ASCE Plot Points Podcast

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 to

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 prestandard and, more broadly, the power of performance-based design to close

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 Rico (12:50). And

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