Infrastructure Outlook: Engineering Future-Ready and Stormwater-Resilient Infrastructure Projects with Porous Pavers
The challenges posed by urban flooding and stormwater issues continue to weigh heavily on the shoulders of engineers, planners and their clients. Water, flowing rapidly over impervious surfaces such as concrete and asphalt, causes more than just ecological damage. In extreme weather events, the sheer volume of uncontrolled water can severely damage infrastructure by cracking foundations, flooding basements and accelerating soil erosion. These issues compromise the structural longevity of buildin...
Engineering the Future: Public Safety Is Paramount in All Aspects of Engineering
Nothing is more important than the core tenet of our profession’s ethics: protecting public health, safety and welfare. When we do not do our jobs right, people can die. I remember a few years into my career, on Dec. 3, 1984, more than half a million people in Bhopal, India, were exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant. It was the world’s worst industrial disaster, resulting in 2,259 immediate deaths and another 10,000 deaths through...
The Joy of Watching Engineers Graduate and Take the Next Step
I’ve been privileged to lead the senior class at Valparaiso University through the two-semester Senior Design Course for civil and environmental engineers for the last five years. This gives me the opportunity to experience what our future engineers are thinking. Granted, I only interact with 20 or so engineering students each year, so my observations are based on a small representative population. But, as I have said in previous columns, it’s rewarding to come to know and understand what this g...
Transportation Troubleshooting: During a Disaster, Get By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Severe natural and man-made disasters now are more commonplace and expensive. In 2024 alone, the United States experienced 27 extreme weather events that each resulted in more than a billion dollars in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Whether it’s a hurricane, flood, wildfire, earthquake, bridge collapse, mudslide, tornado or another occurrence, transportation infrastructure is among our hardest-hit assets—and getting roads and tunnels, trains, buses, an...
Thoughts From Engineers: Stormwater Brings Change to the Modern American City
Every age has its infrastructure challenges. The Industrial Revolution, for example, drove scores of people to the largest cities in search of work. Urban areas grew as they never had before, and widespread illness and death resulted from improper sewage disposal and poor sanitation. Cities such as London managed the resulting public health crisis poorly at first, but later more effectively. Through trial and error, analysis, innovation, and tenacity, simplistic solutions gave way to methodolog...
Executive Corner: A Shifting Outlook for the A/E Industry
For the A/E industry, 2024 ended with widespread optimism, strong contract backlogs and record financial performance for many firms. This is based on the reported performance of publicly traded A/E firms and supported by anecdotal observations of private firms. As earnings reports were released in February 2025 from firms such as TetraTech, AECOM, Jacobs Solutions, Stantec and NV5 Global, the news was almost all positive. The following are a handful of highlights: Stantec (Jan. 28, 2025) • Ne...
Water Works: How Goodhart’s Law Is Reshaping Stormwater Management
Data-driven performance verification is the backbone of the stormwater treatment industry. Engineers, regulators and municipalities rely on quantitative metrics such as pollutant removal rates and runoff reduction volume to evaluate the success of stormwater control measures (SCMs) and estimate regulatory compliance. We’re entering a promising era in which the standardization of SCM performance evaluation can significantly improve our understanding of how well these practices meet regulatory goa...
Workforce Challenges: Competing for New Structural Engineering Talent
RAOUL KARP, P.E., S.E., (LEFT) and BRIAN QUINN, P.E. (RIGHT) With nine out of 10 firms looking for engineers and more than 10 percent of them considering leaving the profession in their early employment years, now is a critical time for firms to revisit their strategies on how to attract and retain new engineers. There are many factors that influence why an entry-level engineer selects a job and how long they stay with that company. By engaging directly with engineering students and review...
Thoughts From Engineers: Machine Learning and Gauging Flood Risk
Long before there were “tech kids” by any definition, I was never more content than in the company of the “huge mainframe” computer residing at the local university computing center while still in high school. (I even crafted an elaborate plan to spend the night there—but that story is for another time.) Later on, during graduate school, I combined my interest in software engineering and hydrology and have remained keenly interested in all developments relating to those two fields ever since. M...
From the Editor: Engineers Often Are the Smartest People in the Room
The “Smart Engineering” special issue each year is always a challenging column for me to write. It’s not that I don’t see the value of smart engineering—it’s just that I don’t know enough about the technical details to create a few paragraphs that would be interesting to our readers. So instead, I will illustrate what I think is a smart engineer, featuring some examples of people I’ve known. Maintain Trust A somewhat funny, but true, definition might be: A smart engineer is one who has determi...
Stormwater Interview with Robert Page, P.E., Vice President, HNTB
Santa Barbara County North Branch Jail Expansion
February Issue 2026
