November 2007
Volume 32, Number 11

David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE, was installed as the Society’s president earlier this month in Orlando, Florida, at the annual conference. Complete coverage of the conference, which this year had as its theme “Infrastructure for All Generations: Plan, Design, Build, Manage,” will be included in the December issue.

On November 3, during the business meeting held as part of the Society’s annual conference, David G. Mongan, p.e., f.ASCE, was inaugurated as ASCE’s 139th president. In his inaugural speech, Mongan attributed his decision to become a civil engineer to a high school friend—Edgar Sutton, now a professional engineer and an ASCE member. Sutton encouraged Mongan to attend the University of Maryland with him and major in civil engineering. “Since I did not have anything better to do, I took him up on that suggestion, and as they say, the rest is history,” Mongan said.

Using Sutton as an example, Mongan stated that individuals have used their “power of one” to have an effect on the world around them. “It was the power of one person’s suggestion that started me on this remarkable civil engineering journey,” he said. He cited such historical figures as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and John F. Kennedy, as well as such contemporary figures as this year’s Hoover Medal recipient, Bernard Amadei, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, who founded the organization Engineers Without Borders–USA. “There are countless stories like this of individuals, each exercising their power of one,” Mongan said.

To encourage ASCE members to exercise their power of one, Mongan said that a number of ASCE initiatives would be implemented that will center on the four issues he has singled out for special attention during his term as president. The four are the workforce and diversity; ASCE’s partnership with Engineers Without Borders; infrastructure renewal; and putting the Society on a path to realizing the goals set forth in the report The Vision for Civil Engineering in 2025.

Recognizing that more students, especially women and members of groups that traditionally have been underrepresented in the profession, need to be acquainted with the challenges and opportunities offered by a career in civil engineering, Mongan said that an initiative linked to the Extraordinary Women Engineers Project—a program that provides resources to inspire young women to enter the engineering field—would be launched in February as part of Engineers Week. Entitled Engineer Your Life, the initiative, Mongan explained, will “provide [engineers] with an opportunity to go into high schools and middle schools to encourage women and underrepresented groups to consider civil engineering as a career.”

ASCE’s Board of Direction recently approved an agreement that “allows us to forge a closer relationship with Engineers Without Borders,” Mongan said. ASCE members will be able to serve as mentors at nearby universities that have Engineers Without Borders chapters, and in that capacity they will be able to offer technical assistance, review plans, and visit sites. “We believe that Engineers Without Borders can be part of our solution to diversity and workforce problems,” he said.

Addressing the state of the nation’s infrastructure, Mongan observed that “we must convince  the public and our political leaders to step forward and fund infrastructure renewal at the levels that this nation deserves.” He encouraged ASCE members to become involved by writing to their representatives and senators—a process that is facilitated at ASCE’s Web site (www.asce.org/govrel/govrel2.cfm)—and to become involved at the state and local levels by speaking out, writing letters to the editor, visiting elected officials, and getting involved in election campaigns.

Mongan also stated that he would continue to focus on achieving ASCE’s vision for civil engineering in 2025. “We must regain the public’s trust in civil engineering. We can’t let the disasters of Katrina, the I-35 bridge, and [Boston’s] Central Artery continue to erode the public’s confidence,” he said. The responsibility rests on all engineers to “exercise our power of one to safeguard the public’s health, safety, and welfare,” he stressed. Each individual can help achieve the vision of the civil engineer as “a master planner, builder, constructor, operator, manager of risk and uncertainty, innovator and integrator of technology, designer of a sustainable environment, and voice in the pubic debate and decision making on infrastructure, financing, and environmental considerations,” he said.

Mongan concluded by reinforcing his notion of the power of one. “One is indeed a very powerful number. When we have thousands and thousands of ones acting together, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.”

- Brett Hanson

On the occasion of his fifth anniversary this month as the Society’s executive director, ASCE News sat down with Patrick J. Natale, P.E., F.ASCE, to take a look back and to discuss the future. The Society’s top executive reflects on the past five years, summarizes the Society’s accomplishments, describes current challenges, and reports to the membership on how he sees the Society continuing to move forward.

You have been the executive director of ASCE for five full years now. What do you think have been the Society’s greatest accomplishments during that time?

I think our accomplishments have been starting from a new foundation and building, and that growth has been very positive. Our membership has been growing when most of our sister societies have experienced declines in membership. Not only sister societies but a lot of other organizations have had a decline in membership, but ours has grown. Our volume of quality programs and materials has grown. One of our catchall phrases is that we are the largest producer of technical professional civil engineering material in the world. That is a fact. And we are respected. Close to fifty percent of our technical material is purchased outside the U.S. That is a sign of how we are revered around the world. As I have traveled around the world with the Society’s presidents, I have been amazed by that respect. We are building on the shoulders of our predecessors, who have set the stage, and we are just helping to carry that ball forward. The presidents who have come before—that is, before Dave Mongan, who is our incoming president, and Bill Marcuson, who will be stepping down—have helped build that foundation and the former executive directors have helped build that foundation, as has the hard work of all of our members.

The other thing that we have accomplished is setting a new direction with our strategic plan and our vision for the civil engineer of the future. I truly believe that ASCE is a leader among our peers. We are out in front on a lot of issues.

I would put as the significant accomplishment over this five-year period that ASCE has ramped up its position of being a true leader within the engineering profession.

What have been the greatest challenges facing the civil engineering profession within the last five years? What are the greatest challenges facing it today?

Infrastructure investment, for one. That’s an issue that we identified many years ago and are still trying to get folks to pay attention to, and there have been a lot of wake-up calls. But my fear is we wake up and then we go back to sleep. You can talk about Katrina, you can talk about the I-35W bridge collapse, the pipe explosion in New York City a couple of months ago, and the blackout in the northeast a couple of years ago. Everybody reacts, for the moment, but where is the action? We need to get to the real action. We need to make sure that this is a priority. Our position—and we have been stating this pretty clearly—is that this should be an issue in the presidential debates. There are a lot of issues that this country is facing—social security, health care, education—all very important issues, and I’m not saying that they should be downgraded. But infrastructure needs to be placed on the same level. If we don’t invest in that infrastructure, it will not bode well for our economy. Infrastructure drives the economy.

Another challenge that we face is the globalization of engineering. That is a challenge. Many of our more routine activities will be outsourced to different countries—China, India, South America, and other parts of the world. We need to be careful that engineering does not become a commodity, but there are some functions of engineering that are easily done elsewhere. Bill Marcuson has a quote about competing globally, not on a technology per dollar basis but on a technology leadership basis. I will modify it slightly and say that it will be on the basis of leadership in innovation in technology. I think that’s what we need to be looking at in the future: how can we add additional value? Part of that is that our salaries command four to five times the rates in these developing countries. So in order to be competitive we need to add additional value, and I believe that we can.

Another key issue we will be facing in the future is the additional education needed to practice engineering. Engineering is more complex than ever before. At the same time, the hours of college credit are being reduced because of a lot of issues. Our whole initiative to raise the bar and to require additional education, I believe, will help us compete in that global market as we require new, expanded skills to expand the depth of the engineer in the technical area but also the breadth in technical and professional areas. Engineers need to be effective in those areas.

Still another challenge we face is the public’s understanding or, rather, lack of understanding of engineering. The public does not have a clear understanding of what an engineer is, and I place a lot of the onus for that on us, the profession. And that’s not just civil engineering. We need to go to a higher level and talk about engineering as a whole and later on down the road we can go into specifics. But we need to talk about the value that engineers bring to make the world a better place. I’ve been working with a group of folks from the profession to change that message and try to have a uniform message from the profession. I serve on a committee of the National Academy of Engineering with several other engineering leaders to try and determine what is the right message and how we should deliver it. Once we develop that, we have got to get others to buy in—all of the engineering socie-ties, all of the corporations. It is estimated that about four hundred million dollars per year is being spent trying to inform the public about engineering. If we’ve been spending that kind of money, we have failed because the public still does not understand. I believe that engineers are respected by the public, but the public still doesn’t know what we do. So if we can have more effective, consistent, and continuous messaging from the profession, we will be more effective.

One of the other key things facing us is the challenge when there is a failure, as with Katrina, the Minneapolis bridge collapse, or even a terrorist attack like the one on the World Trade Center. I believe that ASCE has stood strong on all of these issues and gotten involved. We’ve put teams together in many cases to find out what happened and why, and the intent there has been to figure out how we move forward. Out of the World Trade Center collapse emerged a better understanding about where to place stairwells, how to make stairwells wider for egress, and how to factor in fire protection issues. NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] did a follow-up on our study and we got some good results. There are some opportunities to improve. What we have done in the past has been really good, but engineering is about continuous improvement. And this is a vehicle of how we can improve the way in which we deliver services.

What do you see as ASCE’s greatest strength?

I think I would sum it up in one word: people. I believe leadership has a couple of major strengths. One is that leaders have vision. They see the future. The most exciting part about this is their ability to engage others to be part of that vision. One of my beliefs is that if you can get people to follow the vision, get out of their way. A leader does that. A leader develops the vision, communicates the vision, and inspires others, and others take up the ball and run. As Bill Marcuson said the other day, he surrounds himself with a lot of great people and takes credit for what they do. Part of that is about vision. When you create a vision, you help people be successful. Leadership is a piece of it.

The other segment of our people formula is our volunteers who serve on committees and task forces and editorial boards and on and on and on. They provide so much valuable technical and professional expertise, and that is a real asset to us—expertise in both technical and professional areas. And then look at our staff. Spending time during this past week at our board orientation and our staff meeting last week, when I hear some of the accomplishments of our staff, they are genuinely successful. When the volunteers and the staff partner, the combination is powerful. Just look at the depth of the expertise of our staff. You have technical specialists, professional specialists, and dedicated people who really care about the organization. If you combine the three—leadership, volunteers, and staff—it is a powerful, powerful base that enabled us to do a lot of great things for the profession, but the higher ideal is that ASCE serve the public. I think the outcome of what we do is to serve the public well. It gives me great pride to be a small part of that big picture.

Could you discuss what that vision is that you want to convey?

I believe it goes back to the vision that we put together as a committee. The vision of 2025, the inspirational vision that we put together [in the report The Vision for Civil Engineering in 2025], talks about the importance of engineers entrusted by society. Credibility is a key thing; if we blow it and lose credibility, then we’re finished. Creating a sustainable world, I think that is something civil engineers understand because of our knowledge of air, water, and the construction industry—enhancing the quality of life. But the piece putting it together is being the innovators and integrators of technology. The last thing that I would add to that is that we’ve talked a lot in the past about engineers influencing public policy, and I think that’s important because decisions are made there. But I think that is a very limited vision. I believe that we should not only be influencing them—and I’m not saying we shouldn’t because we should be influencing them—but we should encourage more engineers to play at the table and be engaged as decision makers. Too frequently we have as a profession—and again beyond civil engineering—but we have allowed ourselves to become subservient to other decision makers. The example I’ll give is the Challenger disaster. The chief design engineer was Roger Boisjoly, who recommended not launching because the O rings had not been tested under those weather conditions. Management said, ‘We have a schedule to keep.’ The end result was a disaster that cost the lives of people. Engineers need to know when to say no. We cannot allow this to happen. And there are cases like that in other industries. We cannot have technical or professional decisions being made without understanding the risks and consequences of that. The engineers know that, and we need to stand firm. We have an obligation as part of our licensing law of doing what is right and calling to order what is wrong to stop it from happening. I think the vision is to take the leadership role and, if not, to help drive the change so that the right things are done.

When it comes to issues like that, I have a pretty strong feeling. I practiced for twenty-eight years before coming to the association world. I worked for a utility company for twenty-eight years and did engineering, supervised a lot of engineers, and interacted with engineers from many other industries. I’ve been in the association world for nine years, five here but nine altogether.

ASCE has issued three full report cards on America’s infrastructure, each of which detailed the deplorable state of the nation’s infrastructure. ASCE has put forth considerable effort to bring the crumbling state of our infrastructure to the attention of the United States Congress, and certainly the failure of the levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis have trained a spotlight on this problem.

I also talked a little bit about the 2003 blackout. We issued an update to the report card a week after the blackout. Somebody accused us of being opportunists. My response was that I wish we were that good; this was in the plan for a long time and just timing has a lot to do with things. Fortunately the timing for that was good.
 
But what do you think it will take for serious, effective action to be taken to begin to rectify this problem?

I think we have to keep hammering away on our message. We have to stay on message no matter what. With the I-35W bridge collapse, a bad situation has produced some good results. The media picked the ball up effectively, and they came to us and we didn’t go out seeking the media, but we did receive numerous media inquiries. The tv media, the print media, and the radio media all came to us seeking information. We refused, but they tried to drag us into speculating as to what happened and why. We feel speculation is not an appropriate way to go. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, and we believe they will come out with a solid understanding of what happened and will make some good recommendations. We need to keep the attention of the public focused on infrastructure. The public is more aware of the problem. We’ve done surveys of the public and they have a better understanding. We need to be influencing, but we also need to get involved in the political process. Our lobbying group in D.C. does a magnificent job. We are very fortunate that they have the contacts. For example, this year one of their strategies was to visit all freshmen congressional representatives, and they’ve succeeded in meeting every one of them, partly to let them get to know who we are, but also we’re trying to carry our message to them. A recent example: one of our board members, Andy Herrmann, who happens to be a bridge expert, testified on bridge safety before Congress. Congressman Jim Oberstar, who understands the importance of infrastructure, said at the conclusion of Andy’s testimony that ASCE is the ‘watchdog’ for America’s infrastructure. He paused and then added, ‘and a very credible one at that.’ That has been done because of a lot of hard work. Now how do we get several hundred other congressmen to have the same reaction—understanding the issue and acting on it? That is our job. We just need to keep working and stay on message.

I heard a great quote about infrastructure when we released the report card in 2005. Donald Plusquellic, the mayor of Akron, Ohio, happened to be president of the Conference of Mayors, and they were with us at the release of the report card. His comment was, ‘I would rather see a bridge replaced one year too soon than a day too late.’ I thought about his comment when that bridge went down in Minnesota.

What lessons do you believe the civil engineering profession has learned from the disaster of Katrina and the I-35W collapse?

We need to consider whether there are professional practices that need to be put in place to change the way we do things. If there are things that engineers know should or could be done better, should they call it into play sooner? It goes back to the role of professionals to call it like it is. Engineers are good at doing more with less, finding efficiencies. But if those efficiencies are cutting out quality, cutting out the proper design, we need to stand up and make it clear. We are coming out with some efforts to put that together. We’ve been asked by the National Transportation Safety Board to put together a committee to look at the fatal tunnel accident that occurred in Boston when a piece of concrete came down. We have a group coming together to look at the procurement process for the epoxy and the lessons learned. What can we do to improve conditions to avoid accidents and disasters in the future? That is a brand-new committee that is just getting launched now, which is exciting. If we can improve in the future, we will better accomplish our mission to improve the health, safety, and welfare of the public. That is the role of an engineer; it is in our creed. I think there are some opportunities. For example, we learned a lot from the Katrina disaster. We put together a blue-ribbon panel of experts, our External Review Panel [ERP], from many areas—coastal design, structural design, risk management. We even brought in somebody from the Netherlands to participate so we could get some different points of view and knowledge in dealing with issues like this. We came up with ten recommendations of actions that could be taken. We actually had a discussion. We had an e-mail exchange with a member recently. His question was, ‘What have we done as a result of [Katrina]?’ We responded that we’ve made recommendations and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and others are working on them. And he came back and said, ‘No, what are you doing about it?’ So we are putting together a committee right now to determine what else we should be doing on the ten recommendations coming out of the ERP. So it is pretty interesting that here is a member questioning us. It is a great question. That is the value of our membership, wanting to make things better.

For nearly a decade ASCE has taken an aggressive stance on ‘raising the bar’ on engineering education. It can be said that ASCE’s Policy 465 is one of the most profound statements rendered by civil engineering professionals in recent decades because it recommends that the profession reconstruct the academic foundation for professional practice. How important to the future of the civil engineering profession is this reconstruction and do you think that such a reconstruction will actually take place?

That has been a lightning rod in a lot of ways—the Policy 465 issue of the importance of civil engineers improving the baseline. This is an interesting one. It has evolved to where it is today. It started out a number of years ago as the master’s degree being the first professional degree. That was an interesting starting point. There are still a lot of folks who hold that belief. But the feedback from our committee that worked so hard on this for a decade was that there are some alternative paths, for example, the master’s or the equivalent of the bachelor’s plus thirty hours. We are coming out with a new body of knowledge in February of next year [entitled Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge for the 21st Century] that is more rigorous than the first edition. This will be an ongoing, dynamic process I believe every few years because we are going to take a step back and examine what you need to practice as a civil engineer. This again is a leadership issue. It is about the leaders looking to the future. I hear engineers say frequently that we have good education, and we do—we have great education. Our educational institutions do a wonderful job producing quality engineers. But the point is that what we know today is different from what we knew yesterday. We need to repackage and reconsider the content and the depth of what we need to study. That is what the body of knowledge is talking about: looking over the horizon and not looking in the rearview mirror. We are looking forward.

If you look at this whole concept of civil engineers as leaders, you look at the additional depth and breadth of what we are trying to put into the educational model. We are talking about enhanced communication skills, a better understanding of financial management, and a better understanding of public policy so that we can have an impact on the legislators and possibly become legislators ourselves. A number of universities are looking at redesigning their undergraduate curricula to incorporate some of these subjects. But the conclusion that has come out of studies done by twenty-five universities that examined the situation in depth is that you cannot incorporate the entire body of knowledge into the undergraduate degree. You need to do this at advanced levels—the bachelor’s degree plus. I remember having a discussion with an engineering leader and he said that he was very happy with the quality of the engineers he hired. I said, ‘But when you hire them for your firm, don’t you give them project management training, so they are better equipped to lead one of your projects, and don’t you give them financial management training, and don’t you send them for management and leadership training?’ And the answer to every one of those was yes. And I said, ‘So you agree. For engineers to be a major value to your firm they need more than they come out of college with.’ We want to grow them. It is all about growing people, growing leaders.

If you look back to the 1950s, fifty percent of the Fortune 500 companies were led by engineers. I believe that number today is around twenty-seven percent. It bothers me when I look at departments of transportation around the country and you have nonengineers heading these departments. Environmental protection agencies are led by nonengineers. I actually was with one of our past presidents, meeting with some folks, and there was a person from the Environmental Protection Agency who said that engineers are not capable of being leaders. That bothered the president and it bothers me. We are capable. Have we provided the proper training and development? Have we provided the skills? Or, as Bill Marcuson puts it, ‘Have we put the tools in the toolbox?’ This is about getting the proper tools in the toolbox to prepare the civil engineer for the future. This has been a priority on the radar screen for ten years and the board reaffirmed it when we reviewed the strategic plan. It will continue to be a priority for ASCE and we are driving forward.

ASCE has also taken an aggressive stance on ethics within the past five years, undertaking an initiative spearheaded by the former president William P. Henry to formulate and implement global principles for professional conduct. How important is this initiative to ASCE’s members and to the profession as a whole?

Ethics is the core of any profession. It is a core of ASCE. We have had our Code of Ethics since 1914, and unlike some other organizations around the world we enforce our Code of Ethics. If someone violates it, we take action as appropriate.

I have felt very strongly about the importance of the Code of Ethics, and when I arrived on the scene a couple of years ago I thought we were doing a good job, but I thought there were opportunities for ASCE to do a better job. As a result of some internal discussion ASCE News publishes a column every month on ethics. That was my vision. I thought, why can’t we have a column to help people deal with ethics? Ethics is a complicated issue in many cases, and presenting real examples and real experiences is a value to our members. The column is getting good feedback from the members because they believe it is very important. Our members believe in the importance of ethics. We also include an article in the Section Informant to help our section and branch leaders deal with ethical issues, professional issues, and legal issues. We have also held a number of webinars that are getting a good turnout. In fact we had one last week that had a pretty large participation. We also do training at all of our multiregional meetings to train leaders. You raise the bar and set a higher standard when you are doing that on an ongoing basis.

Bill Henry’s initiative was taking that to the next level. He had this belief that there was a lot of money that was not being used for its intended purpose. If you are trying to invest money in infrastructure around the world and a portion of that has to go to pay off officials, then you not only need more money, you are wasting the limited resources that exist. His belief was the importance of wiping out bribery, fraud, and corruption in the construction industry, which has been tainted by that. Transparency International has an index that rates the more transparent countries, and Finland is at the top of the list. Why can’t other countries be there? So there is an opportunity through this process. And we have to be careful about this. We didn’t want this initiative to be the Americans coming in and dictating to the world. So a committee was put together of folks from around the world and we asked them for their codes of ethics as the baseline and then we added to our Code of Ethics. We have only made changes a few times in the last decade or so. We added sustainability around 1995 and then we added the bribery, fraud, and corruption clause last year. So I think that our leadership has seen the value of it. Again, Bill Marcuson has some great sayings and one of them is that ethics and transparency are like fine crystal: easily broken and hard to repair. So once you are considered unethical, it is hard to repair. I love that.

What, if anything, must ASCE do differently to serve the 21st-century
engineer?

I think it is the vision of 2025, which came out of the Summit on the Future of Civil Engineering, which was held last year and was spearheaded by our incoming president, David Mongan. I think it paints the picture. This process was brought together; indeed, we had engineers from sixty countries come together to help figure out what this is. I say engineers; there were some who were not engineers. We had an architect with us because we wanted a different point of view. We had folks who were in academia and government, both federal and state, and we had engineers from Japan, South Africa, Canada, the U.K., Australia, Malaysia, and a couple of others that I probably don’t remember. It wasn’t about the civil engineer in the U.S. It doesn’t refer to the American civil engineer. There is a broader perspective. So I think it is this combined vision, and the vision points to the need for the body of knowledge. So I believe that to really serve that engineer, we need to help prepare him or her for what will be happening in the future. The way that we are going to get there is via the body of knowledge. It is exciting to see the pieces coming together very smoothly.

When we put this vision together we did it from several cuts. We had Ralph Peterson, who is the president and chief executive officer of CH2M HILL, come in and talk about globalization. He is one of my heroes and is very inspiring. Then we had John Voeller, who happens to be a mechanical engineer and is a senior vice president and the chief technology officer for Black and Veatch. He looked at technology and the importance of technology and how it will shape the future. Then we had Hank Hatch, our incoming director at large on our Board of Direction and a former chief engineer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who talked about leadership and how leaders need to be visionary and need to understand the value of diversity and to factor it into the way that we do business. We used all of that as a baseline from which to build this vision.

What do you believe is the single most important objective ASCE must achieve within the next five years?

I’m having trouble coming up with one, because I think it is a couple of interchangeable parts. I go back to the vision. We have a committee coming together to help determine how we take it from the vision to action steps. It is the continuation of the body of knowledge and getting some action on that. In order to make it really effective, we have to change the licensing law in fifty-six jurisdictions, and in some states they have multiple licensing laws—Illinois, for example. Those are key items, but at the same time we can’t leave this infrastructure issue. We are the stewards of the environment and that is one of the things that we have to do to make sure we get the results. So I think it is one of those things that we must continue to drive. I guess it comes back to the phrase on Policy 465 about raising the bar. Raising the bar is the key. One of the quotes we have used quite often on this whole infrastructure issue is that a strong, solid infrastructure supports a strong economy. A crumbling infrastructure cannot support a strong economy.

What do you believe is the single most important objective the civil engineering profession must achieve within the next five years?

There are two of them. One is professional growth; the other is raising the bar.

It is often pointed out that the civil engineering profession would attract more people if the public had a better understanding of what civil engineers do. Such recent events as the Katrina disaster and the I-35W bridge collapse placed the work of engineers in the spotlight, but it was a negative spotlight. What can ASCE do to increase positive public awareness of the work done by civil engineers that is beneficial to society?

It goes back to my comment before about the public understanding of engineering. We are working hard with the National Academy of Engineering to help come up with a common message for the profession. The other thing that I think we’ve done really well is through the report card activities, and the reaction to disaster is to talk about the role of the civil engineer. Again, we try to keep the conversation focused on the high level of engineering, but sometimes we talk about what engineers can do to help solve the problem. Disasters will happen whether they are man-made or natural. But again the role we can play of improving and going forward is about improving the quality of life. That is the role civil engineers play, whether it relates to air quality, water quality, or wastewater management. If you look at our report card, it covers the fifteen points right on target on how we can drive to make life better. But we need to be really careful that when we are doing it we are doing it in a way that is engaging the public. It is not intended as a scare tactic; that is not our strategy. At the same time, our message in a way has to be one that is perceived by our target audience, and that is a multicultural audience, a multigender audience. We need to have more women in the profession; we need to have more people of color. We need to have more people from around the world practicing engineering. Our message in the past has not attracted some segments of the population. That is one of the factors that we are trying to bring in. We have done some research through our Extraordinary Women Engineers Project. We’ve done some studies on what messages resonate well with young women and young men. And some messages we have been using as a profession—not just the civil engineers, but we are part of that—could have been better. Frequently in the past we would ask, ‘Are you good at math and science?’ Math and science are tools to accomplishing engineering. If we were to talk to folks and ask, ‘Do you want to improve the quality of life?’ it might get folks more interested in engineering because they want to make things better. Air quality is an issue, as is water quality; we’ve talked about these issues, and the accomplishments will be more effective in getting the attention of the public and the younger student coming down the road. There are opportunities.

Are there any definite future plans to improve public awareness of what engineers do?

We have a number of outreach programs that we are using. Our program in connection with the series ZOOM into Engineering was released in 2002 in conjunction with our one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. We are coming out with a new program linked to the series Curious George. Curious George is great for young kids, and we will have a classroom program tied in with Curious George. Our name will be branded on some of the materials that they will be putting out. So we are going to get attention. At least once per year I am required to do a classroom program for five-year-olds. My wife teaches five-year-olds. I go in and talk about engineering. I don’t talk about the details of how to design a bridge or a dam. I talk in more general terms about what engineers do, but in a fun way and it is a hands-on activity. I still remember the first time I presented the program a couple of years ago. I was using ZOOM into Engineering at the time. The first time I used the program a little boy came up afterward and said, ‘Mr. Natale, can you come over and babysit me tonight? I want to play more engineering.’ Now that young man may never become an engineer, but I think he had a little bit of an understanding of the type of things engineers do. If we can continue to do that at the preschool level, the grade school level, the middle school level, and the high school level, we will attract our fair portion of folks.

The other point is that when there is a bond issue on paying for improvements on roads, bridges, or dams, maybe the public would be more understanding of the importance of these issues. It is about their health and safety. Hopefully those are some things that will help on that.

The coalition that has been working on the Extraordinary Women Engineers Project has about sixty organizations participating with us to help. We drove it. We were the creators of it and we did a lot of the fund-raising. But if we had narrowed it to a civil engineering project, then it wouldn’t have tapped into the broader engineering picture. So by having a coalition together and having better input, we were able to put out a better product. The book we put out a couple of years ago has been well received. When we went for funding from the National Science Foundation and the United Engineering Foundation, these groups came together because they saw the value and they have come to the table on multiple requests for funding.

The other piece is that we were able to do this messaging study from the Extraordinary Women Engineers Project, and that is helping us change how we are saying things. I think that is a step forward in making sure we are delivering the right message in the right way and are not turning people away. They still may not come, but the message before pushed some people away, and we needed to change that.

There are some pieces down the road that are possibilities for a tv documentary on the project. One thing I didn’t mention on the project is that we have a program on which I was a technical adviser. It was the tv program aimed at high school students called Design Squad. I just saw results from a study they did after the first couple of months on the air. How has the public perceived it, what is the value? The results were outstanding. It is giving a different face to engineering.

What are ASCE’s plans for appealing to younger members and students?

As time marches on, the students and younger members, as they become midcareer members, are going to want products and services in a way that differs from the way that baby boomers—my generation—wanted them.

Unlike some of our sister organizations we have a pretty strong younger member base. If you look at our population versus our sister organizations, we have a pretty good percent. I’m unhappy with it. I think it should be even higher, and we are working on some means to improve the quality of the services we provide. I have an internal committee and staff working on this. The question is, how do we enhance the student experience? I believe if we enhance the student experience, we will have the students convert to full members. Our conversion rate is better than most of the engineering community.

One of the exciting new activities that ASCE is embarking on is a very close partnership with Engineers Without Borders [EWB]. EWB is a dynamic, rapidly growing organization that is made up of civil engineering students, but not solely civil engineering students. I think we are the majority but there are a large number of mechanical engineers and a small number of chemical and electrical engineers. But there are other students involved, there are nursing students involved, and there are health care providers involved. It is taking some of the basic principles of engineering and going to solve a problem in the developing world or maybe even a community in the U.S. That program is just amazing. We’ve had a group working on it and the board will be acting on our recommendation of a more detailed memorandum of understanding for the partnership between ASCE and EWB. I think it is an exciting time for ASCE and EWB. And that is directly tied into younger members; that’s the key.

What are your goals for ASCE within the next five years?

At the top of my list is member value. We need to provide member value. For example, the intent of my ASCE: Working for You column in ASCE News is to tell members what we have done for them lately. One of our problems is that we do so many great things, and people are busy, so we try to do it in a short version just to hit the highlights. I try to highlight all of the good things going on. ASCE is a huge, complicated organization. We need to make it easy for members to get what they need when they need it. If they need to go to the Web site, then how do we make it easier for the member to find what he or she wants? So it is a matter of producing value, but making it so members know it and they can get to it and get the value. So it is member value, the value proposition. That was also part of our whole restructuring of customer service to try to collect all of that stuff in one box and not have it scattered all over the place. That’s why we also have collaborative marketing, so we have some cross-messaging on some things so we can tell people what we are doing. If we don’t provide member value, we can all go home; we’re not needed. So we have to provide that value.

Another thing is growing people, and that ties back into the vision for 2025 and Policy 465. It is about investing in our future. It is about growing our leaders, making them better leaders, growing our members, so that they can become leaders in whatever walk of life, and growing our staff. I think it is really important that if there are programs out there that can help you do your job or that can help prepare you for the next job—hopefully, that will be here—I believe in that. I love it when people internally grow, when you see them improve their skills and their boss comes in and says, ‘I want to promote, I want to change their job title.’ That is a good sign. That is the right thing for growing people. So that is the members and the staff, we’re growing people.

And another thing is that we are continuing the partnership. I think that is a key point. ASCE staff members and volunteers work as partners to arrive at a clear understanding of what we want to accomplish and then, like Nike, just do it, just do it. I think when we do it, I think our track record says we do it well. No, we do it exceptionally well.

The other key thing is the Web site. The Web is a key to our future. If we are going to survive another hundred and fifty-five years, we need to continue. We have been around a long time because of the strengths we talked about, but if we spend the next five years looking in the rearview mirror, we are going to go off a cliff, as opposed to determining our destiny. I believe that our leaders, both staff and elected volunteers, have been looking through the windshield and not the rearview mirror, and that’s why we have the vision, the body of knowledge, and just the right approach to providing meaningful results for the profession and the public.

Vibrant Governance Through Local Involvement

You have heard it said many times: All politics is local. And ASCE is no exception in this regard. What really matters to us most in life is what is happening close to home. For this reason, ASCE has created regions and made them an important part of its governance structure.

This decision recognizes the enormous value of interacting with peers at the local level. Many members of ASCE take an active role for years on the local or state level but never really get involved in Society-level activities. This change in our governance system is something we members truly need to embrace. I believe we must celebrate the fact that our members are very local in their orientation, and we all should make the most of the new system in place.

Someone once said that there are two things one should never see being made: sausage and laws. The process of creating and changing ASCE’s governance “laws” should probably be added to the list. But now that they have been made, these changes are going to confer benefits to the Society as a whole. Engineers do not like change. The ASCE membership was very comfortable with the old district and zone concept, and the formation of regions presented a major change. But the new regions have also created opportunities for greater involvement.

Charles R. “Chuck” Rendall, P.E., L.S., F.ASCE, one of the principal leaders of our change in governance, wrote an article for ASCE News a few years ago in which he noted that the basic rationale for the change was to involve more ASCE members in the governance structure and to improve communication between Society-level bodies and the sections and branches. When the task committee started thinking about how to improve ASCE, Chuck contended that those involved would do well to “strengthen the middle,” meaning strengthen the relationships between the regions as a way to improve the connections between Society-level entities and other ASCE entities. The regional governance structure was intended to strengthen the middle so that all geographic units would act as—and feel themselves to be—parts of an integrated whole.

The task committee believed that the regions should organize activities and events that would engage more members. This would include continuing education, both in technical areas and in career development. Other activities would focus on, for example, community service, activities with other professional organizations, and the formulation of public policy through meetings with legislators and regulators. In the case of activities held on a regular basis, regions could periodically change the venue so that everyone would have an opportunity to participate.

To fully embrace our local orientation and ensure that members participate more fully in our activities, members in various areas of the region must step up and take responsibility for events.

Society-level bodies are available to provide help and support to the regions—perhaps in training or organizing—to carry out these activities. It is also ASCE’s intent that regional boards include people with a range of backgrounds and perspectives. This diversity will go far in ensuring that the policies adopted will truly redound to the benefit of our profession.

Have the regions fulfilled this original concept as Chuck intended? We are definitely making progress, but we members need to do more to realize the concept, and we need to give the regions more time.

Expanding their reach is, I think, the challenge that regions must face. Many regions have plenary meetings supplemented with one or two board meetings throughout the year. These are valuable, but by focusing on the leadership plenary meetings may not fully address the interests and concerns of the region’s members.

Regional governors provide a link to sections, branches, and institutes. They can convene teleconferences involving, for example, all the chairs of the membership committees within their regions or all the chairs of younger member groups. They can also formulate an agenda of issues reflecting common problems and interests. So I urge you to connect with your governor and to share ideas and discuss interests that have a bearing on ASCE.

ASCE envisions the regions becoming more engaged in our strategic planning process as well. One technique that has already been successfully employed is bringing issues on ASCE’s “radar screen” at the national level to region meetings so that regions can prioritize the issues for themselves. Collecting the resulting input from the region governors is very important, but the effort should be expanded so that ideas come not just from the governors but also from the sections, branches, and institutes. One of the goals of the strategic planning task committee was aligning local entities and institutes with the Society’s strategic plan. The regions can take the lead here. For example, they can help to plan activities that are consistent with the strategic plan but also reflect local interests. In this way sections and branches will be involved to a fuller extent.

I envision the regions reaching out to our Society-level, Board of Direction, and institute committees in a way that will help to determine our strategic direction and will improve the links between the local level and the Society level. ASCE’s leaders will thus have a better opportunity to reach down into the ASCE section leadership. This alignment process could be fostered at the regional leadership conferences.

Another important role for the regions is to find suitable candidates for committee openings. This will provide growth opportunities for section, branch, and institute members. The regions can also single out meritorious members for recognition, awards, and distinguished member or fellow status.

As ASCE begins to further cement its ties with Engineers Without Borders (EWB), the regions will have a unique opportunity. Many of EWB’s professional chapters tend to be regional in scope. Our regions can thus provide an excellent link with our new partner and can further the latter’s goals by mobilizing the talent, creativity, and expertise of sections, branches, and institutes.

The Board of Direction is expending a great deal of resources in terms of time, talent, and funding in order to become a body concerned primarily with strategic thinking. But the national organization can do only so much on our strategic initiatives. We must engage members throughout the regions—through the sections, branches, and institutes—if we are to make significant progress on our strategic objectives.

Thank you for welcoming me as your new president. I look forward to facing the challenge of accomplishing our strategic objectives by taking full advantage of our regional governance system and fully engaging all our members!

—David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE

We are continuously striving to ensure that our members not only excel professionally but also thrive in their personal endeavors. That is why I am pleased to introduce a new online version of the catalog that describes our various insurance programs. This year, rather than turn pages, members can use mouse clicks to learn about the offerings available. This online version is saving the paper and printing costs that would be expended in producing approximately 100,000 hard copies, and it can be updated in the blink of an eye. It provides easy access to a wide array of insurance products designed with ASCE members and their needs in mind. Specialized group insurance plans—including life insurance, dental plans, disability coverage, cancer insurance, long-term care plans, and travel insurance—deliver high-quality coverage at competitive rates. To learn all about ASCE’s insurance plans, visit www.asceinsurance.com.

The American Academy of Water Resources Engineers has announced that 56 engineers have met the requirements to be certified as diplomates in water resources engineering. One of them, Rafael L. Bras, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, a professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was recently named an honorary member of ASCE. The diplomates will be presented with certificates in May at the 2008 World Environmental and Water Resources Congress, which will be held in Honolulu under the sponsorship of ASCE’s Environmental and Water Resources Institute. Diplomate status offers professional engineers an opportunity to gain further recognition in the field of water resources engineering. For more information on the diplomate program, visit www.aawre.org.

With help from ASCE, the pbs series Curious George is bringing civil engineering to students in first grade and in the preschool category—our youngest outreach population! ASCE has joined Universal Studios and Scholastic, Inc., in developing educational materials that introduce engineering design concepts through a series of lesson plans that dovetail with some of the Curious George programs. Activities have been designed to reinforce concepts so that little ones can join George in becoming builders. ASCE members recently were on hand at the Boston Public Library to help celebrate a birthday for the rambunctious chimp. Hundreds of children took part in activities that involved kites and marshmallow bridges, and a good time was had by all. Members are also responding enthusiastically to an outreach program in connection with the series called Let’s Build and have volunteered across the country to work with teachers in a variety of educational settings. ASCE has made it possible for educators nationwide, by registering at www.scholastic.com/letsbuild, to invite a civil engineer to their classroom to spread the excitement of engineering. To learn more, e-mail
outreach@asce.org.

On October 18, The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP) held a breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C., at the Army and Navy Club. The featured speaker was Peter F. Verga, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense. He discussed activities in the Department of Defense (DOD) related to critical infrastructure resilience and highlighted the differences between the terms “homeland security” and “homeland defense.” In discussing the DOD’s plans, Verga stressed the importance of finding and eliminating points of failure. His presentation, along with those of other TISP speakers, is available free as a podcast at http://podcast.tisp.org. The next tisp breakfast will be on November 15 and will be in New York City. It will be followed by breakfast meetings in Washington, D.C., on December 13, January 24, and February 21. Details are available at www.tisp.org.

—Patrick J. Natale, P.E., F.ASCE
Executive Director

SITUATION: Last month, ASCE sponsored an ethics webinar entitled Ethics: The Road Engineers Must Follow. During the seminar, one participant asked, “Is it ethical for an ASCE member to include the P.E. designation on his or her business card without listing the state or states in which the member is licensed?”

DISCUSSION: Several provisions of the Code of Ethics deal with truthfulness in an engineer’s professional activities. Canon 3 requires objectivity and honesty in public statements, canon 4 deals with fidelity to clients and employers, and canon 6 emphasizes the level of tolerance—zero—that is to be accorded to fraud. On the subject of professional credentials, category (d) in the guidelines to practice for canon 5 states that “engineers shall not falsify or permit misrepresentation of their academic qualifications or experience,” and category (f) for that canon has this to say: “Engineers may advertise professional services in a way that does not contain misleading language.”

Because a business card can be viewed both as a statement of credentials and as an advertisement for business, the crucial test under ASCE’s Code of Ethics is whether the member’s use of the P.E. designation on the card is in any way misleading. Under certain circumstances, the use of the P.E. designation on a business card, while truthful in some respects, may give rise to an ethics violation if it creates the false impression that a member is licensed in a state in which he or she is not in fact licensed.

One circumstance under which the use of the P.E. designation on a business card may give rise to an ethics violation occurs when the member’s business card is misleading in and of itself. If a business card does not expressly list the engineer’s state of licensure, a recipient is likely to look at the address given on the card and assume that the engineer is licensed in that state. Thus an engineer whose business card gives a New York address while the engineer is licensed only in New Jersey may be misrepresenting himself or herself as licensed in New York if he or she distributes the card in New York while seeking to obtain engineering work there.

The second, and perhaps more common, circumstance has to do with the engineer’s intent when the business card is distributed. Engineers travel frequently out of state for both professional and personal reasons, and not every use of a business card in such cases constitutes an offer of professional services in another state. If an engineer licensed in Illinois gives his or her business card to an acquaintance in Wisconsin for personal reasons without offering engineering services or with a clear indication that his or her services are available only in Illinois, the P.E. designation on the business card without the state of licensure is unlikely to create a false impression of the engineer’s professional credentials. If that same engineer, however, offers a card to a Wisconsin developer in the midst of a discussion about construction projects in Wisconsin, the member’s words and his or her failure to specify the state of licensure on the business card may together create the impression that the engineer is representing himself or herself as a person licensed in Wisconsin.

While the focus of this column is on compliance with ASCE’s Code of Ethics, it is important to note that this issue has ramifications that are anything but abstract. As with many other professional activities, the question of whether or not a member may use the P.E. designation on a business card without specifying the state of licensure is not just an ethical matter but a question of compliance with state regulations.

The typical state regulation defines a professional engineer as a person certified by the board of that state as qualified to practice engineering. The key words in that definition are “the board of that state,” and state boards differ in the extent to which they impose restrictions on the use of the P.E. designation when an engineer lives in one state but is licensed in another. For example, an engineer in Texas who is licensed in another state but whose business card or letterhead gives a Texas address may include the P.E. designation only if the actual state of licensure is given and the engineer makes it clear that he or she is not licensed in Texas, for example, “John Smith, P.E., Oklahoma (not licensed in Texas).”

To avoid inadvertent violations of state regulations, therefore, engineers whose work or other business involves contact with states where they do not hold professional licensure should review the laws of the particular state or contact the state’s licensing board for clarification as to whether certain uses of the P.E. designation may expose them to disciplinary action. Of course, the best solution for licensed engineers to take, both from an ethical and from a regulatory standpoint, is to specify their state or states of licensure when using the P.E. designation on business cards or other professional materials.

Members who have an ethics question or would like to file a complaint with the Committee on Professional Conduct may call ASCE’s hotline at (703) 295-6061 or (800) 548-ASCE (2723), extension 6061. The attorneys staffing this line can provide advice on how to handle an ethics issue or file a complaint. Please note that individual facts and circumstances vary from case to case and that the general summary information contained in these case studies is not to be construed as a precedent binding upon the Society.

New Jersey Infrastructure Receives a C–

The New Jersey Section of ASCE recently released the 2007 Report Card for New Jersey’s Infrastructure, giving the state’s built environment an overall grade of C– and warning that a wide funding gap will need to be closed just to keep pace with demand.
The intent of the survey is to provide a more detailed picture than that given in ASCE’s most recent national assessment, which in 2005 gave the country’s infrastructure an overall grade of D. ASCE maintains that such tragedies as the collapse in Minneapolis of the Interstate 35W bridge are likely to become more common unless more funding is dedicated to maintenance and repairs. The New Jersey assessment is also intended “to raise public awareness of the impact [that a] crumbling infrastructure is having on our daily lives, and the many issues and decisions that face our state as we strive to maintain and improve our infrastructure,” states a press release by the New Jersey Section.

The section assembled a committee of eight practicing engineers to review available records and analyze the condition of the state’s built environment. Its mission was to “prepare an assessment of [the] infrastructure in order to build support for dedicated and consistent sources of funding to provide adequate infrastructure facilities which are in a state of good repair,” states the press release.

The highest grade on the report card went to the energy category, which received a C+. The report warns, however, that the state will need to increase its energy capacity to meet growing demand within the next few decades. Drinking water, along with ports and navigable waterways, earned only a C, and dams received a C–. The lowest grade on the card, a D, was meted out to roads, bridges, wastewater, and aviation.

New Jersey’s roads traverse a total of approximately 36,000 mi (57,924 km). The report states that the roads are among the worst in the country, costing motorists $3.2 billion in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs each year because of poor road conditions. Approximately 49 percent of the state highway system is deficient because of roughness and surface “distress,” the report states, a figure that promises to remain stubbornly high because of a lack of funding. The backlog of road segments awaiting repair poses a formidable challenge.

On the basis of the data gathered, the roads category should have received an F, according to the report. However, “the grade [was] raised to reflect the success of improving roadway safety trends, and the policies the state continues to pursue, which is promoting safety on our roadways. Therefore ASCE has adjusted the grade given to the New Jersey state roads upwards to a D.”

The report also states that of the 6,420 bridges in New Jersey, 36 percent are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, which is above the national average of 25 percent. What is more, the funding program for bridges is anything but adequate. “At least $1.7 billion would be required to eliminate the deficient [bridge] backlog over the next ten years,” the report states.

It is projected that $15 billion will be needed to repair New Jersey’s wastewater infrastructure, according to the report. Without improvement or other intervention, the report says, the demand for sewage treatment will exceed current capacity by 2016. On the basis of budget projections for fiscal year 2008, federal funding for the New Jersey Clean Water State Revolving Fund will be roughly half what it was in 2004, whereas the number of applications for new projects this year is about 30 percent higher than the number last year.

Air traffic is projected to grow 4.3 percent within the next decade. However, as the report notes, “Newark Liberty International Airport ranks first in the nation for delayed arrivals, and third in the nation for the most delayed airport departures.” The aviation category’s grade of D was assigned on the basis of two factors: safety and the state’s ability to handle current and projected passenger volumes.

Boston Section’s TV Broadcasts Raise the Stature of Engineering 

Acquainting viewers with civil engineering and the state of our nation’s infrastructure was one of the goals of October’s Civil Engineering Today, a monthly television broadcast produced by the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section’s Public Awareness and Outreach Committee. Last month’s discussion was the 16th broadcast over the Boston Neighborhood Network (BNN), a public access network in the city.

“We had been trying to find a way for the longest time to talk to people and bring in all kinds of guests so the public can know what is going on and find out about infrastructure,” says Reed Brockman, P.E., M.ASCE, a civil engineer in the Boston office of dmjm Harris and one of four members of the committee that hosts the program. The other members are Ana Cristina Fragoso, A.M.ASCE, an engineer in the Boston office of Parsons Brinckerhoff; Raul Arauz, A.M.ASCE., an engineer with Marchionda & Associates, L.P., of Stoneham, Massachusetts; and Arthur Bonney, an engineer with the Boston office of HDR.

In discussing the development of the nation’s infrastructure, Brockman and Bonney voiced the hope that young people would consider careers in civil engineering. One means of nurturing such interest, they explained, was participation in the Future City Competition, which forms part of Engineers Week. In this nationwide contest, students in the seventh and eighth grades design a city using SimCity 3000 software, developed by Maxis, and construct a model. “We can open young minds up to engineering, letting them discover for themselves how creative, helpful, and fun the civil engineering world is,” Brockman says of the competition.

In an earlier program that explored the role of women in civil engineering, three women engineers were invited on the program to discuss their engineering careers and recount their experiences. Other programs have dealt with prominent engineering projects, among them Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, or “Big Dig.”

According to Brockman, the hosts do not know exactly how many people watch the program, but on occasion they have had viewers call in with questions and have discovered that people from as far away as Seattle have viewed their programs on BNN’s Web site, www.bnntv.org. He says that the program will run indefinitely and expects that past episodes will retain their value to the civil engineering community.

ASCE Honors Retirees

Joan Obser, James McArdle, and Anne Obser, three of ASCE’s most valued and experienced staff members, were honored on October 26 at the Society’s headquarters, in Reston, Virginia. Altogether the honorees had rendered 135 years of service to ASCE. Patrick J. Natale, P.E., F.ASCE, the Society’s executive director, presented them with service awards, and some of those who have worked with the three looked back with fondness as they paid tribute to their professionalism and long years of service.

Joan joined ASCEon January 27, 1958, at the age of 19 and stayed for a total of 49 years. She was hired as a file clerk and began her career by processing member applications in the records department. She went on to hold various positions in the membership and publications divisions as well as working in the mail room. Joan witnessed significant changes during the course of her career, including the arrival of the Society’s first computers, which eliminated some of her more labor-intensive tasks. In 1995 she became an order fulfillment representative in the publications division.

McArdle was hired as a mail clerk on October 26, 1959, at the age of 16. Just eight months later he was promoted to stock clerk, then to addressing machine operator, and then to duplicating operator. He remembers riding his bike three hours to and from ASCE during a transit strike in New York City in 1962. He particularly enjoyed his work in helping to plan and organize various Society conferences. His last position with ASCE, which he began in 1999, was that of senior office manager.

Anne Obser, Joan’s sister, began her career with ASCE in the membership division on October 6, 1969. During her tenure she worked in customer service, records, and information processing and was regarded by many as the foremost expert on the Society’s membership information database. In 1999 she began working as a senior manager of office services, and in February of this year she became an administrator in the customer service division.

All three retirees are from Brooklyn, New York, and moved with ASCE in the late 1990s from New York City to Reston. Joan and Anne have chosen to remain at their home in Sterling, Virginia, whereas McArdle will be returning to New York. His home there is near the Hudson River, and he expects to be busy with renovation work and interior decorating.

Kalkan Named NEHRP Fellow
Erol Kalkan, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, has been designated a professional fellow in earthquake hazard reduction for 2008 by the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP). Kalkan will work with Anil K. Chopra, Ph.D., M.ASCE, to develop practical guidelines to select and scale earthquake records for the nonlinear response history analysis of structures. Chopra believes that Kalkan’s contributions could influence the current practice of earthquake engineering by helping to bridge the gap between seismologists and structural engineers. Kalkan is working to draw on the knowledge of both groups to select and scale records in order to provide detailed predictions of how structures will respond to earthquakes. He holds a doctorate in structural engineering from the University of California at Davis, as well as two master’s degrees, one in engineering seismology from the Middle East Technical University, in Ankara, Turkey, the other in structural engineering from Bog¯aziçi University, in I˙stanbul, Turkey. The fellowship includes a stipend of $30,000.

Binienda Honored by NASA
Wieslaw K. Binienda, Ph.D., M.ASCE, the chair of the civil engineering department in the University of Akron’s College of Engineering, has received the Turning Goals into Reality Award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for his work on a NASA team dealing with containment concepts as they relate to jet engines. Binienda’s contributions to the team included numerical simulations in impact and postimpact experiments; material and model development; and assistance to General Electric, Honeywell International, and Williams International in the design process for jet engine composite containment systems. The author of more than 80 publications and the recipient of numerous awards, Binienda became a member of the Akron faculty in 1988. His research interests include composite materials testing and processing, material characterization, micromechanics-based modeling, and the implementation of such rigorous techniques as singular integral equations for the analysis of composite damage and failure mechanisms. After obtaining a master’s degree in Poland from the Warsaw University of Technology, Binienda earned a master’s degree and a doctorate, both in mechanical engineering, at Drexel University.

Bradshaw Receives NSF Grant
Aaron Bradshaw, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Merrimack College, and four professors at the University of Michigan and Purdue University have been awarded a $1.6-million grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant will enable Bradshaw to spend the next four years investigating ways to monitor the health of buried pipelines and to detect damage to the lines after an earthquake. He will lead the laboratory program at a specialized testing facility at Cornell University. Bradshaw’s expertise is in geotechnical earthquake engineering, soil testing in the laboratory, and the constitutive behavior of soils. He received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Tufts University and a master’s degree in ocean engineering and a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Rhode Island.

Students Receive Fellowships From PCA
The Education Foundation of the Portland Cement Association awarded fellowships to eight graduate students at its recent meeting in Chicago. Of the eight students, two belong to ASCE. Nicholas DeBlasis, S.M.ASCE, from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was selected for a paper of his entitled “Optimization of Soil Cement Mixtures for Cold Weather Construction,” and Giri Venkiteela, S.M.ASCE, from the University of Louisville, was honored for his paper “Measuring and Modeling the Setting Behavior of Cement Pastes.” The fellowships are awarded to graduate students in the fields of engineering and physical sciences who are investigating areas that hold promise for advancing the science and technology of cement and concrete. The graduate students will each receive $20,000.

Peruvian Government Honors Wrights
Kenneth Wright, P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, the president of Wright Water Engineers, Inc., of Denver, and his wife, Ruth Wright, J.D., have been honored with Peru’s Orden al Mérito por Servicios Distinguidos in recognition of research work and publications that have done much to shed light on the technological achievements of the Incas. In particular, the government paid tribute to their continuing efforts to mitigate the cost of investigating the ancient cities of Machu Picchu, Tipon, and Moray by mobilizing multidisciplinary teams of professionals. José Antonio García Belaúnde, Peru’s foreign minister, stressed the importance of the Wrights’ work in highlighting the technological prowess that the Incas brought to bear in constructing their cities. Kenneth Wright, an honorary professor at Peru’s Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, specializes in hydrology, water supply, groundwater, and hydraulic design. He has a long-standing interest in the engineering achievements of ancient peoples, especially with respect to the use and management of water. Ruth Wright is an attorney and a renowned photographer and has served in Colorado’s legislature.

Abraham Named Georgia’s Transportation Commissioner
Gena Lester Abraham, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, has been appointed Georgia’s commissioner of transportation, making her the first woman to hold the post. Abraham will replace Harold Linnenkohl, a former president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, who is retiring after a 40-year career with the Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT). As the DOT’s 14th commissioner, Abraham will oversee 5,800 employees and manage more than $2 billion of the agency’s annual budget. In February 2006 Abraham was named a state property officer by Sonny Perdue, Georgia’s governor. Before that she served as the executive secretary and director of the construction division of the Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission. She currently serves on the board of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, the Georgia Land Conservation Council, and Georgia’s Capital Asset Management Advisory Council. Abraham has also been an assistant professor of construction engineering and management in the civil engineering department at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Fellows Elected
The following members were elected fellows of the Society in recent months. ASCE fellows are legally registered professional engineers or land surveyors who have made significant technical or professional contributions and have demonstrated notable achievement in responsible charge of engineering activity for at least 10 years following election to the ASCE grade of member. Fellows occupy the Society’s second-highest membership grade, exceeded only by distinguished members.

Michael J. Abrahams, P.E., F.ASCE, is a senior vice president with Parsons Brinckerhoff. He has more than 43 years of professional engineering experience, 38 of them with Parsons Brinckerhoff directing numerous bridge, tunnel, port, and building projects. He also served four years in the Philippines with the Peace Corps after receiving his engineering degrees. Abrahams holds a bachelor of arts in chemistry from Bowdoin College and a bachelor of science in engineering mechanics and a master of science from Columbia University. He was the design manager for the Cooper River Bridge, in Charleston, South Carolina, which was completed a year ahead of schedule and is the longest cable-stayed bridge in North America, and he was the project manager for the replacement of the George P. Coleman Bridge, in Yorktown, Virginia, one of the longest double swing spans in the world, which was accomplished in a record-setting nine-day shutdown. In 1997 he was included on Engineering News-Record’s list of the year’s most newsworthy individuals for his role as project engineer on the bridge to Ford Island (Admiral Clarey Bridge), at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which at the time had one of the world’s longest openable spans. Abrahams was also the project engineer for the replacement of the Hood Canal Bridge, in Washington State, one of the largest floating bridges in the world. All told, his projects have received 35 awards, and he has been the author or coauthor of more than 80 papers and presentations. A life member of ASCE, Abrahams is active in the Metropolitan Section, and his many accolades include that section’s 1999 Roebling Award, conferred on him in recognition of his lifelong contributions.

Lawrence Kin Ping Chew, Reg. Eng., F.ASCE, is a partner with Corporated International Consultants, in Malaysia, where he manages the development of residential and commercial projects valued at more than $200 million. His administrative leadership has helped his firm expand in Malaysia and take advantage of new opportunities in China. Chew specializes in project management, contract administration, and feasibility studies in the areas of structural and geotechnical engineering. The highly accurate computer templates he developed are used on engineering jobsites to verify project modifications and have helped bring multimillion-dollar projects in under budget. Chew earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Australia’s RMIT University and a master’s degree in infrastructure engineering and management from Monash University, also in Australia. He represents engineering and consulting groups in Malaysia in meetings with government agencies and in forums that review government policies pertaining to civil engineering and the construction industry in that country. In addition to ASCE, Chew is active in the affairs of the Institution of Engineers, Malaysia, Engineers Australia, and the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

Jennifer J. Cottingham, P.E., F.ASCE, is the senior program manager for the City of Dallas’s Water Utilities Department. In this capacity she manages more than $100 million annually in engineering and construction capital improvements serving 2.3 million customers and supervises active projects having a total value of approximately $500 million. Cottingham has more than 20 years of experience in planning, designing, and constructing major treatment plant expansions; in developing water supplies, power supplies, and water supply pipelines; and in constructing dam structures and pump stations. She serves as vice-chairman of the advisory board for the civil and environmental engineering department at Southern Methodist University, the school from which she received a bachelor of science in civil engineering. A member of the Dallas Branch of ASCE’s Texas Section, she has made a number of presentations on behalf of the section, most recently at a world congress organized by the International Ozone Association. She is also active in a number of local associations and helps to raise funds for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Thomas R. Draeger, P.E., F.ASCE, has nearly 40 years of professional engineering experience, 30 of them leading projects around the world for Bechtel Corporation. An expert in constructing complex engineering projects in the mining and heavy civil disciplines, Draeger has held numerous positions while working with Bechtel, and as president of Bechtel Construction Operations he currently holds the company’s highest construction position. In this capacity he is accountable for the construction of more than 90 major engineering projects in a variety of industry sectors around the world. Draeger is committed to creating a diverse workforce by recruiting and mentoring young engineers and developing local professionals at his international jobsites. He has been recognized for his ability to dissect complicated engineering and construction problems into manageable components that lend themselves to construction in a variety of cultures and environments. Draeger received a bachelor of science in civil engineering from the University of Washington and is professionally licensed in Arizona, West Virginia, Alberta, and Bahrain. In addition to his active involvement in ASCE and its Construction Institute, Draeger has long been a supporter and leader of the Boy Scouts and the Jaycees. Earlier this year ASCE honored him for his lifetime achievements in construction as part of its Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) awards program.

Ashab U. Mahmud, F.ASCE, is a senior consultant for the House of Consultants, Ltd., in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His 40-year career has included pioneering work with the Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation and the Bangladesh Water Development Board. Mahmud has played a significant role in introducing low-cost irrigation equipment harnessing both surface water and groundwater throughout Bangladesh as part of an effort to gradually replace traditional, manually operated systems of irrigation. This technology transfer has brought about a revolutionary change in irrigated agriculture in rural Bangladesh and helped the country achieve self-sufficiency in food grain production in the late 1990s. Mahmud has prepared several project documents and concept papers that have been used in formulating Bangladesh’s development strategy for alleviating poverty in rural areas. He obtained a bachelor of science in civil engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and a master of science in irrigation engineering from the University of Southampton, in the United Kingdom. An active member of ASCE’s Bangladesh Section, Mahmud also lends his time and expertise to a variety of civic projects in his community.

Norman J. Scheel, P.E., F.ASCE, has owned his own structural engineering firm since 1989. With more than 26 years of experience as a structural engineer, he specializes in prefabricated wood trusses and truss metal plate connectors and is licensed as a professional civil or structural engineer in all 50 states. While serving as the chief structural engineer with Automated Building Components, he was responsible for the research and development work carried out for flat-chord floor trusses, which are now widely used as practical, cost-effective building components. Later, while working with Truss Com, he pioneered the use of prefabricated trusses to help wood frame buildings resist the lateral loads imposed by wind and seismic events. Scheel is the current president of the Structural Engineers Association of California. He was an active member of one of the code committees of the National Council of Structural Engineers Association (NCSEA) in the 1990s, and his work in developing code provisions that were subsequently incorporated into the Uniform Building Code has helped to give the practicing engineer a unified voice in national code development. He was also instrumental in developing the International Building Code, and he continues to be a voting member on the International Code Council’s structural committee. Scheel is active in ASCE’s Sacramento Section, and he has served as a regional judge in the annual steel bridge competition organized by ASCE and the American Institute of Steel Construction. His accolades include the NCSEA’s 2001 Distinguished Service Award.

Aviad Shapira, Sc.D., Reg. Eng., F.ASCE, is an associate professor of construction engineering and management in the civil and environmental engineering department at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. His teaching, research, and consulting have focused on construction equipment and formwork, and his knowledge, expertise, and industry collaborations have taken him to building sites around the world. Shapira is one of the authors, the others being R.L. Peurifoy and Cliff J. Schexnayder, of the seventh edition of Construction Planning, Equipment and Methods. His contributions to this fundamental text have provided new perspectives along with a fuller treatment of building construction to achieve a better balance with heavy civil works. In addition to exposing readers to construction cultures outside the United States in line with current globalization trends, he increased the emphasis on management and its interface with engineering. Shapira was one of the developers of an innovative crane-mounted system that gives operators better vision and control. Reflecting long years of practice-oriented research, the system has been used at numerous projects. Shapira has also been involved in the development and revision of numerous civil engineering standards in Israel. Active in the affairs of ASCE and the American Concrete Institute, Shapira has been the recipient of numerous teaching and professional awards, and he has led a number of scientific studies for major funding agencies. Students over the years have benefited greatly from the way in which he has blended the theoretical and practical aspects of engineering into his teaching and research.

Donald A. Steciak, P.E., F.ASCE, is the facilities design engineer for KAPL, Inc., in Niskayuna, New York. He has more than 20 years of professional engineering experience in a variety of areas, among them heavy construction, bridge inspection, construction inspection, structural design, and facilities design. Having been involved in all phases of engineering projects, from concept development to inspection of the finished product, he has developed the ability to design projects in a practical way while ensuring that the projects deliver a long service life. While working with Clough, Harbour & Associates, LLP, Steciak managed projects involving bridges, dams, retaining walls, and airport structures. He was the manager for the New York State Thruway Authority’s biennial bridge and sign inspection program for 150 bridges, including the Tappan Zee and Castleton crossings, and he also served as the quality control engineer and team leader for the New York State Department of Transportation’s biennial bridge inspection program. Steciak served as a volunteer on a project to reassemble the historically important Whipple Truss Bridge in Vischer Ferry, New York, and to construct its replacement in Fonda, New York. He is active in ASCE’s Mohawk-Hudson Section and has held a number of officer positions. Moreover, his outreach work has helped to give high school students a better understanding of the civil engineering profession.

Christopher M. Stone, P.E., F.ASCE, is the president of Clark Nexsen, of Norfolk, Virginia, which has 350 employees serving customers in Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Maryland, Georgia, and a variety of overseas locations. Stone holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Virginia Military Institute and a master’s degree, also in civil engineering, from the University of Virginia and has 27 years of engineering experience and dedication to the profession as a leader in Internet project management and metrication. Earlier in his career he worked in Spain for Glenn & Sadler overseeing projects that included facilities for the U.S. Department of Defense and space shuttle emergency landing sites in Spain, Morocco, and Gambia for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Stone has designed and managed more than 300 construction projects encompassing more than 6 million sq ft (557,400 m²), and his work at Clark Nexsen has positioned the company to become a major consultant to the Virginia Department of Transportation, with $4 million in revenue annually from the department’s bridge safety inspection program. Stone also served as a structures specialist on an urban search and rescue task force for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He is a licensed professional engineer in six states and has achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) accreditation from the U.S. Green Building Council. In addition to donating his time to a number of nonprofit boards and committees and local planning teams, he speaks at universities and middle schools acquainting students with the challenges and opportunities that a career in engineering can provide.

Timothy L. Sullivan, P.E., F.ASCE, is the senior engineer for the El Dorado Irrigation District, in Placerville, California, and has more than 27 years of experience in wastewater management. He is a licensed professional engineer in addition to holding the highest wastewater operations licenses in both California and Arizona. These qualifications have enabled Sullivan to develop a unique approach to the design and operation of wastewater treatment plants, and he has worked throughout his career to bridge the gap between wastewater engineering practice and operations. He pioneered the writing of several software programs for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that have been distributed to wastewater treatment facilities worldwide. Sullivan has also been active in efforts to increase the number of people qualified to work in wastewater facilities by volunteering his time to conduct seminars, in conjunction with the California Water Environment Association (CWEA), for those preparing to take licensing exams. He is credited with turning around a sewage treatment plant that had one of the worst records in California, transforming it into a facility that has won regional awards from the CWEA on five occasions. In addition to his ASCE membership, Sullivan is active in the affairs of the Water Environment Federation, the Water Environment Research Foundation, and various local, state, and national water associations and technical committees.

Yumei Wang, P.E., F.ASCE, has been a geotechnical engineer with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries since 1994. Her expertise is in technology policy, natural hazard analyses and risk reduction, and sustainable engineering practices, and as the agency’s geohazards section leader she focuses on lowering risks from earthquakes, tsunamis, and landslides. Wang has influenced public policies in her areas of specialization, as well as in matters concerning the environment, energy, and transportation at both the state and the federal level. In 2004 she led a multidisciplinary task force whose work raised the level of earthquake preparedness and was subsequently reflected in state law in Oregon. She also helped to lead an engineering investigation of the earthquake and tsunamis that ravaged coastal areas in southern Asia in December 2004, and she later participated in two television documentaries produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation and appeared in the program “Megaquake,” aired on the Discovery Channel, and “Earthquake Alert,” which appeared on the National Geographic Channel. In 2000 Wang served a one-year term in Washington, D.C., as a congressional fellow in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a position made possible by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and by ASCE. Wang has more than three dozen technical publications to her credit, and she serves on numerous local and national advisory commissions and committees. An adjunct faculty member at Portland State University, she is an active member of ASCE’s Oregon Section, serving on various technical committees dealing with hazard reduction and infrastructure policy. In 2006 the section honored her with its Government Engineer of the Year Award.

Loretta C. Washington, P.E., F.ASCE, is the president and chief executive officer of LCW Engineering, Inc. Washington has more than 22 years of professional experience and has specialized in highway design and transit and site design. She founded LCW in 2004, and before that she served as the director of transportation design for Wilbur Smith Associates’ Atlanta division. She has designed and managed statewide projects for the Georgia Department of Transportation and the Ohio Department of Transportation, and she has carried out projects for the City of Atlanta and for Mobile County, Alabama, ensuring compliance with local, state, and federal regulations. While with Parsons Brinckerhoff, Washington served as the principal design engineer on a number of projects, among them the design of the North Springs station on Atlanta’s Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) rail system. Washington is active within ASCE, having served as secretary and treasurer of both the Central Ohio Section and the Georgia Section, and she is a member of the Society’s Committee on Diversity and Women in Civil Engineering. She is also active in the affairs of a number of other professional groups. As a member of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Georgia’s Transportation Forum, she sits on the committee dealing with consultant relations and is cochair of the subcommittee dealing with quality control and quality assurance. Dedicated to promoting diversity in civil engineering, Washington serves as a role model and mentor, and this commitment is reflected in her work on national committees, with local organizations, and within her own firm.

Donald E. Willhouse, P.E., F.ASCE, is the construction manager for H.R. Gray in Austin, Texas. Willhouse served more than 24 years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. While with the Corps, he commanded a construction platoon and two combat engineer companies. As a staff officer he served at the Pentagon and in South Korea at the Corps’s headquarters, as well as in combat engineer battalions and brigades. He also worked as a scientist investigating new applications of engineering principles in national defense. While at the Pentagon and in South Korea, Willhouse conducted needs assessments, procured engineering assets, and briefed senior administrators during two major forest fire seasons, five hurricanes, a major earthquake, and the Alaska oil spill. He also managed multimillion-dollar design and construction contracts for flood control, navigation, roads, and buildings. After leaving active duty, Willhouse served as the manager of plant maintenance and operations for the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. More recently, he served two years as the director of licensing for the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. Willhouse is active in the Austin Branch of ASCE’s Texas Section. He currently serves on several technical committees and has held the positions of branch secretary, vice president, and president. He is also involved in numerous civic causes. Willhouse volunteers his time as a mentor and is a longtime supporter of the Boy Scouts. His many accolades include the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Outstanding Public Service Award and the ASCE Texas Section’s Service to the People Award.

Bernard Yostpille, P.E., F.ASCE, is an assistant chief structural engineer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where he has worked since obtaining a bachelor of science in civil engineering from Manhattan College in 1979. In 1985 he obtained a master of science in civil engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of New York (now Polytechnic University). In his 27-year career with the authority, he has supervised and performed structural design engineering for buildings, bridges, and marine and transportation facilities. The major undertakings to which he has contributed include the redevelopment of Newark Liberty International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport, the construction of the monorail serving Newark Liberty International Airport, major modifications to the World Trade Center before 2001, and recovery work at the World Trade Center and on the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) rail line after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Yostpille has also conceptualized and implemented blast security enhancements at various public facilities, the contract awards here exceeding $500 million. A former board director of ASCE’s Metropolitan Section, Yostpille served on the steering committee for the 2005 ASCE Structures Congress and organized and chaired the section’s continuing education committee. He is also a former president of the National Society of Professional Engineers. Yostpille actively participates in educational outreach and mentoring programs, and he helped to establish the Susan Kirk Scholarship Foundation for Women in Transportation, which is affiliated with Rutgers University. In 2005 the Metropolitan Section recognized his contributions with its Herbert Howard Government Engineer of the Year Award.

Fellow applications may be obtained from ASCE’s world headquarters, in Reston, Virginia, by calling (800) 548-2723, extension 6289. From outside the country, the number is (703) 295-6289. The e-mail address is fellows@asce.org. The application may be found on the Web at www.asce.org/pdf/fellowmemapp.pdf. Completed applications may be submitted online at www.asce.org/membership/fellowgrade.cfm (click on “Online ASCE Fellow Application”). Questions concerning fellow guidelines (including guideline waiver inquiries) or the application process may be directed to Erin Santiago, the applications coordinator, at (703) 295-6289 or esantiago@asce.org. Completed applications are reviewed monthly by the Membership Application Review Committee.

International Conference on Storm-Water and Urban Water Systems Modeling
February 21–22, 2008, Toronto

Sponsors: ASCE’s Urban Water Resources Research Council, the American Water Resources Association, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, the Ontario Ministry of Energy, the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, and Conservation Ontario.

Paper Topics: Abstracts for papers are solicited on the use of state-of-the-art computer models for resolving pollution problems and for water supply and distribution. The topics also include urban drainage system design and analysis; surface water quality modeling; storm-water and pollution management modeling; modeling effects on aquatic ecosystems and habitats; best management practices with regard to wetlands; ecological restoration; field data monitoring and emerging instrumentation; geographic information systems; decision analysis systems; facilities management systems; and policy legislation, permitting, and enforcement.

Deadline: Abstracts are to be submitted by January 25, 2008.

Contact: Visit www.computationalhydraulics.com or contact Bill James by e-mail at info@computationalhydraulics.com, by telephone at (519) 767-0197, or by fax at (519) 489-0695.

Sponsors: ASCE and its Geo-Institute.

Paper Topics: The formation of karst and sinkholes; applications of geophysics for investigating karst; new geotechnical investigation techniques for karst; GIS mapping and computer databases of karst features; karst imaging and videography; proactive and remedial engineering in karst terrain; foundation design and construction (shallow or deep); dams and impoundments; engineering infrastructure in karst; sinkhole mitigation and repair; grouting techniques; low-permeability barriers; karst water resource management; groundwater tracing; storm-water and wastewater management; contaminant monitoring and remediation in karst; modeling groundwater flow in karst; and planning and regulation.

Deadline: Abstracts of no more than one page are to be submitted by November 28, 2007. Visit http://content.asce.org/conferences/KARST08/call.html.

Contact: The conference Web site is http://content.asce.org/conferences/KARST08/index.html.

Paper Topics: This special issue will focus on the evolution and state of infrastructure policy and decision making with its associated achievements, shortcomings, and future prospects for collaborative leadership. The topics will include the following: theories and practice of public integration and communication; different policy areas that support or impede effective public decision making; the project selection decision process, including dialogue with the public; case studies of engineers participating in the political process; the experiences of engineers who have been staff members of legislative committees; conceptualizing past, present, and future integration dynamics; economic and career risks for public- and private-sector employees; virtual public forums; the clarity of public accountability regarding the operation, maintenance, and replacement of infrastructure; blog-based dialogues; and the economics of technology-facilitated communities. asce welcomes joint or separate submissions from such fields as anthropology, architecture, communications, computer science, economics, engineering, geography, information studies, information systems, management science, political science, psychology, sociology, and telecommunications.

Deadline: April 30, 2008, for papers, which are to be e-mailed to the guest editor, W.M. Hayden, Jr., Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, at wmhayden@buffalo.edu

ASCE CONFERENCES
For further information on these conferences, unless noted otherwise, contact asce Conferences Department, 1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Reston, VA 20191-4400; telephone (800) 548-2723 or, from outside the United States, (703) 295-6300; fax (703) 295-6144; e-mail conf@asce.org; Web site www.asce.org/conferences. Dates are subject to change.

International Conference on Forensic Engineering: Failure Diagnosis and Problem Solving, December 6–9, Mumbai (Bombay), India
www.icaci.com/

Institution of Structural Engineers Centenary Conference, January 24–26, 2008, Hong Kong
www.asce.org/files/pdf/2ndannouncement.pdf

International Conference on Storm-Water and Urban Water Systems Modeling, February 21–22, 2008, Toronto
www.computationalhydraulics.com

Construction
Residential Land Development Strategies (New!)
December 13–14, 2007, Houston

Using CI/ASCE 38-02 Effectively: Standard Guidelines for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data (New!)
December 13–14, 2007, Phoenix

Environmental
NPDES Storm-Water Permit Compliance
(Newly Updated!)
December 13–14, 2007, Atlanta

Geotechnical
Probabilistic Methods in Geotechnical Engineering
December 6–7, 2007, San Francisco

Hydraulics and Water Resources
HEC-RAS Computer Workshop for Unsteady Flow Applications
December 5–7, 2007, Cincinnati

Introduction to Detention Pond Design: Parking Lots And Urban Drainage
December 6–7, 2007, Tucson, Arizona

Dam Breach Analysis Using HEC-RAS
December 12–14, 2007, San Antonio

Pumping Systems Design for Civil Engineers
December 27–28, 2007, New Orleans

Management
Financial Management for the Professional Engineer
December 6–7, 2007, Cincinnati

Leadership and Development for the Engineer
(Newly Updated!)
December 13–14, 2007, San Antonio

Structural
Design of Buildings in Coastal Regions
December 6–7, 2007, Jacksonville, Florida

Posttensioning Construction and Design
December 6–7, 2007, Orlando, Florida

Wind Loads for Buildings and Other Structures
December 6–7, 2007, Atlanta

Design and Strengthening of Shallow Foundations For Conventional and Pre-engineered Buildings
December 13–14, 2007, Boston

Design for Cold-Formed Steel Structures
December 13–14, 2007, Denver

Instrumentation and Monitoring Boot Camp: Planning, Execution, and Measurement Uncertainty For Structural and Geotechnical Construction Projects (New!)
December 13–14, 2007, San Antonio

Seismic Design of Highway Bridges
December 13–14, 2007, Chicago

Transportation
Techniques for Pavement Rehabilitation
December 5–7, 2007, San Antonio

Environmental
Disaster Debris Management, Part I: Disaster Debris Preparation
November 29, 2007, noon–2 pm (eastern time)

Disaster Debris Management, Part II: Disaster Debris Response
December 6, 2007, noon–2 pm (eastern time)

Disaster Debris Management, Part III: Disaster Debris Recovery
December 13, 2007, noon–2 pm (eastern time)

Disaster Debris Management, Part IV: Emerging Issues and Topics
December 20, 2007, noon–2 pm (eastern time)

Management
Is Performance Measurement Stifling Your Performance?
December 7, 2007, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Quality: What Is It and How Do We Achieve It?
December 18, 2007, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

Structural
Renovation of Slabs on Grade
December 4, 2007, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

Design of Brick Veneer Systems
December 5, 2007, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

Specifying Metal Building Systems
December 11, 2007, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

Avoiding Problems in Specifying Metal Roofing
December 12, 2007, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

Advanced Snow Loads (New!)
December 19, 2007, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Mike Alizadeh, P.E., M. ASCE, died on August 25 at the age of 75. He was born on August 24, 1932, in Iran. He graduated from Tehran University with a degree in civil engineering and went on to earn a master’s degree in civil engineering at the University of Michigan in 1959. He then moved to St. Louis and worked as a civil and structural engineer for more than 40 years. In September 1984 Alizadeh founded Geotechnology, Inc., of Maryland Heights, Missouri, and served as its president until 1996 and as its chief executive officer until 2001. Last spring his family donated $40,000 to ASCE’s St. Louis Section to establish the Mike Alizadeh Graduate Studies Scholarship Fund. Alizadeh is survived by his wife, three children, and four grandchildren.

Herbert Rooney Malcom, Jr., Ph.D., P.E., M. ASCE, died on September 1 at the age of 71. He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, on January 2, 1936. He obtained a degree in civil engineering from North Carolina State College in 1963 and went on to earn a doctorate from North Carolina State University in 1973. He became a member of faculty at the latter, and after retiring as a professor emeritus in 2004 he continued as a consultant for the engineering firm McKim and Creed, of Wilmington, North Carolina. Malcom was the recipient of numerous awards for his contributions as an instructor and as a professional engineer. His former students remember his wit and his ability to express concepts and explain material in a way that was easy to understand. Malcom is survived by his wife, two daughters, and three granddaughters.

Paul A. Parisi, ASCE’s former director of publication services, died on September 28. He worked in ASCE’s publications division for 26 years, from 1953 to 1979, and was responsible for ASCE’s transition to photo-offset printing in the 1950s and to computerized composition in the 1960s, as well as the division’s development of a conference proceedings publication program in the 1970s. In 1983 he became the publications business manager for the American Institute of Physics. He was married in 1955 to Joan Galbo, who at the time was a receptionist for ASCE. Parisi is survived by two sons and a daughter.

Robert F. Spiekerman, M. ASCE, died on September 18 at the age of 77. He was born in Stockton, California, on April 12, 1930, and spent his early life in Lodi, California. He graduated from the University of the Pacific with a bachelor of science in civil engineering. He began his career with his family’s business, Spiekerman Concrete Pipe, and then worked as the vice president and manager of Cen-Vi-Ro Pipe Corporation before establishing his own company, California Concrete Pipe Corporation, located in Stockton. In addition to his activities within ASCE, he was a member of the California Society of Professional Engineers, the Rotary Club of Stockton, and the Stockton Golf and Country Club. He received awards from the American Society of Testing and Materials (now ASTM International)—of which he was a fellow—and earned numerous accolades from that organization as well as from the American Concrete Pipe Association. Spiekerman is survived by his wife, six children, and seven grandchildren.