The National Council of Structural Engineers Associations is ramping up a campaign to lure civil engineering students into structural studies and improve their preparation for practice. A mentoring program, designed to help practitioners move the student from the textbook to the workplace, is under development. NCSEA recently released an education survey listing 53 U.S. engineering schools that offer the association’s recommended curriculum. NCSEA is promoting Northeastern University’s work-study program in Boston as its mentoring model. “Our hope is to publicize nationally that which has worked so well with cooperative education at Northeastern,” says Craig E. Barnes, head of CBI Consulting
The behavior of engineered structures in the magnitude-8.8 Maule earthquake that struck Chile on Feb. 27 is unlikely to lead to big changes in U.S. practice or codes, agree engineers. Photo: Ramon Gilsanz In Chile, apartment-unit doors jammed, trapping occupants, thanks to lightly reinforced link beams over openings. “The performance of modern engineered construction in the quake was quite good, and most instances of poor performance are associated with differences in Chilean and U.S. design practice,” said Ronald O. Hamburger at the 2010 National Council of Structural Engineers Associations conference, held from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 in Jersey City,
Peter Arbour thinks his patented prefabricated cladding system, with an integrated solar-energy unit, will be a winner in the marketplace, not just the winner of a design contest. The architect expects the concrete-and-stainless-steel system to make its commercial debut in a year or two, after further development of the award-winning prototype. Photo: Courtesy Of The Center For Architecture/AIA NY Award-winning unitized cladding system needs more tweaking and testing before it is ready to be installed on a real building. Photo: Courtesy Of The Center For Architecture/AIA NY Arbour holds a patent on the system, which is cast using 20,000-psi concrete.
Building-sector groups once again are decrying the Portland Cement Association’s revised requirements for sustainable buildings, which were released recently. The move came after a failed attempt by PCA—at code hearings in August 2009—to get any of the provisions of High Performance Building Requirements for Sustainability 2.0 adopted into the model International Green Building Code. Other organizations characterize PCA’s second attempted end run around the accepted model-code development process as a self-serving push for the use of concrete over rival structural materials through the local adoption of code provisions that have been consistently rejected at the national level. High Performance Building
City officials in Seattle say they will select the project manager and engineering team this week for the city�s nine-acre Central Waterfront project, a major redevelopment plan. The city has already named the 12-member design team. Landscape architect-urban designer James Corner Field Operations was selected from four finalists as the lead designer for the stretch of land along Elliott Bay, which includes a surface street, to be made available by the planned removal of the two-level Alaskan Way Viaduct. Design is set to begin in October. A conceptual design is expected in 2012 and a final design in 2015. Construction
Ove Arup & Partners says it is "incredulous" over a lawsuit by the Art Institute of Chicago accusing the company of errors on the museum’s 264,000-sq-ft Modern Wing. Filed in federal district court in Chicago, the lawsuit claims the multidisciplinary engineer failed to discharge its obligations during design and construction of the wing, which opened in May 2009. Photo: Charles G. Young Interactive Design Architects Art Institute of Chicago alleges Arup did not provide adequate engineering services for the 264,000-sq-ft Modern Wing. The lawsuit, filed Sept. 21, claims Arup's services were "woefully inadequate." The museum asked the court to order
The potential for slashing plan-review and approval time for “replicable” commercial buildings is increasing, thanks to the publication of a road map for code-compliance review. The guideline’s tenets, intended to streamline the approval process by bundling reviews of project prototypes and eliminating repetitive reviews, already have been applied successfully in Philadelphia. The International Code Council’s ICC G1-2010 Guideline for Replicable Buildings, published on Sept. 15, is targeted at state and local building officials. But it also is meant for owners with many similar projects, such as retail, restaurant and hotel chains, and their architects, engineers and builders. “A global review
An inadvertent meeting of the minds during planning for a 484,000-sq-ft hospital in Dayton, Ohio, turned into an effort that has propelled multitrade prefabrication of hospital components to a new level. In the most ambitious U.S. implementation of the strategy, the construction manager estimates that prefabbing the 178 identical patient rooms and 120 overhead corridor utility racks sliced more than two months from construction and 1% to 2% off the cost of the $152-million building, which is 90% complete. The first effort is seen as just a beginning. “I want to change the design of hospitals with this process,” says
Wind energy, which accounted for 39% of all new U.S. electric generating capacity last year, could provide 20% of the nation’s electricity by 2030 if growth trends continue for wind power installations, according to a recent study. On the down side, siting, planning and cost allocation issues remain “key barriers” to transmission investment, the study says. Slide Show It may be possible to reach the U.S. government’s goal of producing 20% of the nation’s electricity from wind energy by 2030, but the production goal it is not a shoe-in, says a recent report. To reach the 20% goal, installations would
During a nine-course meal at a Chinese restaurant in New York City on July 10, Wang Da Sui, design master of China and part of a panel of experts approving the structural scheme for the 632-meter-tall Shanghai Tower, confirmed that the innovative architecture of the twisted and tapering skyscraper—sheathed in sheer glass like a Baccarat crystal—is a guinea pig for crafting China’s first supertall-building code. The code, for structures 300 m and taller with “serious irregularity,” requires performance-based design and extra-stiff frames and puts strict limits on building acceleration. Wang, who also heads the code committee, said the code will
