ASCE Plot Points Podcast

Every day in April, ASCE Plot Points is calling a different civil engineer from around the world to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their life, their community, their work and the civil engineering profession. Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Community Call 9 goes to Distinguished Member Tony Bartolomeo, the former CEO and president of Pennoni. Bartolomeo’s leadership experience gi...

Every day in April, ASCE Plot Points is calling a different civil engineer from around the world to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their life, their community, their work and the civil engineering profession. Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Community Call 8 reaches out to Anthony Fasano to talk about professional development during the coronavirus pandemic. Fasano is the founder ...

Every day in April, ASCE Plot Points is calling a different civil engineer from around the United States to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their life, their community, their work and the civil engineering profession. Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Community Call 7 takes us to St. Louis, but in fact, it takes us all the way to New Zealand. Marsia Geldert-Murphey,

Every day in April, ASCE Plot Points is calling a different civil engineer from around the United States to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their life, their community, their work and the civil engineering profession. Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Community Call 6 finds us talking to Mel Butcher, the private sector group midwest lead at Carollo Engineers, specializing in industr...

Every day in April, ASCE Plot Points is calling a different civil engineer from around the United States to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their life, their community, their work and the civil engineering profession. Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Community Call 5 looks for happier news amid the stress. Cherylyn Henry, a structural engineer in Charlotte, North Carolina, and long...

Every day in April, ASCE Plot Points is calling a different civil engineer from around the United States to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their life, their community, their work and the civil engineering profession. Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Community Call 4 goes to Robin Kemper, ASCE’s past president, living and working in New Jersey, one of the country’s hardest hit

Every day in April, ASCE Plot Points is calling a different civil engineer from around the United States to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their life, their community, their work and the civil engineering profession. Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Community Call 3 goes to Tony Cioffi, whose work as assistant resident engineer for the Kew Gardens Interchange Phase 4 project in

Every day in April, ASCE Plot Points is calling a different civil engineer from around the United States to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their life, their community, their work and the civil engineering profession. Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Community Call 2 goes to Vivian Chong, a senior civil engineering student at UCLA. She talks about how the final quarter of

Every day in April, ASCE Plot Points is calling a different civil engineer from around the United States to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting their life, their community, their work and the civil engineering profession. Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Community Call 1 goes to Mike Paddock, a deputy director with Engineers Without Borders. Also the author of the ASCE News “Engineerin...

An entrepreneur starts with an idea, it's true. But a successful entrepreneur pairs the idea with a plan

Stressed about election season? Worried you won’t find a candidate who represents all that you believe? Maybe it’s time for you to eliminate the proxy and run for office yourself. Marsha Anderson Bomar did. She’s in her fourth term on the City Council in Duluth, Georgia, and talks today about how civil engineering and public office intersect (2:05). We get a civil engineering “Origin Story”

What keeps a community safe after an extreme event? An interdependent system of systems. Resilience starts with keeping those lifeline systems connected and working together

When it comes to inspiring the next generation of civil engineers, representation is so very important. Jose Castro, an assistant engineer in water resources for Michael Baker International in Irvine, California, tells his story of both how he was inspired to pursue civil engineering when he was a student and how he now inspires students through outreach work (1:52). In Extracurricular, we hear fr...

Planning for retirement is a crucial component to any personal finance strategy. But it’s not easy. When do you start? How much money is enough? Nicolai Oliden, in the second part of a two-part podcast series, helps answer those questions (1:06). Then in Origin Stories, we meet ASCE Virginia Section Past-President Daren Williams and hear how his father and the Navy helped shape his career,

No one likes to talk about money. It often feels immodest, awkward, maybe even embarrassing. So how do you get advice about managing your money and developing an investment strategy? Nicolai Oliden, a roadway project engineer for Ethos Engineering and former president of the Phoenix Younger Member Forum, helps young engineers have those difficult conversations about personal finance (1:18). And in...

Maybe you’ve recently been offered the chance to go work a career fair or talk to some students at a local school. And maybe you’ve thought, “Sure, it might be fun, but what would I even say? Why would those kids want to hear my story. I’m nobody special.” But maybe you’re totally wrong. Your presence for just one afternoon can have a huge effect

Job goals don’t always have to be centered around salary or status. Often, it’s more about personal happiness and finding the right fit. For Bianca Casem, a project engineer at Swenson Say Fagét in downtown Seattle, that means sharing an office with her dog (0:35). And in today’s Extracurricular segment, Chris Hanna, project engineer at Pennoni, discusses his passion for live music (8:56). Listen...

Margarita Kruyff is not a civil engineer. But she works with civil engineers every day in her job as the assistant director of the Environment and Sustainability Department for the City of Miami Beach and also serves as chair of the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute Miami-Dade Chapter. So she is uniquely positioned to provide insights on what it’s like to work and communicate

ASCE’s Structural Engineering Institute issued the “Prestandard for Performance-Based Wind Design” early this year. Performance-based design continues to be one of the four focus areas (along with resilience, life-cycle cost analysis and innovation) of ASCE’s Grand Challenge. Don Scott, P.E., F.SEI, F.ASCE, the prime investigator for the prestandard development team, talks about both the prestanda...

Guillermo Díaz-Fañas, C.Eng, Ing., P.E., M.ASCE, has been giving back and making a difference all his life. Today he talks about the nonprofit he helped start, Qu-AKE: Queer Advocacy and Knowledge Exchange, for LGBTQ+ professionals working in the built environment (1:16). In the Changing the World segment, Hector Colon de la Cruz discusses his work on ASCE’s Infrastructure Report Card for Puerto R...

Making mistakes, unfortunately, is part of being human. But how do you handle mistakes on the job, especially if that job is something with such high stakes as civil engineering? Mike Howell has been helping engineers own and learn from their mistakes for years. He talks about how to stop trying to be perfect and start being human (2:50). In the debut of a segment

One of the most important and divisive transportation trends of 2019, dockless scooters have taken U.S. cities by storm. Kristin Musulin, senior editor for Smart Cities Dive, breaks down the positives, problems and possibilities (1:04). In today’s Origin Story, we hear from Greg Kuklinski about how his love for civil engineering goes all the way back to his days in the crib (10:34). And in

Carolyn Emerson talks about the challenges she saw for women in civil engineering more than a decade ago and what progress she has seen since

You have to know yourself before you can be yourself. For Clint Martin, that meant taking on the Appalachian Trail thru-hike for nearly six months in the woods before starting his first full-time civil engineering job. He talks about how the experience helped make him a better civil engineer (1:20). We hear an Origin Story from Vanessa Eslava, a civil engineer in San Diego who

Alex McDowell, an award-winning production designer for dozens of Hollywood films, talks about the way he is blending storytelling and data-driven research for ASCE's Future World Vision