The Evolution Of Structural Engineering

At the beginning of the 20th century, majestic buildings and bridges were designed with simple design tools, and built in Massachusetts and across the country. A lot of progress has been achieved since then. We have learned from failures due to natural disasters, daring human assumptions that did not work, and from the voluminous research undertaken. The civil engineers practicing during that time period had simple codes and simplified methods of calculating structures and observing their construction. Gradual computerization, new codes, and legislation are now multiplying the tasks of the structural engineer and are raising several challenges to the profession. In the following paragraphs, a brief overview of the gradual changes from the

At this time, the stiffness matrix method in structural engineering was being established and postgraduate engineering stu-dents were writing different programs to solve engineering problems. In less than a year’s time, the tried and true “slide rule” was replaced by Hewlett Packard’s first calculator, the HP-35, released in 1971. During this same time period, the building codes were also expanding. ACI 318-71 Building Code Requirements superseded and expanded the previous version ACI 318-67 with several new chapters including the load factor method. AISC further expanded the Construction Manual. Computer aided drafting was born, but initially was too costly to be fully endorsed and adopted by the engineering

It is the pace of change that appears to be creating a gap that is becoming larger and larger with the years between various categories of practicing engineers, including the new graduates. Catching up with the technology and the codes is no more the problem of senior engineers but of engineers at all experience levels. Our engineering profession has evolved through mentorship from generation to generation. It is essential to keep continuity in mentorship and create a “common language” between various categories of experienced engineers. Several questions arise towards the future:
1. Are the professional engineers satisfied with the structural background beyond computer-ization that fresh graduates bring with them from universities and colleges?
2. Do the professional engineers need to re-educate themselves with the emerging tech-nologies every 5–7 years?
3. Attending seminars/webinars of one or two hours highlight changes in practice, but are they enough to understand the core of the changes and implement