate. Recent scientific studies on the effects of multitasking have concluded that my experience is predictable. Heavy media multitaskers perform more poorly on a ran ge of memory tests than people who focus on fewer tasks. In fact, says Clifford Nass, one of the Stanford team, [heavy multitaskers] are suckers for irrelevancy. This conclusion is contrary to the popular belief that multitaskers are better a ble to navigate the new perpetually wired-in world. I was clued into this bombsh ell by an article by Adam Gorlick, republished by Modern Steel Construction. htt p://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html Over the years, scientists have shown that the brain cannot process more than on

e string of information at a time. However, many people countered that multitask ers must have a special ability to control their focus, store and organize infor mation, and/or filter out irrelevant information. On the contrary, the Stanford study concludes that multitaskers perform poorly in three tests designed to eval uate each of these hypothesis independently. Heavy multitaskers consistently und erperformed light multitaskers. Eyal Ophir, the study s lead author concluded, [the heavy multitaskers] couldn t help thinking about the task they weren t doing. The researchers are still studying whether chronic media multitaskers are born ith an inability to concentrate or have damaged their cognitive control. Let s e that distracted thinking is a reversible condition or perhaps my condition more to do with an empty stomach. Still, the message is clear: by doing less, ou might accomplish more. w hop had y

Speed Networking Published by ken maschke under Supercharge Your Career Tis the season for retail politicking. It seems like every other day there s anoth er debate prefaced with hours of footage of the candidates kissing babies and sha king hand. It occurred to me the other night that the presidential election proce ss is really designed to select the best networkers in the nation. Candidates mu st be able to make a personal connection with voters with only a few moments of face time. Previously this blog has discussed the importance of networking in career buildi ng. Growing personal relationships will take you further than simply handing out tons of business cards, but you may not always have much time to make a first i mpression. Sometimes there is merit to quantity as well. Speed networking is an activity that ASCE chapters can hold to help members prac tice their networking skills and get to know their peers better. Here are basics of speed networking: First, take a seat at a long table with chairs on both sides. Don t sit with friends the point is to meet new people

Leave your bag and coat at the edge of the room, so you can switch se ats easier als Bring lots of business cards to exchange Be prepared with pen and paper to take notes if needed Organizers: look to complete groups, fill in gaps, or seat late arriv

Second, talk for two minutes with the person opposite you, until the cue for swi tching Consider sounding a 30 second warning to allow people to complete the ir conversations Have a different sound to make the switch

Upon hearing the cue to move, immediately all the people on one side of the tabl e will move up one spot Repeat the process about 20 times. Remember the key is to meet as many people as possible.

Mingle with the people who most interested you over hors d oeuvres or a cold beer. A Case Against Extreme Specialization Published by ken maschke under Motivational,Supercharge Your Career By regular contributor Rafael Gomes de Oliveira: No single person on the planet knows how to make a pencil. That is the idea behi nd economist Leonard Read s humbling essay I, Pencil. Each of the tasks involved in the process the felling of trees, the production of the lacquer, the mining of t he graphite, the formation of the rubber, etc are so specialized that no one per son would be able to make a even simple pencil from scratch. Can you imagine mak ing a toaster or personal computer? Specialization and the division of labor allow society to combine many different skills in the production of goods and services. Collaboration makes much possi ble. I don t have to worry about making my own clothes or growing all the food I e at. However, specializations are becoming narrower and narrower all the time, ev en inside the discipline of civil engineering. Just take a look at ASCE s several different technical groups and their committees. Despite all the benefits specia lization brings, too much of a good thing can become a problem. Specialization is often the by-product of having explored new and exciting terri tory, but it is difficult to come up with new concepts if you are working under too narrow a scope of ideas. By considering a broader knowledge base, you will b e more likely to make connections across disciplines, where many innovative idea s come from. Leonardo da Vinci once said: Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the wo rk appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harm ony and proportion is more readily seen. I follow this suggestion by maintaining awareness of things outside my area of e xpertise and by looking at the bigger picture. Too much specialization can limit your vision, resulting in scarcer creative opportunities. Creativity and innova tion are two of the sought after skills in today s market. Balancing specialized k nowledge with broad awareness is key to creativity and innovation. Another key i s practice. Yes, you can practice creative thinking. When making decisions try t o think divergently instead of utilizing established concepts. Companies are currently comprised, to some degree, by generalists and specialist s. The generalists are usually in charge of a comprehensive view of the company or a project, and the specialists are responsible for fulfilling the required ne eds of the company. They are both equally important, and one can t survive without the other. I foresee a shift from this type of division into more hybrid workers. The most successful worker will be the one who can be both a generalist and a specialist. Their versatility will give them an advantage over someone who is either/or, an d their creativity will allow them to come up with innovative ideas and concepts . Specialization will continue to be an important part of our civilization, but couple that with a generalist way of thinking and you will obtain a great formul a for success both in your academic and professional lives.

Brunelleschi s Cupola Part 1 Published by ken maschke under Uncategorized

Fanelli, G., Fanelli, M. Brunelleschi's Cupola Past and Present of an Architectu ral Masterpiece. 2004 Mandragora. On vacation in South Florida for Christmas, I finally had the chance to catch up on some reading that I ve intended since my trip to Europe two years ago. While i n Florence, Italy, I picked up a comprehensive volume about the design and const ruction of the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, often known as the Duomo , which si mply means cathedral. The Book, Brunelleschi s Cupola (Fanelli, 2004), provides a factual account of the structure based on historic documents and modern computer analysis. Despite sticking to verifiable information, the story of the cupola a nd its architect is both unbelievable and inspirational. Background By the early 14th century the city state of Florence had established itself as a political and economic leader in the region. Local authorities wanted a cathedr al to physically manifest their superiority, a political aspiration that has nev er really gone out of vogue. As work proceeded on the cathedral, in 1357, the de cision was cast to construct the largest dome since the Roman era. However, it w ould be another 63 years before construction began on the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore. The feat would require innovation in organization, design, constructi on equipment, and the services of a new profession: the architect. Although the city elders may have counted on divine intervention to deliver the solutions to their building challenge, they were much assisted by a well-organiz ed team leading the construction. The cathedral project was led by the city s top guilds something like a mix between the chamber of commerce and labor unions. Th e guilds for merchants, bankers, physicians & apothecaries, silk producers, and wool producers formed a sort of board-of-directors, known as the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, to guide the project. In time, the very powerful wool guild cam e to take the majority of responsibility. The Opera kept detailed records of bui lding material purchases and contracts. They also sought to work with profession als and frequently called on experts to offer confidence that the construction w ould be undertaken successfully. Florence, Italy vantage from Piazalle Michelangelo Brunelleschi s Legend By the early 1400s, the cathedral was ready to receive its iconic dome, but no o ne as yet had provided a solution for the extraordinary span or the means of con struction. At that time, Filippo Brunelleschi (1371-1446) was already consulting on the project. He had gained some fame completing projects like the Hospital o f the Innocents and the Barbadori Chapel before bringing his talents to the Oper a di Santa Maria del Fiore. Legend has it that Brunelleschi arrived at the Opera and boldly declared that he had a solution for constructing the cupola without centering, interior scaffold ing to support the structure until it was fully erected. It s said that he refused to describe his plan, insisting that someone would steal the idea and get the c ontract instead of him. To prove his point, he challenged the Opera to balance a boiled egg on end. After many failed, he simply cracked the end and stood the e gg, saying see how easy it is when you know the answer. The story is almost assuredly false. In fact, Brunelleschi participated in a des ign contest in 1417 and received some funds to create drawings and a scale model . His concepts for avoiding the use of centering were most likely implemented in the scale model. He would have also made reference to his previous projects whi ch utilized similar construction techniques. However, there appears to be some t ruth to the depiction of his maverick attitude. Records indicate that he was twi ce thrown out of Opera meetings for espousing his views on construction methods.

It s also known that he played a prank of mistaken identity on a difficult carpen ter, known historically as the fat man. No winner was declared in the 1417 design competition, but additional informatio n was requested from Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378 1455) three years l ater. Although Brunelleschi s design met the design objectives, the Opera still wa s still wary of Brunelleschi being able to deliver as promised. Brunelleschi, Gh iberti, and Battista d Antonio were jointly awarded the contract for the position of provisor operis Cupole construendi. This new position was superior to the tra ditional role of master builder (capomaestro). In time, Brunelleschi would edge out his peers and become recognized as the singular architect of the Cupola. Stay tuned for further discussion of the design and construction of Brunelleschi s Cupola in forthcoming blogs. Have you visited the Duomo of Florence? What was y our impression of the structure? Please contribute your comments below.

How does it stand? Brunelleschi s Cupola, Part 2 Published by ken maschke under Amazing Structures,International Experiences,Trav el As a structural engineer, my principal interest in reading about the cupola of S anta Maria del Fiore is how exactly does it stand up. The masonry dome is still the largest of its kind. With a span of over 45 meters, it held the overall reco rd until 1881, when the iron framed Devonshire Royal Hospital captured the title . A design like Brunelleschi s will not be seen again, since the radical use of un reinforced masonry would likely not meet modern building codes. Nevertheless, th e Cupola has stood for seven centuries and offers many lessons to today s structur al engineers Even with the knowledge of Newtonian physics and computer modeling the behavior of Brunelleschi s dome is difficult for modern engineers to understand. At the tim e of construction, Brunelleschi would have relied on his personal experience con structing similar masonry structures and the use of physical modeling. It s also s aid that he traveled to Rome to observe the techniques of the ancient masters be fore completing his design of the Cupola. Cupola at Night The Cupola is actually an eight-sided dome with an interior and exterior membran e. The space between the faces allows stair access to the top of the dome while also reducing the overall weight of the structure. Large pilasters are located a t the corners of the octagon and intermediate piers and beams provide further st iffening of the structure. The overall slope of the dome is steeper than Romanes que construction in part to reduce thrust on the supporting drum and to lessen t he flat portion near the apex. A solid compression ring is located at the top of the dome while several iron-linked stone rings provide a questionable amount of tension resistance at various elevations of the dome. Some earlier observers of the structure have suggested that the shape follows a catenary, in which case the entire masonry structure would see only compression stresses at least in some portion of the cross section. A closer examination of the geometry and the formation of full-thickness cracks along four sides of the dome disprove the catenary theory. There are sections of the unreinforced masonr y that resist some amount of bending moment. The dome s geometry and thickness would have been agreed upon by Brunelleschi and his contemporaries on the basis of scale model behavior. Unfortunately, the stre

ngth of materials is not directly scalable as Galileo proved two centuries later in his treatise entitled Discourses and mathematical demonstrations concerning t wo new sciences pertaining to mechanics and local motions. Galileo initiated the modern method of comparing strength of materials to the internal stresses develo ped. The weight of a material is a function of its density and volume, expressed in a unit of length cubed. Material strength on the other hand is evaluated based on the cross sectional area (length squared). Researchers doing scale modeling tod ay would artificially inflate the measure of gravity to report scaled-up results . The same inconsistency regarding scale applies to deformations to an even larg er extent. Nevertheless, Brunelleschi s design has withstood the test of time, owi ng in large part to the quality control of building materials and techniques of construction. It is said that Brunelleschi was on site nearly every day throughout the 16-year construction of the cupola. He is known to have held his workmen to exacting st andards. Contractors who did not perform to spec in any given season were dismis sed and blacklisted from future work. Likely trained through apprenticeship, Bru nelleschi knew the details of masonry construction. The genius of his design for the cupola is buried within the intricate bricklaying of the structure. Cupola under construction, Image by Rossi, Le cupole del Brunelleschi capire per conservare, 1982 Brunelleschi was able to realize construction without centering, shoring of the unfinished masonry arch, through the use of a herringbone brick lay-up. In this pattern, vertical courses placed regularly between regular horizontal courses. T his lay-up locked-in adjacent brickwork. Provided that the eight sides of the dome were constructed concurrently, the dome would be self-supporting. Although the herringbone lay-up was already a known construction technique for masonry domes, the work at the Cupola was groundbreaking in scope and precision. Perspective view of the 'slack-line' bricklaying surfaces, image by: Ippolito an d Peroni, La cupola di Santa Maria del Fiore, 1997 The slack-line method of orienting the mortar joints was another procedure innov atively applied in the construction of the Cupola. Typically, each masonry wall course is a level horizontal. However, since the eight sides of the Cupola must be slightly angled in order to connect at the apex, the plane of each side s morta r bed is at a different angle. At the corners, they would intersect at a skew wh ich could have resulted in stress concentrations. Brunelleschi understood the im portance of the corner pilaster and took care to avoid such localized discontinu ities. The slack-line lay-up that he implemented allows the mortar beds to arriv e at each corner on the same plane. This means that each continuous course must be slightly curved, like the slack in a line of rope. The geometry was extremely complicated, and Brunelleschi s team worked without the advantage of today s laser levels and positioning devices. Construction Machines Brunelleschi was not known to let a gap in technology slow him down. Like the Re naissance masters that would follow Leonardo Da Vinci was known to have examined Brunelleschi s projects for inspiration the builder of the Cupola designed new ma chines to build better and faster. At a time when progress on cathedrals was mea sured in decades, if not centuries, Brunelleschi completed his dome in just 16 y ears. Revolving crane with load-positioning devices

Maintaining the material stores on site was a major priority for avoiding work s toppages. During construction of the Cupola, Brunelleschi noticed that a signifi cant amount of the marble he needed was being damaged en route. Transferring the large blocks from ship to shore appeared to be the principal culprit. Brunelles chi therefore designed a barge with round paddle wheels that could also serve as wheels on ground. This amphibious vehicle enabled a seamless transition up the slip, thereby eliminating excess handling. Hoisting brickwork up to the leading edge of the construction was also critical to maintaining the completion schedule. The main hoist would have been powered b y a team of oxen. After a load had been delivered to the top of the work platfor m, the oxen would have to be re-yoked in the opposite direction to safely lower the palate, then again re-yoked to turn in the lifting direction. Brunelleschi i s credited with inventing a multi-speed hoist that could be thrown into up- or d own-mode without changing the direction of the marching oxen. A series of suspended work platforms were necessary to continue the work on the advancing edge of the dome. Smaller hoists were used to move material between th e platforms and out into position. Brunelleschi also devised hoists with ratchet ing fail-safes to prevent falling loads and adjustable counterweights to safely deliver material into position. Ahead of his time, safety was a concern on Brune lleschi s job site. It seems that alcoholic beverages were also restricted during the work day. Despite such careful consideration and attention to detail, imper fections were inevitable in such a massive undertaking. Contemporary Analysis and Cracking Cracked interior fresco It s likely that the dome began cracking almost immediately upon completion. Some of the interior frescoes actually incorporate the cracks in order to minimize th e appearance of the cracks. Documented studies over the last 500 years show that the cracks have grown and separated to several centimeters in width today. In the early 1990s, analysis was performed by the Italian national power board ( ENEL) and Florence University s Department of Civil Engineering in order to assess the cause for concern in four full-depth cracks observed in the Cupola. The ana lysis confirmed the structural behavior of the Cupola. Many areas of the dome mu st actually resist bending forces, consistent with typical indeterminate dome be havior. The top of the dome contracts from net compressive forces while the bott om of the dome wants to expand. Flat arches between the corner and intermediate pilasters must resist bending and shear. Computer analysis cannot really capture the effects of the herringbone and slack-line lay-up. If anything, we can assum e that these construction methods enable the membranes of the dome to behave mor e homogeneously than conventional masonry construction. Comparison between the deformed shape of the Cupola a) uncracked, b) cracked Interestingly, the recent study places a majority of the blame for the four majo r full-depth cracks on the design of the drum on which the Cupola sits. The drum is octagonal in shape, but it rests only on four piers. The sides of the drum t hat must span between the piers have very large circular windows through their e ntire section. There has been speculation that the openings were intended to red uce the weight of the structure in addition to allowing light into the cathedral . The unintended effect of this design decision, however, is that the support fo r the cupola does not have uniform stiffness. Nor did the design of the drum res pect the peculiarities of deep beam behavior. Without any embedment of tension m etal, cracking was inevitable. The outcome of the cracks makes the resilience of the Cupola even more impressiv

e. Redundancies in the design (interlocking masonry, stone hoop rings, intermedi ate pilasters, dual shells, etc.) have provided an alternate load path for the s tructure. Recent studies have concluded that the static stability of the Cupola is not at risk. However, the effects of a major earthquake were not sufficiently addressed. Owing largely to its longevity thus far, a monitoring regimen was re commended in lieu of immediate repairs. Networking 101 Published by ken maschke under annual conference,Early Career Experiences,Job Se arch,Supercharge Your Career It s clich to talk about the importance of networking in advancing your career. Why all the emphasis? Because success really is as much about who you know, and tho se contacts will, by extension, expand what you know. In a tough economy, you ne ed to build relationships with people that can give you that in. Later in your car eer, you ll need to start bringing in work to justify a move up into management. N etworking is the avenue to meeting your goals, but most people wouldn t call it ea sy street. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind while networking. Many of the ideas li sted were originally printed on James Clear s blog, Passive Panda http://passivepa nda.com/networking-tips and brought to my attention in the November/December 201 1 volume of The ATA Chronicle, 24 Networking Tips that Actually Work. Be genuine. Many people consider networking to be insincere and self-aggrandizin g. Conversely, it should be a friendly, helpful, two-way interaction. Start with non-business conversation and seek to build a relationship before making the sa le. Help others. Try to understand other people s needs first. Where can you contribut e to theisuccess? They will be very appreciative of your contribution and will w ant to return the favor, but do not expect immediate returns. Be focused. There s no need to shake the hand of everyone in the room. You are bet ter served to make a strong impression with a few targeted people. The people yo u impress may even act on your behalf and share your story or suggest other key people for you to meet. Take the advice of the people in the room to seek out th e contacts that are most relevant to your cause. Expand your horizons. Don t limit your networking efforts to your immediate indust ry. Consider that your clients may come from diverse backgrounds. You may also b e well served by professionals in other fields that can support your business. Introduce people. Connect other like-minded people in your network, but bear in mind that sometimes it may be appropriate to ask permission first. Maybe you can establish a reputation as someone who can provide connections across industries . Nurture your current network. Don t forget about the connections that you already made the effort to make. You likely think of many of these people as colleagues and friends. Take time to keep in touch. Involve this network in your latest ven tures. Please share your own networking tips by posting a comment below. Recruiting Published by ken maschke under Job Search,Uncategorized I recently attended a job fair at the University of Michigan as a recruiter on b ehalf of my company. Despite the slow economy, we were fortunate to be looking f

or highly qualified structural engineering students. Attending a job fair as a r ecruiter is part company promotion, part interviewing, and part career counselin g. The top candidates are usually pretty obvious. They re in the right degree program and are pursing the right level of education. For structural engineering, that means focusing on structural design courses and working toward your Master s degre e. The best candidates also have relevant work experience. Prior work experience is even important when looking for an internship. Finally, the best recruits al so demonstrate a real interest and competency in the field. Leadership in projec t teams, research, or sometimes a convincing personal narrative let the recruite r know that you have the drive to succeed at their company. It sounds easy enoug h to reach the elite status, but the majority of candidates widely miss the mark . I think many students overlook the competition. Realize that all of your peers h ave had the same courses, have learned the same computer programs, and will be s peaking to the same companies that day. Secondly, realize that there are many ot her highly regarded colleges filled with students taking the same classes, learn ing the same programs, speaking to the same companies tomorrow. Differentiation is important. So you say you ve learned how to use AutoCAD oh it was a lab in CEE 12 3. Everyone I ve talked to takes that class. I d rather know, you ve been working with s ome architecture students on a new campus plan, and you had to draft three of th e campus building structures in CAD [ps. bonus points if you used Revit or Rhino ]? You must really know the software! There is no need to add silly gimmicks to your resume like saying that your obje ctive is only to work for Company A or printing on brightly colored paper. The p lace to differentiate yourself is in the content of the resume. Don t bend the tru th though. Most recruiters for civil engineering firms were once civil engineeri ng students. They know all about ASCE, the concrete canoe, and tech aides in the research lab. A good recruiter will ask questions about the activities listed o n your resume and gauge your level of involvement. Overreach is a big turn-off. Instead, actually go for the leadership positions and let those experiences be y our differentiator. Experience means a lot to recruiters. It demonstrates that someone else was will ing to hire you, and perhaps it won t take as long to train you for the workforce. Trust me, you ll need a lot of on the job training. If it takes a job to get a jo b, how do you start the cycle? First, recognize that some companies take on more junior level employees. My first engineering internship was carrying around a d ensity meter for the department of transportation. My second job was inspecting all the bolts in a stadium roof to make sure they were on tight. Finally, on job number three, I was allowed to touch actual design work, but mostly I checked s hop drawings. If you can t get your foot in the door there are other options, and I don t mean wor king at a summer camp or Subway. There is nothing wrong with trying to earn extr a cash, but try to find time for activities that will set you apart from the cro wd. Call up a local engineer and ask to job shadow once a week. They will enjoy imparting their seasoned advice, and it might even lead to part time work. Sign up for some software or skills training. Professional organizations, software ve ndors, and unions offer training courses all the time. Talk to everyone; you mig ht find a job. If you re staying on campus, look to help a professor with their re search, engage in a cross-disciplinary design project (like Engineers Without Bo rders), or help your friends in the architecture school with their studio projec ts. Finally, recruiters can tell if you re not really that into their line of work. Co mpanies look for employees that they can imagine as part of their team for years

to come. See last week s blog for all the benefits of following your passion. Bef ore your interview, read the company website to learn about their practice areas and office locations. The recruiter will wan to know where you see yourself. If you haven t had enough experiences, whether through coursework, internships, or e xtracurriculars, to form an opinion about the specific line of work, you won t lik ely be invited for a second interview. Even if you re in the undecided category, there is plenty of benefit to speaking w ith the recruiters at a job fair. They know the industry; they know what you nee d to get your foot in the door. Ask lots of questions of the recruiters. They ar e the perfect career counselors. Setting a Clear Career Goal Published by ken maschke under Early Career Experiences,Job Search,Motivational By regular guest blogger: Rafael Gomes de Oliveira Two months ago, I had a conversation with some peers about why I decided to stud y structural engineering and how I went about finding a job. Structural engineer ing was a natural response to my interest in man-made world wonders, such as the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China, and especially in high-rise structures li ke the Empire State Building. When it was time to find a job, I targeted companies that design tall buildings around the world. That didn t make the job-hunting process any easier, but instead of wasting my time blindly sending resumes to as many companies as I could, I c hose to spend it thoroughly researching and applying for jobs at the few compani es that matched my interests. The results were very positive. The cover letter I wrote to each company was unique and used the language of that company s corporat e culture or so I hoped, based on my observations during the research process. A t each interview I was able to discuss several of the company s projects and ask r elevant questions. My targeted approach wouldn t have been possible without very clear career goals. It surprised me that several of my classmates, when asked just before graduation about their plans after college, would respond, to get a job. Which kind of job? I would ask. Oh, just any job. The time to pick just any job is when looking for an in ternship or part time job two years before you graduate. There are consequences to being undecided after graduation. This is not an unsolvable problem. Many resources related to the different branc hes of civil engineering can be easily accessed online. Your professors and advi sors would be more than happy to help you decide which career direction to chose . Even more importantly, nothing is stopping you from contacting a company and a sking them if you could stop by for a visit in order to get to know a little bit more about what they do. It would be very flattering, especially for smaller co mpanies, to have potential employees show interest in them. You need to take the initiative to find out more about what you might be doing for the rest of your life. If you do find a job, will you know it is the right one for you? At a Texas Rang ers game last year (congrats, pennant winners!) two engineers told me that their initial career plans completely changed after their first job, which they didn t m uch enjoy. They rationalized that this was a very common experience. Do you want to end up settling for just any job? Once in that comfort zone once, you ll have mo re overall responsibilities, and it may be difficult to move on. The two Rangers fans appeared content with their eventual career path, but deep down I could se nse that a little part of them wondered what if I had chosen the path I wanted in the first place? If you do not want to have to live with that doubt, you should take time to decide exactly what it is that you want. Never settle for less.

Many people keep their options open because they think that s their best shot at f inding work. They might actually limit their opportunities. Hunt for jobs with a sniper s rifle rather than a shotgun. Having a clear career goal is rarer than yo u think. In a time when it s very difficult to find work, you want to use every ad vantage you can to get yourself over the hump.