Advice for a Young Structural Engineer

[fromtherafters]

I am a structural engineer early in my career and recently made a switch from building design to bridge design. I am finding it difficult adjusting to the new culture of bridge design and I am looking for some advice. With a few projects under my belt at my new company, I am finding the trend is to obtain an example set of plans, reports and/or calculations from the client and copy the format, details, materials or design approach. While I was on the building side, we never copied example plans or calculations.

Has anyone else found this to be typical of the bridge design sector or may this just be the culture of the company? Any input is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

 

[glass99]

Road and rail bridge projects move s-l-o-w-l-y. They get all freaked out when they have a deadline for a small bridge design in a year's time. In the building world, your whole project will be built this time next year. They are also super conservative. My old bridge design boss told me to design to 12ksi for all steel work.

There are innovative bridge firms out there. Schlaich Bergermann do nice work from time to time in this area, but its usually in pedestrian footbridges. HNTB have a small division within a division which do good work. Departments of Transportation are tough clients.

Notwithstanding the above, I still love bridges. If I could choose I would only do architectural footbridges, but they are inherently cool.

 

[kylesito]

My experience is that this is the bridge world. Very prescriptive, very "paint-by-numbers". You may run across the truly innovative project once or twice in your career, or you may rise up high enough that you are more on the conceptual planning side of projects....but by in large, many of the projects are very simplistic and conservative.

I don't mean to sound derogatory to the bridge guys. With few exceptions, I have found my bridge friends to be probably the smarter, better engineers in strictly the technical sense between the two groups. But even they will agree to the sometimes prescriptive nature of their work.

PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

 

[upjengnr04]

I agree with kylesito....Due to a restructuring and dramatic drop in building workload, I recently made a move to bridges (either layoff or transfer). I will say working for DOTs is tough and very "prescriptive". My experience over the last two years has been pull out an example bridge project and follow. The review process can get very tedious and as was stated earlier, a rush job means in 6-9 months. Although I personally enjoy buildings over bridges, somebody needs to design bridges, and my current co-workers do their job VERY well and with a lot of pride.

 

[glass99]

I will also say that I am much more stressed since working on buildings rather than bridges. There is a lot more dodgyness going on in the buildings world with developers and fly by night folk. With a bridge, everything is calculated, measured and tested, and nothing is eyeballed. I look at the weld testing requirements for even a simple highway bridge, and it blows away all but the most serious building project.

 

[Ron]

Qshake....where are ya? This thread needs your $0.02

 

[fromtherafters]

Thank you all for responding. I was afraid this would be the norm for the industry. As you can imagine, it is difficult to hear the reasoning for doing something is because "it is the way it has always been done" especially as a young engineer trying to learn the practice.

Based on what you all have shared, my past building experience could have been worse and my current bridge experience could be better.

Thanks again for all of your input. At least now I know I'm no crazy and this is just the way it is.

 

[kylesito]

Embrace it. It's probably a lot stress than us building guys have to deal with but much more higher level analysis. And there is nothing like seeing a 200' span get built! Sure beats the 30' span on my building columns.

PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

 

[glass99]

fromtherafters - Its also important that you understand the attitude of "its always been done this way" as something you have to put up with until you earn your stripes. Bide your time, and don't get sucked into it yourself because its a pit of mediocrity that is hard to climb out of. I saw an excellent interview with the CEO of Etsy.com, who explained that he came from Yahoo - Yahoo is the company of disappointed expectations that could have been Google, and everyone there has a bit of a chip on their shoulder about it. Perhaps for that reason, the Yahoo alumni have all excelled in their post Yahoo lives, and have pushed forward to new heights.

Bridges can and should be cool. You are given design time resources that a buildings guy would kill for. Make something of it!