Even before the tumultuous events of 2020, things were changing rapidly in our profession. The technological revolution, globalization, major societal challenges requiring structural engineering leadership, and the advancement of a new generation of engineers eager to make a difference in the world have been shifting the landscape for some time. …
Author Archives : Glenn R. Bell, P.E., S.E., C.Eng, FIStructE, F.SEI, F.ASCE
Glenn R. Bell is SEI President (FY20), a Director of Confidential Reporting on Structural Safety – U.S., a Board member of The Charles Pankow Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the University of Bath (U.K.).
Continuous improvement through sharing lessons from failures, near misses, and similar incidents is critical to any profession or industry. In the U.S. structural engineering community, we have long used publications, conferences, and university curricula for this purpose. However, we now have a new, robust tool for learning from failures through the recently launched system Confidential Reporting on Structural Safety in the US (CROSS-US). …
Pursuing Our Vision for Structural Engineering
In 2013, the Structural Engineering Institute published A Vision for the Future of Structural Engineering and Structural Engineers: A case for change (the SEI Vision – www.asce.org/SEI). The SEI Vision lays out an inspiring view of what the structural engineering profession could be by the year 2033, and it makes a number of recommendations for SEI Board of Governors’ action to lead us to that vision. …
While certain jurisdictions of the U.S. have had structural engineering (SE) licensure separate from the more generic professional engineering (PE) licensure for over a century, an industry-wide promotion of SE licensure has gained momentum in the past several years. The authors, as strong proponents of SE licensure, wish to reinforce the critical nature of this movement to our future. …
Frank Heger was a vanguard of the engineering industry, a visionary with his work, and a champion for public safety. From the late 1970s to 1982, the author witnessed the evolution of Frank’s most well-known work in geodesic spheres, “Spaceship Earth” at Disney’s Epcot Center. In 1980, he developed the revolutionary Soil-Pipe Interaction Design Analysis (SPIDA) software – the first-ever computer program combining heavy mathematical and theoretical computations for the design of buried pipe systems. In addition, Heger performed outstanding investigative work for the L’Ambience Plaza Collapse in 1987, which led to receiving the 1992 Construction Index Excellence Award for his personal research into the matter. …