My October 2020 column was titled “Engineers Need to Lead the Way on Climate Change Mitigation,” and I tried to make the point that our profession has a responsibility to maintain an environment that’s best for the world, and we need to do more…
From the Editor: Personal and Mass-Media Stories Highlight the Importance of Inspections
During my career, I’ve performed inspections on hundreds of bridges. The inspections varied in detail depending on the reasons for looking at them.…
From the Editor: Open Mic Night at ‘The Engineer’s Lounge’
I recently completed two semesters teaching senior civil engineers at my alma mater, Valparaiso University. It was a pleasure and honor to be part…
From the Editor: Smart Engineering Urgently Needed to Improve Our Infrastructure
The American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) recently published its “report card” for America’s infrastructure. I read through the summary, and this is what I learned: We received an overall grade of C-. That’s an improvement from D+ in 2017,…
From the Editor: Engineering Allows You To Be Part of History
The COVID-19 pandemic has created blocks of time that we didn’t previously have. For some of us, it’s the time we used to spend commuting. For others, it’s the time we spent shopping or attending cultural events. For me, it has created time to catch…
From the Editor: Engineers Need To Find Their Voice in 2021
What if you inspected a bridge and found severe rust deterioration of a fracture-critical steel member, and you reviewed previous inspection reports that documented the progression of this condition? And what if you took this information back to the office,…
From the Editor: What’s Past Is Prologue, But the Future Seems Uncertain
For the last three months, I’ve been teaching a senior design class at Valparaiso University, my alma mater. When I say “at Valparaiso University,” I mean “at home, for the university, through online software.” The pandemic has had a significant…
From the Editor: Engineers Need To Lead the Way on Climate Change Mitigation
When our Editorial Director Todd Danielson gave me the heads up that Informed Infrastructure would be introducing a new “special issue” on “Green Engineering” a year from now in October 2021, I thought about the end of this summer season…
From the Editor: Time to Enjoy Nature for Its Beauty … and Engineering
The last few months have certainly been different. Many people are working from home, and there’s much less travel leading to jokes about commute times to the office and how many weeks per gallon cars are reporting as their efficiency standard. This different…
From the Editor: Graduating Engineering Students Face New Challenges
The stay-at-home orders due to the pandemic are beginning to be relaxed in some places. For me, at least for some time yet, I’m choosing to act as if everything is not yet back to normal. Whatever I’m called—baby boomer, dinosaur or grandpa—I’m at…
