High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
(OP)
I know for a fact that for conventional industrial building and low-rise 2/3 story buildings, a bachelor degree + motivation to learn/continuing education might suffice. However, I want to have a hand in larger and high-profile projects. I've heard ppl saying that a Master is almost a must to handle these kinds of buildings/structures along with architects.
I am close to finishing my undergrad with a likely offer to work on mostly industrial/conventional designs. However, I was wondering if a master is truly worth it in the long run in lieu of continuing education on/off the job.
Any tips and suggestions are greatly welcomed
I am close to finishing my undergrad with a likely offer to work on mostly industrial/conventional designs. However, I was wondering if a master is truly worth it in the long run in lieu of continuing education on/off the job.
Any tips and suggestions are greatly welcomed





RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
If you have the time and resources, it's probably worth it.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
What is "ppl" ??
Good on ya,
Goober Dave
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
I found it usually takes a lot of time on the job/experience to get the higher profile assignments. I think you'll have time to better evaluate your further education needs while you're getting the experience. I finished my graduate degree just before I sat for the PE. I think the timing helped tremendously as my brain was still operating in study/exam mode.
Good luck with your decision.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
My post was a tad facetious -- I wanted to start the thought for the OP (StructIntern) of what Tick so eloquently put. Looking for career advice? Here's some more:
While it may broaden the living experience for older folks like me to learn text-message shorthand, it will do nothing but spell disaster in the professional world. It's tough to change from years of text-typing, but it's still a must. I consider it a bit amusing, myself -- but most of my peers consider it disrespectful, some highly so.
Perhaps when Gen Y makes it to our age, they'll begin to convert the workforce to a new mode of communication -- if the next generation doesn't come up with an even more convenient way.
Meantime, proper grammar is the rule.
Good on y'all! (Including StructIntern)
Goober Dave
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
If I spend 10 minutes to type and proofread my posts on a forum after work at home, that would drive me nuts. But anyway, grammar and diction rule. I can't contest that.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
Fe
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
https://ww
for the push behind this initiative. It's very tough reading with a slew of links that say nothing. It's now been watered down to a Bachelors plus 30. Once again, it seems like there's a lot of inertia resisting this, but it might happen someday.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
Let alone the responsibilities of a structural engineer
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
In general, a lot of structural firms value the master's degree. You'll see a good bit of them state that a master's degree is "preferred" in their job advertisements, even if they primarily work on low-rise and mid-rise structures.
If you have the opportunity right now, I would highly recommend going for the master's degree. JedClampett has already touched on the push for high education requirements. I'll also argue that getting the master's degree with a structural emphasis greatly hones your technical background and will leave you with a greater confidence as you practice throughout the rest of your career, whether your work on high-rise buildings or not.
If you have a job offer upon completion of your bachelor's degree, then you may want to consider pursuing the master's degree as you work part-time. Your employer may be receptive to you working 25-30 hours a week while you take graduate classes. I did it this way and was able to finish my degree in 2-1/2 years. I enjoyed getting the degree in this manner because I was able continue my technical background while gaining a lot of real-world experience. I thought that work gave me a better context of what to look for in each course and how to choose independent research topics.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
Even though you might be deadset on working on highrises now, a few years doing lowrise or industrial structures may change your mind (or harden your resove).
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
The very high budget projects are more often then going to be located in China, Dubai, Abu Dubai, South East Asia and Doha. The with the majority of the structural design for these projects will come from offices in the US, China, Hong Kong, India and Dubai.
Best if luck.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
Apologies, I went to university in South Africa where we didn't have to do "core curriculum" in the humanities and I have twice as many engineering credits as ABET requires from my undergrad alone.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
I am a big fan of let the workplace or market decide what the demand on education is. The companies are taking the risk, not the engineering societies. Risk is mitigated strongly by knowledge - the more you know the better you can minimize risky areas. Larger firms that work on major projects tend to hire MS candidates. Smaller firms that do routine municipality work can make do (and very well) with BSCE employees. So if you, as a business owner, can get by with the BSCE coursework for your employees, then you shouldn't be subject to hiring more expensive engineers. Of course there are exceptions in that some small firms are involoved in specialty work that requires MS or PHD.
Regards,
![[pipe] pipe](https://www.tipmaster.com/images/pipe.gif)
Qshake
Eng-Tips Forums:Real Solutions for Real Problems Really Quick.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
BS from a small college
BS from an average state university (they did buildings up to 30 stories in high wind areas)
Self employed with a BS from an average state university
Retired PHD professors, though non-engineers
All well-off businessman, except for that self-employed guy.
One of my go-to mentors from a previous company had a BS and an MBA, but he said the key in his career was a several year stint with a really good mentor.
I liked school and was a good student, but I am a firm believer in on the job training for structural engineers being they key to this profession. A Masters certainly won't hurt you, but don't be too disappointed if it is not the rocket ship for your career you may have hoped. I would work first if you can find a good job, and then decide what to do after that. You may not want to even do structural engineering.
I know plenty of young engineers who have recently gone to grad school basically because the job market was so bad...
Good luck!
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
If your coming out of your undergrad right the most important advice I could give you would be this: Make sure you can get a job after you graduate from your Master's program. You don't need to be a fortune teller but just ask a few of the Master's candidates who are graduating soon about their prospects and their classmates prospects as well. The answer you get will be telling about your own prospects after graduation.
There's nothing worse than spending all that money to get a Master's degree and then flipping burgers because thats the only job available. I've been fortunate enough to avoid that fate but several of my classmates from my Masters program have not (and these are not dumb/unmotivated people either).
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
One thing I would say is that a MS is much more valuable to you after you have a couple years of experience. At that point you'll have a better idea of what's important, what you really need to pay attention to and what's just not worth staying up until 2 am to finish.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
Did you guys do a dynamic analysis for the lateral design?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
You NEED it to be accepted by a company to do the work, but you really do not "need" it to do the design.
MOST of the design is the same as for a low rise. You have your gravity systems, vibration, deflection and serviceability. The only difference in high rise is that you also start getting things like built up shapes, mode shapes, wind tunnel analysis and other more complicated areas that would be easier to understand if you have a background in Dynamics (which many undergrad study programs do not include).
High rise concrete also includes things such as creep shortening and non-linear analysis (say tension fracturing of the concrete when bent in one direction under seismic load is different than in the other direction, so your mode shape is non-linear with a non-continuous point at 0).
So it is recommended that you get a Masters, but it is not truly needed.
Now, as for net acronyms. As for a Gen-X'er it is not that hard to understand terms such as "PPL" "OMG" "THX" "L8R" and others. These are just friendly colloquialisms that save time in a texting world.
Are they appropriate for professional discourse? No. No more than "like" was and is for my own generation (although that one is still living strong in Gen-Y).
Why so many are focusing on something that has absolutely nothing to do with the OT is beyond me.
Ironic that people are grousing about internet shorthand on an internet BBS. ;)
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
We did not do a dynamic analysis for the lateral design for strength. We did have a wind-tunnel study and provided the wind-tunnel guys with frequencies/periods, mode-shapes, mass distributions, mass moments of inertia, etc. for him to give us accelerations due to wind at the highest occupied floor of the building.
We did some checks (for comparison) to see how close some spreadsheets we have are, and it was reasonably close.
I will say that our lateral system is minimally stressed (about 0.5 max at the base columns) and our drift is H/800 for a 50 year wind, and we were just squeaking by on accelerations.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
Was it a really slender building? I am surprised accelerations were controlling on a 30 story building.
RE: High-rise and bridge projects - Master degree a must?
Also the steel framed structure is lighter than concrete.
It was a torsional mode that was controlling the frequency and accelerations.
I guess to be fair I should qualify that the acceleration increased radially as you for out toward the corners of the building because of the torsional nature and there were small portions of each corner that were close, but the majority of the upper floor was ok.