Change Leader: Electric Utilities Face Many Challenges and Opportunities in 2019
These profiles are based on interviews, and the opinions and statements are those of the subject and are not necessarily shared or endorsed by this publication. Mark Burke is a technical and business development advisor for Black & Veatch, an employee-owned engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company. Black & Veatch produces annual reports based on expansive surveys for a variety of industry sectors. Mark Burke contributed to the “2019 Strategic Directions: Smart...
Making Everyone Happy: Early and Effective Collaboration to Realize a Beautiful Building
To complement this feature, Todd Danielson, the magazine’s editorial director, went to the Chicago office of Forefront Structural Engineers and interviewed Steve Franckowiak, S.E., P.E., associate, and Amanda Featherstone, S.E., P.E., project engineer. Click here to watch the video. Structural engineers occupy a difficult niche in high-rise construction; too often, their role is perceived as a “reality check” on the actual cost-effective constructability of beautiful, ambitious bu...
Tunnel Vision: Blended Technologies for Tight Schedules and Tighter Conditions
By John Stenmark John May is accustomed to taking on challenging projects, but he soon recognized that this one would be different. Meeting the project requirements would involve multiple technologies, advanced software and a team of dedicated and—quite literally—flexible surveyors that would spend days working in a cramped underground pipe built to carry water, not humans. The work originated from a utility owner in Northern California who needed to rehabilitate a 90-year-old buried...
Aiming for Net Zero in Public Buildings: 8 Principles
Buildings account for as much as 40 percent of all energy consumed in the United States. To increase the efficiency of buildings and address climate-change issues, government programs increasingly promote “net zero energy” (NZE) goals for public buildings. The following eight guiding principles for project design phases will help produce buildings that generate energy onsite using clean renewable resources through the course of a year that are at least equal to the total amount of energy cons...
Infrastructure Outlook: Power Play: Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Cyber-attacks
Governments generally define the essential assets of a functioning society as its critical infrastructure, including electricity, communications, heating, healthcare and transport networks. For the United States, attempted cyber-attacks on these systems continue to be an attractive target. The ability of a foreign actor to gain control and operate them remotely would most assuredly wreak havoc. The lives of millions of people would be immediately impacted if one or more of these major systems be...
From the Editor: Use Different Viewpoints to Uncover the Unknown Unknowns
I read a meme-like quote a few days ago: “It amazes me that I can wirelessly transfer data from my brain to another brain by vibrating the air with my voice box.” Simultaneously whimsical and thought provoking, it reminds me to think of everyday things—like talking—from a different perspective. A similar approach may have been on the minds of scientists who recently discovered something startling and new about sound itself. Four hundred years ago, Isaac Newton laid down the laws of classical...
From the Editor: A Brief Glimpse at Useful AEC Pocket Tech
Living with tech is a lot like living with a new puppy: it’s not easy to recognize changes occurring through time until you step back and look at where we were not long ago compared to where we are today. Every couple of years, I see a graphic (or sometimes a video) showing how the number of devices on a typical literal desktop has reduced through the years, thanks to advances in smartphone technology. You can see one from the CATO Institute at bit.ly/2Im7ThI. As the graphic illustrates, it’s...
After the Wildfire: Soil Stabilization Key to Recovery Efforts
Fiber-reinforced matrix products are designed to give seed a stable growth medium on particularly steep slopes. Hydromulch was used on hillsides in the Verdugo Mountains in Los Angeles following the La Tuna Fire, which started Sept. 1, 2017, and burned 7,194 acres. It was the city’s largest wildfire in 50 years. Soil erosion is a common concern after a wildfire—just ask Logan Moore, a landscape associate with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) North Region. Moor...
Thoughts From Engineers: The Hidden Monster That’s Our Failing Water Infrastructure
An aging house built in the 1930s with chipping paint, a porch door that swings eerily in the wind and precariously leaning support beams gets attention. A bridge with rusty trusses and roads with potholes get attention as well. People complain—loudly—to their local and state representatives about the rough drive and costly damage to their cars. There are plenty of stories in the news about crumbling highways and third-world airports, but not so much about our water infrastructure—until now....
Executive Corner: The Latest Trends in A/E Stock Valuation and M&A Pricing
Rusk O’Brien Gido + Partners, LLC recently released its annually updated ”A/E Business Valuation and M&A Transactions Study.” Data from the sixth-edition study show remarkable stability in valuations of minority interests in privately held A/E and environmental consulting firms. As illustrated in Figure 1, enterprise values as a multiple of gross revenue, net service revenue, and pre-bonus earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) were virtually unchanged from 2017 to 2018. This is not too...
Video: Crashes Drop Measurably After Rural Road Safety Improvement Project on US 521 in Lancaster County
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June Issue 2026
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