Civil Engineering Innovation in Next 10 Years

[AJDH]

Hello All

The Construction industry has been traditionally seen as a low innovation sector which is reactive rather than proactive to market requirements. My question is, what major innovations do the group foresee or predict in the next 10-15 years in the Civil sector. Where do you all see the main changes occurring in terms of either design or construction from either the way projects are constructed to the way they are designed.

 

[chicopee]

Higher concrete strength, thereby, providing lighter concrete products

 

[TomDOT]

More weathering steel for most areas and ASTM A1010 structural stainless for the coastal areas. Dramatically cuts down maintenance of steel structures when properly applied.

 

[fel3]

Years ago, I had a Community Services District as a client. I filled the role of Interim District Engineer for about 4 months while they were between in-house engineers. One of the board members (a Grade 5 WTP and Grade 5 WWTP operator, no less), didn't want to pay very much for consulting engineering services because, as he asked me one day, "Can't you engineers just push a button on your computer to get your design?" So, I am waiting--still waiting--for someone to invent that button.

BTW, it was this guy's enthusiastic ignorance leading the charge that lead the entire board to insanely vote 5-0 to rehire a consultant they had fired for cause one year before. The project was the design of a significant upgrade to their small wastewater treatment plant and they had botched it so badly that the previous District Engineer had fired them, with Board approval, at the 50% CD stage. One of the board members even expressed sympathy for the fired consultant for having been fired, and this after the CSD Manager reminded them why they had been fired in the first place. As you might imagine, the selection committee I sat on had ranked this consultant last out of the four consultants we interviewed. After this debacle, I recommended to the CSD Manager that he require peer review and hire either one of the two top-ranked firms (they were neck-and-neck) to handle it.

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"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[ryanjanoch]

We see more and more mobile apps, albeit occurring slowly, in the construction industry these days. Everyone on site has a phone now and they can use it as the central access point to drawings, maps, inspection forms, etc.

Ryan Janoch
Mapistry

http://www.mapistry.com

 

[brandonbw]

I was reading through Civil 3D blogs and that 1 button approach to design sounds further away. Since this is 10 years away, how can drones help out in delivering products, building something, or being used on the job to be more efficient? For simplicity it would be nice to take pictures of my yard. Tell the drone to remove some dirt, bring some wood over, fill the dirt back in, and plant my garden.

Would be nice to see an app that can take depth from a phone camera picture, like google photosphere, and automatically pop that onto a plan to render.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer

http://bwengr.com

 

[BUGGAR]

Building Codes will become so complex that there will be a new engineering discipline of Building Code Engineer with the B.C.E. title.
A special Code Engineer Discipline will be required for ACI Appendix D which is now 1700 pages long.

Building Codes will be considered as laws and will thus be free. But the Code bodies will be able to charge a steep activation fee and you will have to pay a monthly dongle access fee.

All engineering will be done in the cloud and engineers will have no ownership or ultimate control of their documents. Droves of attorneys will be in charge of this.

ASCE will finally prevail and you will need 35 years of formal University study to get an engineering degree. There will also be no more poor engineers – few will be able to afford it. This is a good thing to reduce engineering unemployment since with new computer techniques, only about 250 engineers will be required in any state.

Microsoft will buy the Catholic Church.

 

[msquared48]

Transparent Aluminum to vastly improve stealth technology.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[dhengr]

AJDH:
Actually, a good thing would be to get back to actually educating engineers, and having them come to their early jobs with a good background in the fundamentals of their area of work, and to be thinkers and problem solvers. This, rather than just training them to use apps and software where they actually have no idea what they are really doing, just plug and grind, and hope for the best. Then, the companies and bosses or superiors had better start realizing that newly minted engineers need some serious supervision and mentoring if they are going to turn into real engineers. We are seeing OP’s/questions from people who can’t reason their way through the simplest of problems in their field, problems from their first few classes at the uni., and they are being asked to (or assumed to be able to) design some fairly complex problems, structures, products; all because they have access to a computer program which they don’t understand. The computer program doesn’t innovate, it isn’t proactive, it helps us solve and analyze complex problems when used in the hands of a knowledgeable engineer, someone who has a vague idea how the program works and what it does, and approx. what the answer should be. Knowledgeable engineers, with some good experience and good judgement can be innovative and proactive, but even this is being inhibited by the complexity and convoluted nature of your codes and standards these days. And, this trend too, is being forced by the fact that we have fewer and fewer experienced engineers and designers and more and more technicians and young computer operators trying to do engineering work, so the codes and design guide solved problems must show them the next step.

Things like serious engineering experience and good judgement used to be important aspects of the engineering process. The concepts of ‘rational analysis, in accordance with well established principles of mechanics,’ is just about out the window, and it used to be the bedrock of real engineering. Most newer people don’t know how any longer, and the push back from unknowledgeable code officials (code readers, followers and manipulators) makes any deviation pretty difficult. The idea that codes/stds. are ‘not intended to prevent the use of any method or material of construction not specifically prescribed, providing they be reasonably proven and approved,’ is pretty much out the window too. It just takes too much of a fight to deviate from the codes, even in a reasonable way. Now, we are screwin ourselves and the public in general, when, if it’s not explicitly spelled out in a code or standard, it can’t be done; it certainly won’t be done by an inexperienced technician.