Monir87 said:
I'd like to say that I am really impressed with your great knowledge in structural engineering. Your answers to all questions imply that you have an excellent experience in the structural engineering field.
Thanks Monir87, that's very kind of you to say.
Monir87 said:
Can you please refer me to the sources that you provided you with such a great knowledge?
For me, it's been mostly about books. I didn't get all that much out of graduate school. And, while I've had some excellent mentors, they mostly taught me about project management, efficient graphical communication, and business development. By the time that I was about three years into my career, I found that I had a pretty good handle on how buildings work in the real world and the purely technical mentoring that I was receiving slowed to a trickle.
The trick with the books is a) finding the time to read them and b) finding the right ones. There are oodles of textbooks out there that teach us how to design particular things. In my opinion, however, there are only a select few that have really helped me to think like a structural engineer. And those books have
really helped me.
As far as I can tell, I read
vastly more technical material on my own time than your average structural engineer. And, even at that, I only make it through about two structural engineering textbooks cover to cover each year (in addition to random articles etc). So one has to be selective. Here are a few of the publications that have been especially helpful to me:
- Structural Concepts and Systems for Architects and Engineers, TY Lin
- Building Structural Design Handbook, White & Salmon
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Reinforced Concrete Structures, Park & Paulay.
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Seismic Design of Reinforced Concrete and Masonry Buildings, Paulay & Priestley
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Structural Members and Frames, Theodore Galambos
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Design of Welded Structures, Omer Blodgett
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Structural Stability - Theory and Implementation, Chen & Lui
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Design of Prestressed Concrete Structure, TY Lin
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Reinforced Masonry Engineering Handbook, Amrhein
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Simplified Design of Building Foundations, Ambrose
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The Analysis of Irregular Shaped Structures - Diaphragms and Shear Walls, Malone & Rice
So there you have it. Just sit down and read 6000+ pages of material on your own time and you'll be all set. If you decide to do some reading, I'd recommend the two bolded texts to start. In my opinion, they're the best for understanding practical, holistic building design. And, oddly, almost nobody has these books anymore.
Monir87 said:
And what is your advice to fresh graduates like me?
In my estimation, these are the required skills for a brilliant career as a structural engineer, listed in order of importance:
1) Salesmanship. The ability to sell yourself, your ideas, and your firm to your clients.
2) Project/People Management. If you don't make money and hit deadlines, your competition will get the cool projects.
3) Technical prowess.
Do not underestimate the importance of items #1 and #2. Money has to be made and clients have to be kept happy at all costs. Our professors, our professional associations, and even other engineers will tell you that public safety (technical) supersedes all else. That's an incorrect portrayal of reality in my opinion. You have to pick your battles technically to ensure that you are tending to gardens #1 & #2 as well as ensuring safety on the truly critical items. If you're a hard-ass about everything technical, you'll find yourself designing garden sheds and sweating over the correct splicing of the diaphragm chords. Meanwhile, the engineer down the street who doesn't know what a diaphragm is will be turning out sky scrapers and giving seminars on how to generally be awesome.
I like to debate structural engineering theory -- a lot. If I challenge you on something, know that I'm doing so because I respect your opinion enough to either change it or adopt it.
