Stressing Masonry's Future
Post-tensioning techniques are expanding the possibilities for masonry in building and bridge construction. Two projects in Britain and the U.S. show the rewards of rethinking approaches...
A Race to Innovate
The annual Concrete Canoe Competition, which is co-sponsored by the ASCE and Cleveland-based Master Builders, fosters several engineering breakthroughs that are ignored or forgotten by...
Public Water in Private Hands
The nation's water utilities are becoming a battleground for control between private companies that want a share of the market and public employees who are bidding for their...
Putting On Your Safety Cap
Geomembranes are an important part of landfill cap design. However not all geomembrane liners are created equal, and it's best to know what a liner is made of before specifying...
On the Texas Fast Track
When Texans do something, they do it big, and they do it fast. So it comes as no surprise that the second largest sports facility in the U.S., Texas International Raceway, is currently...
Net Results
On any sort of cleanup, digging is expensive and intrusive, but when the cleanup involves unexploded artillery shells and other munitions, digging can also be dangerous. Understandably,...
Who is the Civil Engineering Reader?
ASCE commissioned a marketing firm to survey Civil Engineering readers. The questionnaire offered them a chance to candidly express their feelings, about the magazine as well as the state...
Dam Engineers Go Over the Top
In the 1980s, dam engineers with the Lower Colorado River Authority worried that the Wirtz Dam, near Austin, Texas, would fail in the event of a maximum probable flood. They looked to...
Monumental Restorations
Modern nondestructive field surveys and state-of-the-art static dynamic monitoring systems provide important information for historical renovations while ensuring that the structure remains...
Risk Management at Wahleach Dam
In a first-of-its-kind application, engineers used risk analysis to make event-driven design decisions to evaluate dam safety improvements at Canada's Wahleach Dam in British...
Design/Build Goes Light
Full speed ahead: Those might well be the bywords of Baltimore's Central Light Rail Line extension, a trailblazing project believed to be the first in which the design/build...
Small Town, High-Tech Solution
A reverse osmosis system is a viable treatment option for small communities seeking to achieve compliance with stringent drinking water standards. Here's how one town in Illinois...
Saving a Sinking City
A construction team repairing a bridge or expanding a hospital usually must work around the daily activities of the affected group of people. But for a construction project in Co-op City,...
A Bridge Along the Same Lines
Engineers in Tennessee were recently charged with building a new viaduct in an old profile, while at the same time keeping headroom for the trains and keeping off the neighbors'...
Delivered into Providence
The Bristol County Water Authority of Rhode Island needed a pipeline to move potable water into the eastern regions, but the Providence River stood in the way. Directional-drilling provided...
A Sure Ride
Are current quality assurance practices resulting in the degree of highway quality that is desired and expected? The resounding no that often answers this question has brought the concern...
Job Security is an Oxymoron
The old notion of job security has given way to improved personal productivity, growth of the global economy, outsourcing and a glut of engineering talent. The author describes how young...
Smooth Take-Off
Rough runway pavement can make for a bumpy flight and nervous passengers. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey uses an advanced software package to detect and mitigate rough spots...
Tunneling Against Time (Available only in the Geoenvironmental Special Issue)
The phenomenal growth of Las Vegas has prompted nearly $1 billion worth of water-supply projects. A $33 million tunnel scheme�a critical element of the new construction�is on pace. The...
Multiplicity (Available only in the Geoenvironmental Special Issue)
When it comes to tracking groundwater contaminant plumes, single completion monitoring wells are the standard choice, but they aren't the only one. After four years of trying...
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