Undergraduate geotechnical engineering education of the 21st century

Forum papers are thought-provoking opinion pieces or essays founded in fact, sometimes containing speculation, on a civil engineering topic of general interest and relevance to the readership of the journal.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

How the new architectural engineering program criteria differs from the new civil engineering program criteria

There are 17 ABET accredited architectural engineering (AE) programs in the country and over 200 civil engineering (CE) programs. To gain accreditation, a program must meet the ABET general criteria common to every engineering program and specific criteria that are unique to an individual program. The American Society of Civil Engineers is the lead professional society in this effort for both CE and AE programs. Recently the Civil Engineers rewrote and implemented the Civil Engineering ABET Program Criteria to incorporate changes in the ABET general criteria, the publication of the Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge I, and the work accomplished on ASCE Policy 465. This year, a subcommittee of the Architectural Engineering Institute Academic Council rewrote the ABET Program Criteria for Architectural Engineering (AE) Programs. In the process, the writers consulted many of the same documents used by the civil engineers and faced many of the same issues. On some of these issues, the AE community chose to follow the same path as the civil engineers and on other issues chose an alternative path. This paper examines the new AE Program criteria and reports on the issues and decisions that were made to create it. Comparisons are made with the existing program criteria and the new civil engineering program criteria. The issues include the recognized sub-disciplines of architectural engineering, the minimum degree of attainment in each sub-discipline, the role of architecture, the role of design, the need for flexibility to preserve the uniqueness of the various programs, and the minimum requirements for math, science and engineering fundamentals. The CE Division will hopefully benefit from seeing the similar challenges in developing program criteria faced by a totally different group and the decisions they reached

The Kentucky Department of Highway’s Scholarship Program

The Kentucky Department of Highways was organized in 1912, at that time the field of highway engineering was new, little was actually known about the scientific process of building roads, there were no highway engineers as such. The civil engineer because of his experience in the construction of railroads and public works was to become the highway engineer in the future. As road building began to be an important fact, most schools added courses in highway construction to the already over-crowded field of civil engineering, and highway engineering today is considered on of the major branches of the broad field of civil engineering. The general practice is to give the Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering for four years of college study; and, by additional study, one may major in highway engineering and receive the Master of Science in Civil Engineering (highway major)

The capacity of emerging civil engineering contractors

Construction management competencies are essential to realise sound practices among and to realise optimum performance by, inter alia, emerging civil engineering contractors. Such competencies enable the success of the business of construction and the management of projects, with increased efficiency and reduced costs as a benefit. The article presents the findings of a Masters study, the objectives in general being to determine the current practices and performance of emerging civil engineering contractors in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropole. The descriptive method was adopted in the empirical study. The salient findings of the study are: most of the emerging civil engineering contractors do not possess civil engineering related qualifications; construction resources are inappropriately managed leading to construction failures; skills programmes are not well structured and supported; there is a lack of capacity at all management levels of the organisations in terms of managing the business of construction and projects; the nine functions of organisations in the form of general management, technical or production, procurement, marketing, financial, human resources, public relations, legal, and administration and information technology, are not comprehensively represented; and self-ratings indicate inadequacy relative to the controlling function of management work, and relative to certain activities of the organising function. The article concludes that emerging civil engineering contractors lack the requisite competencies and resources to realise sustainable contracting organisations. The article recommends that formal civil engineering and construction management education and training should be promoted throughout the industry for all categories of civil engineering contracting organisations. The article further recommends that all nine functions should be adequately staffed with suitably qualified people in order to manage and undertake the work successfully. Organisations should have the requisite construction-related resources, and owners and managers should market their organisations to ensure the sustainability thereof

Designing Of Curricula Of Environmental Engineering And Constructions Engineering For Sustainability

The experience carried out at the University of Florence, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, in designing two new undergraduate curricula in “Environmental Engineering” and “Civil and Building Engineering for sustainability”, is reported. The bachelor in Environmental Engineering aims to train engineers capable of working in the field of protection of environment, territory and natural resources. The bachelor in Civil and Building Engineering for sustainability aims to train engineers capable of working in the field of structures, infrastructures, and constructions in general, as well as management and safety of construction processes. The development of the two curricula was based preliminarily on a national and international survey of degree programs of the same type and with shared learning outcomes. Subsequently, labour market needs were identified starting from discussions with all stakeholders, students and professors included. Teaching methods and methods for assessing students\u27 preparation have also been revised and the teaching plan of both curricula is characterized in the third year by the presence of multidisciplinary laboratories, focused on the most characterizing themes of each programme and the different disciplines with integrative and specific in-depth characteristics. Finally, a thorough design of the two courses contents has been initiated, based on the definition of the general educational objectives and the specific disciplines

Nondetection, false alarm, and calibration insensitivity in kurtosis- and pseudofractal-based singularity detection

This work isolates cases of nondetection, false alarm, and insensitivity for a general class of problems dealing with the detection and characterization of existence, location, and extent of singularities embedded in signals or in their derivatives when employing kurtosis- and pseudofractal-based methods for the detection and characterization process. The nondetection, false alarm, and insensitivity for these methods are illustrated on an example problem of damage identification and calibration in beams where the singularity to be identified lies in the derivative of the measured signal. The findings are general, not constrained to linear systems, and are potentially applicable to a wide range of fields including engineering system identification, fault detection, health monitoring of mechanical and civil structures, sensor failure, aerospace engineering, and biomedical engineering

Entry to employment: choices made by qualified women civil engineers leaving higher education

The subject of this thesis is the career choice of final year women civil engineering students. Though a considerable body of general literature exists on women in the labour market, including women in engineering and women in construction, there is a lack of knowledge about women in civil engineering specifically. Present attitudes are largely based on unproven assumptions unsupported by empirical data. By examining the career choice of the group, the aims of the thesis were to examine the factors affecting career choice of women civil engineers; to extend the knowledge base and to test some of the current thinking about women in engineering and construction. Four objectives were formulated. These concerned the initial reasons for the career choice, differences in male and female choices, whether there is a relationship between college experiences and career choice and whether there is a relationship between career expectations and career choice. These objectives were explored in a comprehensive literature review, and in an extensive series of interviews followed by a national survey of all final year women civil engineering students and an equivalent number of final year male civil engineering students. The data was analyzed by testing a number of hypotheses for each of the four objectives using advanced statistical techniques. The results of the study showed that there were a very large number of complex factors involved in women's career choice. Of particular interest were the differences in the career choices of male and female civil engineering students, that some college experiences of women were related to career choice and that generally the beliefs women had of a career in civil engineering did not appear to be related to their choice of sector of civil engineering. The thesis, in its original research, has clearly made an important contribution to the study of women in civil engineering and there is ample scope for future research projects to build on this original research. These findings have important implications for career advisors, teachers, lecturers in higher education as well as employers in the construction industry

“Top-Down-Bottom-Up” Methodology as a Common Approach to Defining Bespoke Sets of Sustainability Assessment Criteria for the Built Environment

YesThe top-down-bottom-up (TDBU) methodology for defining bespoke sets of sustainability criteria for specific civil engineering project types is introduced and discussed. The need to define sustainability criteria for specific civil engineering project types occurs mainly in one or both of the following cases: (1) when a more comprehensive and indicative assessment of the sustainability of the project type in question is required; and/or (2) there is no readily available bespoke sustainability assessment tool, or set of criteria, for assessing the sustainability of the project type. The construction of roads, buildings, airports, tunnels, dams, flood banks, bridges, water supply, and sewage systems and their supporting systems are considered to be unique civil engineering/infrastructure project types. The normative definition of sustainable civil engineering/infrastructure projects and the framework for assessing its sustainability is defined and provided by the authors. An example of the TDBU methodology being applied to define sustainability criteria for transport noise reducing devices is presented and discussed. The end result of applying the methodology is a systematically researched and industry validated set of criteria that denotes assessing the sustainability of the civil engineering/infrastructure project type. The paper concludes that the top-down-bottom-up will support stakeholders and managers involved in assessing sustainability to consider all major research methods to define general and unique sustainability criteria to assess and so maximize sustainability

Interview with Donald E. Hudson

Interview in 1997 with Donald Ellis Hudson, professor of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics, emeritus, and a pioneer in the field of earthquake engineering. Hudson received his BS (1938), master's (1939), and PhD (1942, mechanical engineering) from Caltech and then joined the faculty of its Division of Engineering and Applied Science. After retiring from Caltech in 1981 with emeritus status, he moved to the USC School of Engineering, where he chaired the Department of Civil Engineering from 1981 to 1985. He was also president of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering (IAEE) from 1980 to 1984. In this interview, Hudson comments on the development of earthquake engineering at Caltech; his collaboration with Caltech colleagues Frederick Lindvall, Romeo Martel, and George Housner; and his consulting work with General Petroleum Corporation in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He recalls his close association with the University of Roorkee, in India; the founding of the IAEE and the establishment of its periodic international conferences on earthquake engineering; his travels to Japan and to technical schools in South America; his consultation on the Bhakra Dam in India; and the development of civil engineering at USC. He also discusses the eccentric Caltech alumnus Edward Simmons, inventor of the strain gauge, and Simmons's legal battle with Caltech over the patent

Designing by Geometry. Rankine's Theorems of Transformation of Structures.

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820-1872) was one of the main figures in establishing engineering science in the second half of the 19th. Century. His Manual of Applied Mechanics (1858) gathers most of his contributions to strength of materials and structural theory. A few additions are to be found in his Manual of Civil Engineering (1862). The book is based in his Lectures on Engineering delivered in the Glasgow University, and formed part of his intention of converting engineering science in a university degree (Channell 1982, Buchanan 1985). Both in plan and in content the book shows and enormous rigour and originality. It is difficult to read. As remarked by Timoshenko (1953, 198): "In his work Rankine prefers to treat each problem first in its most general form and only later does he consider various particular cases which may be of some practical interest. Rankine's adoption of this method of writing makes his books difficult to read, and they demand considerable concentration of the reader." Besides, Rankine does not repeat any demonstration or formula, and sometimes the reader must trace back the complete development through four or five previous paragraphs. The method is that of a mathematician. However, the Manual had 21 editions (the last in 1921) an exerted a considerable influence both in England and America. In this article we will concentrate only in one of the more originals contributions of Rankine in the field of structural theory, his Theorems of Transformation of Structures. These theorems have deserved no attention either to his contemporaries or to modern historians of structural theory. It appears that the only exception is Timoshenko (1953,198-200) who cited the general statement and described briefly its applications to arches. The present author has studied the application of the Theorems to masonry structures (Huerta and Aroca 1989; Huerta 1990, 2004, 2007). Rankine discovered the Theorems during the preparation of his Lectures for his Chair of Engineering in the University of Glasgow . He considered it very important, as he published it in a short note communicated to the Royal Society in 1856 (Rankine 1856). He included it, also, in his article "Mechanics (applied)" for the 8th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Rankine 1857). Eventually, the Theorems were incoroporated in the Manual of applied mechanics and applied to frames, cables, rib arches and masonry structures. The theorems were also included in his Manual of civil engineering (1862), generally in a shortened way, but with some additions