Amid all the America’s 250th anniversary celebrations this summer, the Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge marks its centennial. Thomas Murphy, Ph.D., P.E., S.E., a senior vice president and chief technical officer at Modjeski and Masters, is the perfect person to talk about the bridge’s legacy. His company’s namesake Ralph Modjeski was the chief engineer for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge back…
Infrastructure resilience is in a very enticing spot here in 2026. It’s arguably never been more important to ensure that your community’s infrastructure remains resilient. But the good news, meanwhile, is that you could make the case that it’s never been easier to make your infrastructure resilient. Technology is developing at such a rapid pace, and those new developments have made resilience far…
Earth Day 2026 finds the ASCE Plot Points podcast celebrating with a conversation between Xavi Fonoll Almansa, an assistant professor of environmental Engineering at the University of Texas, at Austin, and guest host Kuang Zhu of the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute’s Environmental Health and Water Quality Committee. In episode 190 of ASCE Plot Points, they discuss resource…
Kristin Schultheis is a senior project planner at the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. And that likely conjures images of urban areas, working across the biggest city in Wisconsin. And that would be accurate. But Schultheis' work encompasses a much larger area than the city proper with challenges and opportunities that extend into the surrounding rural areas and even active farmland. In…
This week, in recognition of Earth Day, the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute's Environmental Health and Water Quality Committee is bringing three conversations to the ASCE Plot Points podcast. The first, in episode 188 of ASCE Plot Points, is with William Gonwa, Ph.D., program director for civil Engineering, civil and architectural engineering, and construction management at the…
Something is happening this week at the American Society of Civil Engineers that hasn’t happened in nearly 12 years. ASCE has a new leader at the Headquarters building in Reston, Virginia. Peter O’Neil officially started as ASCE’s new chief executive officer March 30. This is big news for not only the organization but for the entire civil engineering profession. O’Neil brings a wealth of executive…
Civil engineering risk management is not only an important topic, it can be a nebulous one. Gray areas, assumptions, communication breakdowns, in other words: a real mess. So ASCE has launched a new Risk Management Community of Practice – a space for engineers to share and learn and compare notes in hopes of removing some of the confusion around risk. Bill McAnally and Mitch Winkler are members of…
It’s snow season in a lot of places right now – which means salt season. And salt season isn’t great for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is contaminated water. So, Connie Fortin and Tim Olson have a new idea. They call it low salt design – a way of reducing the need for salt from the very start of the project. Fortin is a low salt strategist and Olson a water resources engineer, both…
After more than a decade of experience building teams that build airplanes, Lisa Schleuter has added a new job title to her resume: children’s book author. Schleuter has published a new book called Ollie the Civil Engineer aimed at entertaining and inspiring young children. In episode 184 of ASCE Plot Points, Schleuter talks about Ollie, her career in civil engineering, and how she came to find…
AI takes up a lot of oxygen in the room right now. But when it comes to specific impacts, do we have a strong industry-wide understanding? Does anyone know? Mark Coates, vice president of the Infrastructure Policy Advancement team at Bentley Systems, set about finding out. His group helped lead a global study to better understand the topic , looking at AI in three main areas: readiness, risk, and…