Editorial: Ushering in a Year of Thriving on Challenges

Let me be one of the first, who doesn’t know you personally, to wish you a Happy New Year on behalf of everyone at STRUCTURE magazine and the extended NCSEA family.

If you haven’t noticed, we live in interesting times. I can clearly remember standing in my office a quarter century ago discussing with others the chances of our computers refusing to start up when we returned to the office in January 2000. No one prevailed in the debate because none of us knew anything about what we were predicting. I suppose we should have asked a computer expert? It turned out to be much ado about nothing. All of these years later, we are now having a similar debate about AI, with most of us knowing nothing about the details yet wondering when the computers will lock us out of the office, start performing calculations and preparing drawings, and generally make us humans redundant. Hopefully our new masters will be benevolent and give us enough money for food. But think of all the time off we will have! The end of work-life balance will be upon us.

But thanks to AI, I now know that the Chinese New Year in 2026 will usher in the year of the Fire Horse and that there are five sub-types of the years of the Horse (although I didn’t ask), with the Fire Horse being one of them. The year of the Fire Horse will usher in energy, passion, and transformative potential, which are associated with traits like intelligence, courage, and independence. If you are expecting an addition to your family soon, babies born in in 2026 will be seen as energetic, confident, proactive, and thriving on challenges, with a strong desire for progress and breakthroughs. Sound like future structural engineers to me! If this sounds good and you are want to do the right thing by your new child, while also helping address the industry shortage of engineers, I figure you have about two months to get in the game.

Enough fun and frivolity, or doom and gloom, as the case may be. Let’s get down to business and have a look ahead.

The quality of this magazine is better than ever thanks to our authors, our editorial staff, and the dedicated editorial board volunteers. I hope you like the larger graphics as much as I do.
STRUCTURE is the structural engineering profession’s primary vehicle for sharing information and educating structural engineers about topics they need to know about or topics they didn’t know they needed to know about (kind of like those messages from your AI app). We aim at the sweet spot, not too technical, not too light, and with enough information to inform and pique your interest to learn more. If you haven’t noticed, our major themes include concrete, steel, wood, and masonry (the big four on licensure exams), with sub-themes including wind, seismic, tall buildings, bridges, and computer software.

I invite you to contribute by writing for STRUCTURE. While technical and project-related topics are our bread and butter, readers also enjoy articles that educate them on the full breadth of the engineering profession, including business issues. These under-explored topics include challenges facing small firms (meeting and developing clients, monitoring company and project finances, hiring staff, etc.), larger industry trends (the economics of construction, material selection and availability, labor, etc.) and research (new and evolving technologies, innovative or improved engineering tools, cutting-edge research, etc.).

The magazine succeeds because of you. So please don’t be bashful. If you have an idea you would like to propose, or if you wish to update a previous article you authored with new material, we would love to hear from you.

Our first year with a dedicated structural engineering GPT based largely on STRUCTURE magazine articles, along with other NCSEA and affiliated resources, has been a successful first step in using this technology. STRUCTURE is broadening its AI capabilities with a new tool to be launched in the spring of 2026. Like the original SE GPT, this tool will answer queries based on a closed database that includes structural engineering-specific resources. This means, STRUCTURE magazine articles, NCSEA publications, NCSEA webinar transcripts, white papers, and other documents. The update will be more user-friendly and better integrated into our website, so users won’t have to navigate to a third-party site. The tool itself also has additional capabilities that will help expand its knowledgebase. It will be a sort of “Super Librarian” for our readers.

The NCSEA Summit will be held for the first time in San Francisco in October. The organizers for the 2025 Summit in New York City were happy to announce that the event set an attendance record of over 1,000 individuals. Just 10 years ago, the NCSEA annual event drew 200.

undreds of practicing structural engineers, industry leaders, and innovative thinkers gathered in New York City to explore the latest advancements in structural engineering.

Speaking as a native San Franciscan, October is a great time to visit northern California. The late summer weather is pleasant (as usual), there is less coastal fog, and the last of the wine grapes are being harvested. Consider expanding your visit to an entire week and have a look around at what there is to see. We spoiled locals don’t explore as much as we ought to, but I guarantee that a drive north or south along the coast, a day trip to Monterey and Carmel or a quick visit to the Redwoods farther north, will be rewarding experiences.

Please make 2026 a year for sharing your knowledge with others, exploring new tools and resources available to us, and coming to San Francisco to meet with your colleagues. ■

About the Author

John A. Dal Pino is a Principal with Claremont Engineers, Inc. in Oakland, California. He serves as the Chair of the STRUCTURE Editorial Board (jdalpino@claremontengineers.com).