Codes and standards committee work might be viewed as a thankless job. It is unpaid. It takes years to develop new codes and improve old ones.

During his final 20 months in the U.S. Navy, Carlos Diaz was part of a team deconstructing a nuclear aircraft carrier for refurbishment. The experience made him want to be a designer.

Structural engineer Sean P. Clifton owes his career trajectory to the liquid “sloshing” damper. As a graduate student at the University of Texas Austin, he watched with fascination as a guest lecturer demonstrated the action of the device—which damps a tall building’s sway—using a 1-ft-tall “homemade” oscillator to represent a skyscraper.

Structural Engineers 2050 Commitment Program is supporting the ambitious SE 2050 Challenge, which states that “all structural engineers shall understand, reduce and ultimately eliminate embodied carbon in their projects by 2050.” 

The Structural Engineers 2050 Commitment Program is trying to identify best practices to reduce embodied carbon in building structures.

The U.S. General Services Administration has issued an RFI as part of a fact-finding mission to help establish federal agency procurement preferences for construction materials and goods that contain less embodied carbon.

Startups and more established suppliers of products that reduce the carbon footprint of concrete are developing systems to make the product more sustainable.

Suppliers are beginning to offer concrete and cement products with reduced carbon content, but roadblocks remain in the way of widespread market penetration.