Bill Shannon and Stan Wilson: Geotechnical Pioneers with a 60-Year Legacy
Starting a business today can pose an array of challenges�planning, financial, legal, and licensing among them. But at its core, a company's founders must be dedicated to...
Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction
The Journal accepts papers and articles spanning legal issues and litigation pertaining to all areas of engineering and construction, including contract law and interpretation; professional liability and...
Civil Engineering Magazine Archive
The?Civil Engineering Magazine Archive?provides a record of civil engineering achievements and professional issues published in Civil Engineering Magazine, the official publication of the American Society...
Transparency and Integrity in Water Management
The purpose of this Paper will be to explore, define and discuss the matter of transparency, integrity and effectiveness in water and associated land management. In view of the complex...
On the Question of Accepting Work Outside One's Field of Expertise: An Ethical Fail Safe
The winner of the Daniel W. Mead Prize for ethical writing by a student discusses the history of the development of ASCE's code of ethics. Although it may be legal for civil...
Defining the Manual's Audience, Content, and Level of Detail
Often, the technical writers assigned to prepare an O&M manual aren't technical writers at all, but members of the facility design engineering staff. While they may...
Identity Crisis
For years, engineers have established the authenticity of original documents with stamps and signatures. Although stamps and signatures work well for hard copies of documents, they inadequate...
Defusing the Millennium Bomb
On January 1, 2000, some date-sensitive computer systems may interpret the year as 1900, wiping out or altering data or crashing altogether. Richard L. Bland was put in charge of assessing...
Staking Your Claim
If you buy land, you have certain legal protections ensuring that no one can take it away from you without your consent. You can put a fence around it, you can prohibit trespassers and...
How to Succeed in Business...
As civil engineering continues to evolve as a profession, consulting engineers must continually re-invent their businesses and their practices. In this article, consulting engineers talk...
Appropriate Sanitation Technology Advisor: A Planner's Tool in Less Developed Countries
The goal of the expert system (ES) prototype described in this paper is to create an advising method for planners, engineers and officials in Less-Developed Countries (LDCs) to utilize...
Legal Principles Applicable to Sharing Transboundary Waters
Transboundary water management programs must be developed on a case-by-case basis, but certain principles apply to such agreements generally. These principles include commitment to cooperation,...
Does ASCE Have a Responsibility to Mandate Continuing Education?
This paper won the Mead award for a paper by a younger member of ASCE. He notes that there is an exponential explosion of technology and knowledge and that more demands and higher expectations...
The Urge to Merge
A report issued in 1994 by the Professional Services Management Association offers a glimpse into the world of mergers and acquisitions in the architecture/engineering industry, through...
Insurance and the Environmental Engineer
The grading/excavation contractor had no problem completing the project, a routine regrading job with no visible problems or obstructions at the site, on time and on budget. Two years...
Divided We Fall
This article examines the aftermath of a falsework failure during the construction of a Mississippi River bridge in Minnesota. The author reviews the legal issues that arose from the collapse,...
The Law of the Colorado River: Can It Cope With Severe Sustained Drought?
This paper analyzes the Law of the River from the perspective of its effect on allocation decisions in the event of a long term, severe drought. The analysis is organized in a manner familiar...
Survival Skills
Thinking of what will become of a firm once an owner leaves is an important topic what many owners of firms choose to ignore. As a result, many firms fail soon after ownership is transferred....
Engineers and Contractors Go Global
The telecommunication explosion and the rise of free-trade agreements are pushing consulting engineers and construction companies toward globalization, a trend seen in past decades among...
Vietnam: Taming the Tiger
For businesses, few developing countries offer as many opportunities in a stable political environment as Vietnam. Nevertheless, the country's commercial and legal systems...
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