Towers Were Unique On behalf of The American Society of Civil Engineers' Committee on Design of Steel Building Structures, I am writing to thank you for the editorial "Office Towers Are Safest Buildings of Them All" (ENR 4/8 p. 48). It is important that a technically sound and nonbiased assessment be made of the response of the World Trade Center Towers to the destructive terrorist attack of Sep. 11. The profession has every reason to believe that the Federal Emergency Management Agency/ASCE report will be such a document. Unfortunately, certain segments of the print media, apparently fed by special interest
Along Exit 14B of the New Jersey Turnpike, you can see something even more distressing than lower Manhattans skyline. Mountains of metal rise from the scrap yards of Jersey City, where much of the steel from the 110-story World Trade Center was taken and shredded. There, much of the evidence of the worlds largest-ever building collapse passed through on its way into history. It is there that the physical clues of the terrorist assault were gathered together one more time after having left Ground Zero, directly across the Hudson River. But except for 100 or so pieces saved for future
Curmudgeons see just fun and games at student-run concrete canoe and steel bridge contests. You often hear criticism that these annual competitions distract faculty and students from serious academic pursuits. But I believe that any structured activities that help students develop a "hands-on" feel for modern materials, design processes and construction practices are as important as any course that develops an understanding of underlying physical laws and design principles. In many ways, practical experience may be even more valuable to engineering practice. Although I don't speak for most of my faculty colleagues, I'm an advocate of student competitions such as
Look At The Contractors As the attorney for the developer of Guam's Royal Palm Resort, I would like to clarify a few impressions from your story on the lawsuits "Jury That Deliberated a Year Awards Owners $146.8 million" (ENR 5/6 p. 14). I suggested that, in my view, everyone on this project let the owner down; however, the further "claims" attributed to me were not mine. To be clear, I confirmed that engineers on both sides of The case testified that the structural design did not meet code. But I [also] explained that structural engineers testifIed that those design flaws
No wonder that so many construction engineers complain about the poor quality of design drawings; no wonder that construction and design engineers rarely see eye-to-eye in dispute resolutions; no wonder that construction engineers often propose methods different from what design engineers feel comfortable with. It's because of polarized hemisphericities. In a recent study that I did with funding from the Federal Highway Administration and Hawaii Dept. of Transportation, I found that most construction engineers are left-brained and most design engineers are right-brained. BALANCE. For the past 200 years, researchers have been developing the field of hemisphericity. A breakthrough came in
Project owners often write onerous contracts to shield themselves from risks. But one-sided contracts may leave them with higher bids from fewer qualified bidders. Realizing this problem more than a decade ago, the New York City Transit Authority began rethinking its contracting schemes. Until then, one-sided contract language was used "to protect us from ourselves," said Mysore Nagaraja, senior vice president and chief engineer at NYC Transit, as he helped me look into the consequences of such contracts. SURVEY. At Columbia University during my masters program in civil engineering, I wrote a 30-question survey that I sent to contractors and
We Care In his recent viewpoint, John R. Butler Jr., unfairly criticized the entire construction industry in Georgia and blamed general contractors, construction managers and the like for not "caring" about their projects, for hiring unskilled workers, and for passing responsibility for their projects to subcontractors or specialty contractors (ENR 3/18 p. 99). The Associated Builders and Contractors, representing nearly 500 contractors, subcontractors and construction-related firms in Georgia, agrees that there are problems with some construction projects in the state. But we want to remind Butler that contractors are not the only ones to blame. Georgias process for construction projects
Even as an architecture student at the University of Kabul, I wanted to help preserve my cultural heritage. But in 1978 I left for Denmarkwith a scholarship to study historic building restoration. Soon after, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, causing unfathomable destruction and bringing restoration projects to a complete halt. Of course, my plans changed. In 1980, after completing my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, I came to visit my brother in the U.S. and for the first time became aware of the atrocities taking place in Afghanistan. Advised not to go back, I stayed in the
Several days ago I was working late on a proposal. Stuck with writing a section on how a prospective client could benefit from using Web-based technologies, I decided to take a break to grab a hamburger across the street. Although it had been a long time since I had eaten at a McDonald's, the company had been on my mind ever since I had read Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Several sections of the book, but mostly the discussion of the McDonald's empire, had made me think about my own industryenvironmental managementand its identity and perception problems. These problems
As someone who embraces technological advances, I felt genuinely excited by an invitation last year to submit a construction bid proposal over the Internet. The client, a blue-chip firm for which we had previously worked, told us the deal during a conference call with three other invited bidders. We were to participate in a new process called "auction bidding." We listened carefully to the rules. "Although each bidding contractor's identity remains guarded, the low bid is immediately posted on the auction site...for all invited contractors to view," the rules stated. "Contractors are allowed to underbid...by any dollar value and in