Indulgence

For those of you that don’t have to spend time with engineers, consider yourself very, very fortunate. For those of you that do spend time with engineers, you have my deepest and most sincere apologies…

As many of you know, I'm a Structural Engineer. Structural Engineering is a specialty within Civil Engineering and I describe it as "figuring out how to keep buildings from falling down, and figuring out what happened when they do fall down." Others have more eloquently described Structural Engineering thusly:

“Structural Engineering is the art of modeling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyze so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance."

That definition is a little tongue-in-cheek, but there is also some truth in it.

My personal definition of Structural Engineering centers on two basic fundamentals:

Newton’s First Law:

A body at rest remains at rest, unless acted upon by an external force (kinda sounds like me during football season).

Newton’s Third Law:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction (push forward against your desk and your chair rolls backwards)

These simple definitions have worked well for me in 27 years of structural engineering practice. I have been fortunate enough to perform design work on structures all over the United States (some of which you may have visited at one time or another), to conduct condition assessments of buildings after some horrible disasters (Hurricane Andrew and the Oklahoma City bombing), and to preserve some nationally significant historic buildings. I also have been fortunate enough to work with several very talented and outstanding people, some of whom are readers of this blog.

So far, during the course of my career, I have cumulatively spent over one year away from home on business, assessing buildings or visiting construction sites. My family has always been patient and understanding, and I am so grateful for that. Thank-you S and C and K.

Today I found out that, after a semi-rigorous evaluation process, I have become a Board Certified Structural Engineer. I am only the 12th Structural Engineer in my home state to attain this certification, and one of about 1000 Structural Engineers nation-wide.

I’m a lucky man, indeed!