Engineered Solutions: FLOOD MITIGATION with Green-Friendly Armoring
Sponsored by: Esplanade Club Lake is a large resort-lifestyle community development in Fort Myers, Fla. Situated on 778 acres, the community features a number of aquatic amenities, including a large lake, ponds, boat ramp and recreational dock. To support the community’s drainage infrastructure and mitigate flooding, three spillways were built within the development. Each spillway needed armoring to protect and stabilize its channel and sides. Rock riprap and concrete were both co...
ReEngineering the Engineer: What Was I Thinking?
A funny thought crossed my mind this week. I started my career at a slow time in the early 1980s and considered myself lucky to find work at a small engineering firm doing what I was educated to do. I managed through slow spots in the early 1990s, Y2K and even 9/11. And our office survived the six-plus years of the Great Recession relatively intact. The funny thought that popped into my head: I was subconsciously thinking I’d get to retire without having to deal with another crisis … By the tim...
Infrastructure Outlook: Putting Designs into Motion with Extended Reality
The digitization of data is paving the way for more-advanced technology that connects the design process to real-world information. The key to digitization is tying in 3D models at the start of the design process and integrating constructible data that enable all stakeholders to work together and share data in real-time to optimize the design, build and operate lifecycle. When it comes to planning and design, how do you tie data in the model from the office to the field? Augmented- and mixed-re...
Ten Years After the Haiti Earthquake: How Building Disaster-Resilient Structures Can Lift a Nation
Image: Port-au-Prince, Haiti, suffered massive destruction from an earthquake in 2010. By Kit Miyamoto, Ph.D., S.E., and Lucienne Cross In 20 years of responding to earthquakes as a structural engineer, I have never seen destruction such as I witnessed in Haiti a decade ago. Traveling through the wreckage of Port-au-Prince just days after the earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, I saw a hellish landscape: people digging through concrete for missing family, twisted metal, cars squashed und...
Executive Corner: Lost Value in M&A: A New Way to Create and Capture Value
Buying or selling a firm creates risk and opportunity for both buyers and sellers. Up to 30 percent of a firm’s potential value is lost during and after the typical acquisition. For those selling, they’re losing millions in potential rewards for their efforts building a firm. For buyers, their return on investment can evaporate almost instantly. For this installment of “Executive Corner,” we explore how innovative firms are gaining new insights to maximize value when buying, selling or preparin...
Deliberate Clashing in Urban Infill Projects
A partial 3D axonometric section shows the representation of an existing railyard with a structural platform built around it as well as the potential massing of a building above. All geometry was created within either AutoCAD or Revit and then imported into Navisworks. As urban populations grow and demand for housing increases, vacant or underutilized land is at a premium, leading to a rise in urban infill projects. Whenever the needs of a dense population change drastically in a short...
Thoughts from Engineers: The Food Industry Has a Major Impact on Water Resources
Cheesemaking is a bonafide American industry that generates some $50 billion in revenue every year. In the regions of New York where dairy farms dominate, small-town communities and cheese production have coexisted peacefully through the years. A longtime American favorite, Philadelphia Cream Cheese has been produced in Lowville, N.Y., for nearly 40 years. A new plant became operational in 2017 and expanded Kraft Heinz’s (parent company of Philadelphia Cream Cheese) production line to also incl...
It’s the Thought That Counts: Simple Tools (Like Hand Sketches) Can Help Create Better Designs
Publisher’s Note: I met structural engineer Clark Baurer when I served as a juror for the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois’ (SEAOI) Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards Competition—his elegant and innovative structural renovation of Chicago’s Theater on the Lake won the Lavicka Award for Small Firm/Small Project up to $2 million. The project hit a sweet spot for me: repurposing an old structure as well as a complicated structural challenge. Clark’s use of hand drawings was an...
From the Editor: Spring’s Arrival Leads to Thoughts of Unfrozen Infrastructure
As I write this in early March, we’re experiencing sunny, warm days in the Midwest. We had a warmer-than-average winter with less snow than usual. Spring is the time when we witness the change from gray and white to blue and green. The sky clears itself of the ever-present cloud cover and melts the snow of winter, giving way to blue above and green growth at ground level. If this sounds a bit poetic, it’s because I’m preparing myself for the companion season of road construction and farm-equip...
Specification Section: 2020 Steel Product and Design/Fabrication Software Guide
This guide briefly showcases the latest Steel Product and Design/Fabrication Software used by civil and structural engineers throughout the industry. If your company should have been included in the guide, let us know by emailing jboone@v1-media.com, and we’ll add it online. American Institute of Steel Construction The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), headquartered in Chicago, is a non-partisan, not-for-profit technical institute and trade association established...
Stormwater Interview with Robert Page, P.E., Vice President, HNTB
TriMet’s Banfield Type 1 Substation Replacement Project
February Issue 2026
