Designing the complex repair of a century-old religious icon, damaged by a rare magnitude-5.8 earthquake in the nation’s capital, may have needed the hand of God or the patience of a saint, but its success is credited to the talents of a trained engineer.
If not for a family trip to his parents’ native Greece in 1997, when he was a civil engineering student in Germany, concrete mix master Andreas Tselebidis would have missed his life’s calling.
Developing the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco has been a nearly two-decade crusade for Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan, executive director of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA).
Proper asphalt compaction is the key to ensuring the life of roads, and finding new ways to measure that compaction is seen as the key to improving infrastructure construction.
In 2010, when Ronald W. Wackrow was about four months shy of completing the rescue of the troubled 6.5-million-sq-ft Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, his boss, Related Cos. Chairman Stephen M. Ross, suggested his next assignment: Relocate to the East Coast to steer design and construction of the developer’s 17.5- million-sq-ft Hudson Yards—a 26-acre mini-city primarily sited over the Long Island Railroad yard on the far West Side of Midtown Manhattan.
The American Society of Civil Engineers will cite lifetime achievers in design, construction, management, government service and education on March 17.
Edwin “Ed” Malzahn, who invented the first compact trenching machine and built his family company into global manufacturer Charles Machine Works on the success of his “Ditch Witch,” died Dec. 11. He was 94.