designs if a size or spacing is out of the ordinary or if they think
they have a better idea. At first, you may not welcome their comments
and questions, but their ideas are often well-founded and
result in a better product.
Fabricators and contractors may also make unintentional
errors or omissions that could affect the structure. They could misinterpret
the drawings, forget to put an embedded plate in a concrete
wall, lay out rebar incorrectly, make an unacceptable weld,
etc. As a structural engineer, you will be called upon to determine
if what the contractor has done is acceptable or design a correction
if it is not and do so as promptly as possible to not hold up
construction. Again, another learning experience.
The stress that these everyday occurrences cause never
completely goes away. However, the level of stress does get
more tolerable.
The more projects you complete, the greater your understanding
becomes, and the more your engineering judgment grows. And
the more conversations you have with clients, the more comfortable
these interactions become. All of this helps. Unfortunately,
there is just no substitute for spending time and gaining experience.
Or maybe it is fortunate.
After all, as Thomas Paine said, “That which we obtain too easily,
we esteem too lightly.”
There are things that you can do to lower your stress level.
Review your work and bring questions to your supervisor or a colleague
with more experience. This can be humbling, but it is also
an excellent opportunity to learn. Most people like to help others;
it feels good to pass on knowledge and explaining ideas to others
helps build their understanding. However, learning how to come
up with answers on your own is part of growing as an engineer.
Look for the answer in an old textbook, use an Internet search
engine, read a journal article. If you are like me, the complex problems
that you have during the workday remain with you at night.
Sometimes the cleverest solutions pop into your head out of the
blue when you shower or climb into bed.
If your firm does not have checklists, create your own for calculations
to be done and items to be on drawings – and use them.
Please do not view the checking of shop drawings as something
you would like to delegate to others but as a way to confirm that
everything is as it should be before construction begins. Pay close
attention, and you will find the detailer’s mistakes and any design
issues that slipped through previous reviews.
We are lucky to live at a time when, each year, our design tools
become more powerful, allowing us to create ever more sophisticated
models. However, it is helpful to keep in mind mathematician
George Box’s quip: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
To improve efficiency and get the right answers, keep structural
design models as simple as possible while still maintaining their
usefulness. It generally takes a few years to develop the intuition
for when a member is under- or over-sized, so it is even more
important early in your career to understand what the software
you are using can and cannot do, and to be intentional with the
design assumptions inherent in the model. For example, if a steel
beam connection is modeled as fixed, the drawings ought to have
connections at the flanges, and if a concrete slab is necessary, do
not model it as a flexible diaphragm.
In this author’s experience, it takes about four years to develop
confidence in most daily tasks. I still had questions. I still
have questions, but I realized around the time that I took the
P.E. exam that requiring four years of experience before allowing
someone to be professionally licensed is not just an arbitrary
period. Four years really is a reasonable amount of time to develop
acceptable competence.
So, strive to get better each day and find and learn from your
mistakes. Take personal responsibility. Try to keep things in perspective
and remain humble, and in doing so, you will be able to
push through and overcome.
Structural engineering is an honorable profession that plays a
valuable role in society. When storms blow through or earthquakes
shake the ground, our communities rely on us and our expertise to
keep them safe. It is, however, not an easy profession. All of us have
had times when the job presented a real challenge, but it is a challenge
worth pursuing. The rewards are significant. t
Jim Lintz is a structural engineer at LJB, Inc. in Dayton, Ohio.
Reprinted with permission, STRUCTURE, February 2021.
QA/QC – YOUNG ENGINEERS
belchonock/123RF
The more projects
you complete,
the greater your
understanding
becomes, and
the more your
engineering
judgment grows.
96 | ISSUE 3 2021 www.piledrivers.org
/www.piledrivers.org
