Review Category : Structural Forum

By Chad S. Mitchell, PE, SE

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The structural engineering profession is full of stressors. Whether life safety, deadlines or cost/budget concerns, there is never an absence of stress. Even the best engineers have their challenges; they either have tools to manage the stress or they likely hide their struggles. Per a 2016 Center for Disease Control and Prevention study, architects and engineers had the fifth highest suicide rate at 32 per 100,000, double the national rate at the time. As May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, this article aims to provide insight and resources for taking care of your mental health and supporting colleagues who may be struggling.

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By Matt Barnard

Somewhere, the earth is shaking. Earthquakes happen frequently throughout the world but often go unnoticed or are of little concern. Occasionally, earthquakes are much larger with shaking that impacts people and the built environment and cause tremendous loss of life, as we saw last year with the disaster in Turkey. In a world that seems to be more connected than ever, whether through our instantaneous sharing of everything to our global economies and supply chains, we now almost immediately see and then are impacted by these large earthquakes whether we have personally felt the shaking or not.

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By Joan Malana Kennedy

This is part 2 of a 2-part series about the developing issues in access to design data concerning digital collaborative working environments, particularly BIM. Part 1 discussed the background and BIM development in the UK, and the first reported formal dispute involving BIM in the UK, Trant Engineering Limited v Mott MacDonald Ltd [2017] EHWC 2061 (TCC). This article will deal with the lessons learned about TEL v MML [2017] and the implications and applications for designers.

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Have you ever received a call from a developer asking you to take a look at an old building? Sometimes, they might ask if you could tell them that it’s not feasible to save it so that they can justify tearing it down. Other times, they might ask you whether it’s possible to restore it. We, as structural engineers, need to understand our role in scenarios like this.

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Implications for designers (Part 1 of 2).

This is part 1 of a 2-part series about the developing issues in access to design data concerning digital collaborative working environments, particularly BIM. Part 1 discusses the background and BIM development in the UK and the first reported formal dispute involving BIM in the UK, Trant Engineering Limited v Mott MacDonald Ltd [2017] EHWC 2061 (TCC). Part 2 will deal with the lessons learned about Trant v Mott MacDonald [2017] and the implications and applications for Designers.

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For SEs and Climate Change Scientists, Predictive Ability Rests in Finite Element Quality

For any who have read my previous articles, it will be no surprise that the views I present herein might be considered heretical. But, after much thoughtful consideration of what appears to be a prevailing attitude among many of the structural engineering community regarding the global climate crisis, I feel a responsibility to present what I believe is a fair critique of what is often (in my view, incorrectly) called Settled Science. I do this because I feel it is not in the best interest of our profession to blindly accept as settled something that is not actually settled. Our reputations will suffer if we accept, without debate, hypotheses that are not proven and may be shown in the future to be wrong (particularly if we “go along” to look fashionably hip to the public or our clients). 

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Alternative Building Materials

When it comes to impeding home-building growth, one does not need to look further than global supply chain issues. Closures in factories and transportation hubs have negatively affected an industry that relies on building materials sourced throughout the world. And while there is certainly no shortage of new housing demand here in the United States, there is a scarcity of the essential materials needed to build these dwellings.

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STRUCTURE magazine