/ News

Structural Solutions: Nuggets of Wisdom for Engineers Young and Old, Part 3: The Final Chapter

October 2, 2017 - in Articles, Column

My previous two columns covered two main pieces of advice I like to share with students at the Direct Connect session at the NASCC conference: careful use of computer software, and mastering verbal and written communication. In this issue, I’ll finish my…

Structural Solutions: Nuggets of Wisdom for Engineers Young and Old, Part 2: Communication Is Key

August 7, 2017 - in Articles, Column

In my previous column, I mentioned the Direct Connect session for students that happens each year at the NASCC conference. My company has attended the…

Structural Solutions: Nuggets of Wisdom for Engineers Young and Old, Part 1

May 29, 2017 - in Articles, Column

If you haven’t been to the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) NASCC Steel Conference, you really need to go. It’s not just about the…

Structural Solutions: Engineers Need to Take Responsibility for Public-Safety Designs

March 24, 2017 - in Articles, Column

My wife and I have been in Charlotte, N.C., for quite some time now. We’ve watched it grow from a rather sleepy city in the early 1980s to a national banking center despite having to weather the recent financial crisis. Of course, growth means jobs, and…

Structural Solutions: The Power of Positive Thinking Lasts a Lifetime

January 31, 2017 - in Articles, Column

Although my daughters have almost finished college, it’s not (yet) difficult to remember when they were young. I was in scouting most of my young life—from Cub Scouts to Webelos to Boy Scouts, until I “aged out” at 18—and having two daughters didn’t…

Structural Solutions: Proper Communication – Engineers Need It Just Like Everyone Else

December 5, 2016 - in Articles, Column

I’m sure there are many readers of this column who can remember when the telephone was the only substitute for an in-person meeting—it wasn’t that long ago. Today, we have myriad ways to communicate through the internet: talking to multiple people at…

Structural Solutions: We’re All Busy….

October 12, 2016 - in Column

As a business owner, you have to deal with a lot of things. Some are simple: Where to order copier paper? Where should we have the Christmas party this year? Others are not so simple: Is it time to consider moving the office to the cloud? How can we grow our…

Structural Solutions: Delegated Design or Delegated Engineering?

August 1, 2016 - in Column

If you didn’t make it to the 2016 NASCC conference this year, you missed a lot of excellent engineering sessions. One of the more-interesting sessions (at least for me) was titled “Delegated Connection Design: What Are the EORs Responsibilities?” As…

Structural Solutions: Picking Partners to Manage Risk

May 31, 2016 - in Column

In the previous issue of Informed Infrastructure, I wrote about how sometimes things happen in our lives that help us do better and avoid trouble later in life. The scout-leadership training obstacle course I talked about did just that (see “Managing Risk…

Structural Solutions: Managing Risk through Careful Planning

April 3, 2016 - in Column

In my later years in the Boy Scouts, the senior leaders took us older scouts on a leadership-training obstacle course—the equivalent of some of today’s office teamwork outings. One particularly memorable obstacle had two telephone pole uprights about six…