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Robert K. Otani, PE LEED AP, is Chief Technology Officer at Thornton Tomasetti, Inc., a 1,800+ person multidisciplinary engineering and consulting firm, and founded the CORE studio, an applications development, advanced computational modeling, and R&D group at his firm. Otani serves on the Advisory Committee for Thornton Tomasetti’s firm-wide Research and Development program. He has extensive structural design and project management experience involving commercial, infrastructure, institutional, cultural, and residential structures. Over his 29-year career, he has worked on a wide variety of complex projects, including high rise buildings, long-span roof structures, sports arenas, airport terminals, major building structural renovations, and complex art projects totaling over $3 billion USD of construction. He served as President of the Structural Engineers Association of New York in 2007 and was a professor at Pratt Institute School of Architecture from 2008-2018 and Columbia GSAPP from 2009-2015.
STRUCTURE: What inspired you to become a structural engineer?
Otani: At first, I didn’t know that I wanted to be a structural engineer. In high school I did well in math and science, I worked as a carpenter during the summers thanks to my brother, and my dad was a chemical engineer, so the combination of those factors led me to civil engineering at Rutgers University.
STRUCTURE: What were some of your most fulfilling moments during your career?
Otani: I’ve worked on some iconic and very challenging buildings, so anytime one of those projects gets built successfully—as engineered and as planned—it’s very fulfilling. From a management perspective, it has been the growth and success of the CORE studio team which I helped to create in 2010 and is now over 40 people. From a mentoring standpoint, I’ve supervised many up-and-coming engineers and to see them develop into very successful project managers and leaders in the firm has been fulfilling as well.
STRUCTURE: What were the biggest challenges you experienced during the various stages of your career?
Otani: Early in my career, the biggest challenge was that despite excelling in the technical aspect of engineering, I was not recognized in the firm. So, I had to learn the business aspects of the firm. From a personal perspective, I had to learn to be more extroverted and confident in speaking. To a large extent it was self-marketing.
In many ways, SEAoNY helped me with that aspect when I became very active in the organization, serving on the Board and being active in the Codes, Publications, and Programs committees.
STRUCTURE: These sound like issues that many engineers face. What would be your advice to them?
Otani: My advice would be to learn as much as possible from subject matter experts early in one’s career to excel at project technical work, be observant and learn from the successful Principals in the firm to understand what it takes to be a leader, and raise your hand for specific initiatives within the firm that will both add value and earn recognition. Finally, it is critical that every engineer knows their strengths and weaknesses and to improve their skills when needed, which is something that is important throughout an engineer’s career. We all can improve.
STRUCTURE: Our industry has advanced significantly over the past few years with the aid of technology and now the consideration of AI. What will the impact be on our industry?
Otani: The industry has evolved tremendously over my career from mainly doing our work by hand calculations, engineering design aides, and hand drafting. I did not have a computer when I started at Thornton Tomasetti in 1995! We had shared computers when I started and only a handful of engineering software to use as compared to now, where a myriad of software are available to use.
In many ways this has made it more difficult for young engineers to navigate the design of a building. What we do in terms of production has changed as well with the advent of BIM, which has led to clients asking for more detail at all stages of the design process. So technological advances have been a double-edged sword in many ways. Technology has allowed us to do more, but clients and the resulting standard of care have required us to do more, as well.
STRUCTURE: What advice would you give to someone who doesn’t know where to start with integrating AI into their daily work?
Otani: With any new technology or software, the most important aspect to know is what is its capabilities—what it does well and what it doesn’t. I explain AI as “embedded intelligence” since the data/information that AI is built upon (if done correctly) is real data and smart data and the artificial part is how the AI models are trained. So, the biggest aspect of trust in AI is going to be where and how that data was created or developed and how accurate the AI model is. That level of accuracy will determine how much an engineer can trust AI and consequently how much double checking of that information is required.
STRUCTURE: Is there anything you miss from a time without the advanced systems we have today?
Otani: Absolutely. In the “old” days we used to only do analysis for a subset of a building i.e. a few columns, a few bays, and a few options for lateral systems, and use our engineering skills to make judgements about the entire building system. Now many engineers model the entire building in finite element software and let the software do the work without necessarily understanding the nuances of the behavior of the building, load paths, and sensitivity of the system layouts to the overall design. I’m hoping that AI can help engineers become better engineers as opposed to technicians using software.
STRUCTURE: What might young engineers do today in response to the difficulty of navigating so many software options available?
Otani: I think it’s the engineering firms’ responsibility to both educate young engineers on “best practices” of what software to use (as well as teach engineers how to best use the software) and when during the project timeline to use the software. However, it is also the responsibility of the young engineer to know when to ask questions to the subject matter experts in the firm and engineering organization members (like SEAoNY). My most valuable engineering lessons, both technically and professionally, came from my colleagues both at my firm and from my SEAoNY colleagues.
STRUCTURE: Sounds like mentorship is still critically important. Would you like to mention a few of yours and how they helped you?
Otani: There have been so many so I’ll only mention my first mentor, I. Paul Lew, PE, RA, who was Project Manager/Senior VP of the JFK Terminal One project that I started on. As a licensed architect and engineer, Paul had a unique combination of skills as a prolific technical engineer, but he also had an aesthetic mindset where he would seamlessly communicate with the design architects. He would perform step-by-step calculations on a yellow pad in front of the engineering team to simplify an otherwise very complex problem which was invaluable to me by instilling that every engineering problem can be broken down into simpler components if you understand load path and physics. Finally, he was the only person in the office that would detail connections in 3D autocad, which in 1995 was unheard of. That level of detailed thinking, simulation, visualization and ability to share that knowledge certainly stuck with me and has become a model for me.
STRUCTURE: As a past president of SEAoNY, what accomplishments are you proud to see in the organization now, and what do you hope for the future of SEAoNY?
Otani: I’m particularly proud that when I was President, we hired a management company (Jaffe) to help manage the SEAoNY functions and to this day Jaffe is still assisting the organization. Prior to that, I had to email the organization from my work email, and it certainly is more efficient now. I’m also glad that SEAoNY has added Sustainability and Diversity to their committees. I would hope that SEAoNY would try and get more young people involved. I’ve noticed that since the pandemic there is less interest in young engineers getting involved with organizations like SEAoNY which would help them grow and learn to be better engineers and managers.
STRUCTURE: Everyone is concerned about work-life balance. Can you share some of your tricks?
Otani: When I was a young engineer, work-life balance was not really discussed. We were rewarded for being productive and getting things done and I was one of those who worked many hours, including weekends, to do that. I don’t regret that because I became skilled very fast. However, more recently I’ve learned to balance that workaholic mentality and manage my time with the help of others in a more reasonable timeframe. One of the keys to work-life balance also is really enjoying what you do and making adjustments in your daily work to make it more enjoyable.
STRUCTURE: Do you think that working extra hard, in the workaholic mentality you mentioned, is the only way for young engineers to ultimately succeed in our industry today, or are there other paths?
Otani: No, being a workaholic is certainly not a successful long-term strategy for succeeding particularly in today’s environment. It had some benefits when I was a young engineer—working more meant learning more and being more productive but that was a different time. Today it’s important that engineers develop smarter. That is, to learn as much as possible from their colleagues and continuously develop both their technical and leadership skills.
STRUCTURE: What sorts of adjustments in your daily work has made your job more enjoyable?
Otani: I started by assessing my strengths and weaknesses and decided to focus on what I do best. Today as our firm’s CTO, my colleagues know me for software, AI, and computational tools but the reality is that my passion for advanced FEA modeling back in the mid-2000s was what got me interested in computational modeling in the first place. With the rapid pace of technological improvements, structural engineering will never be the same as when I first started and it’s exciting to be part of forming the future of our practice.
With any job there will be challenges but if you enjoy your work and related contributions to the built environment and ultimately the cities we live in, have fun solving complex challenges along the way, and remember to find fun away from engineering and the office, then that is key to work life balance.
STRUCTURE: What is the best career advice that you have received?
Otani: Charlie Thornton told me once that everybody should have a vision of where they want to be in 5 years, to work every day towards achieving that vision and to do whatever it takes to get there.
Credit is given to SEAoNY for several questions in this interview. ■