Every now and then, you get a project that just seems to run into headwinds no matter which direction you turn. This latest one, however, came at a time when we were closing out our Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) project. The difference between the two…

Historically, the kickoff keynotes for the NASCC Steel Conference are a must-see, and the 2019 conference in St. Louis was no exception. Orzan Varol presented the keynote this year titled “The Power of Contrarian Thinking.” The gist of the presentation…

At about the time I was leaving my old firm in 2004, one of the large national architectural firms we worked with made a corporate announcement. Their firm would be focusing on the green movement (predominantly LEED at the time) and were committed to designing…

Codes have changed significantly through the years. When I started engineering, the structural section of the North Carolina Building Code was just more than 100 pages and was basically the “one-stop shop” for all our structural engineering analysis and…

When I started my company several years ago, I decided to play the “I need to be close to home” card. Instead of commuting 20 miles to Charlotte, N.C., every day, I found some office space close to our home. I was pretty sure I’d be spending a lot of…

In fall 2018, I was asked to go to a meeting to help one of our clients. It was a small project but rather unique: a 100-foot-long structure to support a sanitary sewer line across a creek. We had completed a couple of these for other people through the years…

My dad passed away about a year and a half ago. Being the oldest of three children, it was my task to help put together the eulogy for the service. I knew I wouldn’t be the one reading it (those types of potentially emotional talks are not in my repertoire),…