Wayne Low, SEAONC President

Hello Everyone,

If my office is any indication, the last month has been full of holiday celebrations and a lot.. lot of vacations.  If not, then I am sure it is because you all have bigger plans in the coming months. It is a well earned break. In this time, it is good to remember the delicate balance we aim to hit in our lives. We didn’t know it at the time, but it took a pandemic to change how we work, collaborate, interact or even celebrate with each other.  

It feels like a distant memory, but, I for one, can still recall the jarring shift we all went through from spending time with our friends and colleagues, to a state where running into someone on the street meant turning around or moving to the side to create that dreaded six feet. I am sure that sociologists will study this for years to come in hopes to understand what the repercussions have been.  The National Institute of Health are looking at the social consequences of COVID and found that the shift to isolation and social distancing, has led to a whole host of problems, ranging from depression, anxiety, insecurity and stress. The members of SEAONC are not immune to these forces, and as we emerge from our bubbles and return to group events, we should all remind ourselves of the benefits of community.  

In 2022, the Board of Directors completed a member survey to inform our strategic plan for the next five years.  What came out of the survey was a clear message from our members, that one of our strengths is our ability to build camaraderie, a network, to help each other. SEAONC is embracing this as one of our core pillars for the next five years, and we are planning events to help us to reconnect, taking steps to rebuild our networks that have shrunk as a matter of safety.

It wasn’t that long ago that many SEAONC’s members were asking for just the opposite—events and meetings online—mainly to save time. I’m sure I second many opinions when I say “Zoom fatigue” is a real thing and that our members have voiced a desire to meet in real life.  It is our natural craving as human beings to search out personal touches and interactions. SEAONC is endeavoring to help, focusing our efforts to create engaging and accessible meetings for our members.

Looking back to when I first joined SEAONC, one of the aspects that I loved is the opportunities to share ideas and to build lasting friendships. I am sure you all agree with me that our group is unique, both for the friendliness and willingness to help each other. There is no better group of colleagues and friends in the world of structural engineering.  Networking can be tough for some of our members, but I encourage you to be active and build your social circle. As a quick reminder, the benefits of networking are:

• Allows you to build connection and meet the leaders and innovators in our profession.
• Helps to build your reputation in our industry. People want to get to know you before they can establish trust and view you as reliable.
• Connects you and creates an awareness of what is out there and what is coming in our profession.
• Increases your visibility. It has been said that half of success is being in the right place at the right time.
• Provides you options and resources. You never know when you might need some help on a project or with your employment.

As we build on the year for SEAONC, I personally invite you to our August Member Appreciation Meeting. The is no official program other than to meet someone new or re-connect with a friend. The meeting is on August 8 and is being hosted at Plank in Jack London Square in Oakland.  Come for the food, drinks, and camaraderie. Please note that the meeting has shifted a week from our traditional first meeting on the first Tuesday of the month.

I encourage everyone to bring a colleague, especially new members of SEAONC or those who haven’t attended a meeting in a while. Come meet our new board members and let us know your thoughts on what you would like/hope to see in the coming year.  We want to hear from you and it will be fun!!

Looking forward to seeing you all in person! Until then.

*Chris Truong, National Park Service, El Portal, CA

*Jeff Stevens, Peoples Associates Structural Engineers, San Jose, CA

*Tatiana Gospe, Langan, Parsippany, NJ

*Mukuntheshwaran Venkatesan, Thornton Tomasetti, San Francisco, CA

*Madeline Mueller, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, San Francisco, CA

*Jiayi Ren, Thornton Tomasetti, San Francisco, CA

*Sheela Vedula, Anthem Structural Engineers, Boulder, CO

*Emily Wong, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, Inc., Oakland, CA

*Anghela Athene A. Alonzo, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, Inc., Oakland, CA

*Sunil Gupta, PhD, Retired, San Francisco, CA

It's that time of year!

Yes, it’s time to seize the moment and time to pay your dues! July 1 begins a new fiscal year for our association and if you haven’t yet renewed your membership, now is the time.

Please log into your account and click the renewal button to freshen up your status today!

Questions about your level, fees, benefits? Reach out to our Membership Manager,

Julee Cooke at membership@seaonc.org, or by calling 415.974.5147.

Member Appreciation Night

Please join us Tuesday, August 8th for the first member appreciation networking night of the 2023-2024 SEAONC year! Please come join us and celebrate Summer and SEAONC. Our meeting is hosted at Plank in Jack London Square in Oakland. Come for the food, the drinks and some fun. We hope to see you all there!

Location: Plank Oakland: 98 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94607

Schedule: 5:00p - 7:00p



Cost: Free to SEAONC Members

A Corporate Membership, Many Benefits

If your company has multiple members involved in SEAONC or an interest in gaining more exposure with our more than 1200+ membership base, you might wish to consider one of our Corporate Membership packages, which offer a variety of benefits from complimentary membership, corporate identity on our website, discounted rates to event registration and much much more.

Click here for a complete overview of the program offerings or reach out to our Membership Department for more information. 

Thank you to our Corporate Members!

Your generosity and support of SEAONC are greatly appreciated.

PLATINUM

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Sustainable Design Committee (SDC)

Upcoming Projects/Events



At the Sustainable Design Committee, we are looking to increase avenues for members to get involved through new projects! The projects we are considering are: building a sustainability resource hub targeted at assisting small firms, hosting informational events on new carbon reduction policies in California and the Bay Area, and exploring the intersection of sustainability & resilience. Our overarching goal is to get members active and involved in collaborative projects where we can learn from each other as structural engineers addressing the challenges of building a sustainable world.  If you are interested in joining our monthly Teams meetings or getting involved in a project, please email us at sustainable@seaonc.org to get on our mailing list and receive the Teams Link!

Continuing Education Committee (CEC)

Hope your summers are going well! CEC just wrapped up a great year with three engaging in-person seminars and two virtual mini-seminars. A diverse array of topics were covered during these presentations. David Shook and Joe Maffei started the year off by sharing their insights on the non-prescriptive tall building design and peer review process with fascinating insights into the award winning 500 Folsom St project. We also listened to Kelly Cobeen talk about the recent changes to AWC’s CLT shear wall and diaphragm design provisions, followed by another interesting presentation by Ethan Martin on the testing procedures and constructability challenges on some recently completed mass timber projects in California. In an exciting collaboration between DES and CEC, we learned about the response and recovery observations from the 2022 M6.4 Ferndale earthquake from Janielle Maffei and the DES committee.

A special thanks to all our speakers for sharing their valuable time and experience with us and to everyone who was able to join us in planning and executing these informative events. We really appreciate all the unique topics and interesting projects everyone brings to CEC so that we can invite our industry’s experts to educate us on them. In an effort to make these presentations more accessible, all of the events were recorded and will be made available to  SEAONC members. We would also like to give a big thank you to our past-chair Jaclyn Lee for taking the lead in planning and executing all of CEC’s efforts over the last year. Keeping the momentum going, Jay Malviya will be stepping into the chair position for CEC for 2023-24 and we look forward to hosting some great presentations this year as well.

If you are interested in contributing to our efforts towards providing a dynamic platform for sharing our industry’s expertise with the wider engineering community, reach out at cec@seaonc.org.

David Shook discussing the core-only lateral system for the 500 Folsom tower in San Francisco

Construction Quality Assurance Committee (CQA)

Who Should Manage the Special Inspections for Your Projects?

Have you ever had a project where some of the required special inspections and tests were just not done?  And then, more than likely, you were asked to accept the work as is or come up with a scheme for verifying that the work is acceptable?

It’s actually a common problem in the industry, as the building code does not task any particular stakeholder with tracking each special inspection and test to ensure that all of the inspections and tests are done.

CQA has re-posted a Newsletter article from 2013 that nicely identifies the roles of the various players in a construction project, and suggests how each (the owner, the design engineer, the engineer in charge of the testing and inspection agency, and the contractor) can do a bit more to make the process work better.

You can find the pdf document, titled Who Manages the Special Inspection Effort, on CQA’s web page, here: https://www.seaonc.org/members/group.aspx?id=210664

SE3 Mentorship Event Recap

SEAONC SE3 recently hosted a successful summer speed mentorship event at Degenkolb’s Oakland office. The event targeted mentees who are currently students, interns, and young professionals with 0-2 years of experience. Mentees were split into groups of 2-3 and our 10 mentors rotated through the groups to talk about their path as structural engineers and answer any burning questions from the mentees! 

Many thanks to our excellent mentors: Rachel Cohen and Angelene Boto (Forell | Elsesser), Ehsan Panah and JC Qian (MBCSE), Sharad Dangol (Martin/Martin), Jack Wegleitner and Simon Wong (Degenkolb), Ryan Pintar and Ashley Waite (Tipping), and James Enright (Element SE)

Thank you also to Degenkolb Engineers for hosting the event in their Oakland office, and to our SE3 volunteers for helping set up and clean up.

Young Members Forum Committee (YMF)

Structural Engineers Across the Pacific Ocean Recap

SEAONC YMF and SESOC ESE (Structural Engineering Society New Zealand, Emerging Structural Engineers Committee) hosted a joint webinar on June 7th to highlight projects that young engineers across Northern California and New Zealand have been working on. Five presenters each gave a 10 minute presentation to share what they have been working on, allowing a glimpse into the similarities and differences we face practicing on opposite sides of the Pacific. 

SEAONC YMF Presenters included Zander Danto (WJE) and Guillaume Rodrigue (ARUP). Zander presented on the Alcatraz Stabilization and Rehabilitation Project and Guillaume presented a Luxury Residential Project in Texas. SESOC ESE presenters included Ben Westeneng, Christen Ravn and Libby Porter. They presented on their involvement and contributions to AgResearch, a post-tensioned rocking wall mass timber workplace, the Christchurch Cathedral Strengthening and Restoration Project, an ongoing recovery project in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake, and the newly constructed University of Auckland Recreation and Wellness Centre.

The joint webinar had over 250 attendees between SEAONC YMF and SESOC ESE members. Based on the successful turnout this webinar attracted and the positive feedback received from both sides of the Pacific, SEAONC YMF and SESOC ESE hope to make these crossover webinars a regular occurrence.

SEAONC + Ignited’s AEC Week 2023: A Recap

Our Outreach Committee hosted another great AEC Week with Ignited this June! Seaonc and Ignited partnered with SmithGroup, HENSEL PHELPS & KPFF to host 10 Middle and High School teachers, primarily from underserved schools, complete with lunches and a variety of interactive presentations and activities. A special thanks to the SEAONC DEI Endowment for helping to sponsor the event. This year’s AEC week centered around Sunnyvale Civic Hall which was a partnership project between our three industry hosts. The teachers got to tour through the Sunnyvale Civic Center Campus, and the architectural (SmithGroup), structural (KPFF) and construction (Hensel Phelps) teams shared many of the strategies implemented to achieve Net Zero Energy performance, better than code seismic performance, life cycle thinking and eventual LEED Platinum Certification. Our outreach committee also organized a fun Mola Structural Model activity during the week so the teachers could learn about structural behavior, and even tested their structures on a shake table! 

By the end of the week, our teachers had learned from speakers from all sides of the AEC story, a range of industry support organizations including Taylor Devices, Cast Connex & Simpson Strong-tie, as well as our SE3 committee. Our 10 teachers left with lesson plans and their own MOLA kits, ready to engage their students. They will return to their classrooms prepared to help their students consider a range of careers they might have otherwise known nothing about! OC also received a number of requests for follow-up classroom visits from the teachers.

[ Read More ]

Business Forum

Committee Chairs: Jeffrey Zhang

The main Business Forum was in a planning mode this last year with a shift towards helping structural engineering firms with better preparing their engineers with their careers. Our premier event was a co-hosted event, with the SE3 committee, called “Innovate Your Career” where experienced members of SEAONC shared their career experiences and how structural engineering could be applied to various fields.

In the future, the Business Forum is looking into other events focused on marketing (co-hosted with the AIA-SF) and an event called “How to have a successful Internship.”



Contact us at business@seaonc.org for more information or if you’d like to get involved.

Outreach Committee

Committee Chairs: Martina Sbicca, Leena Kibriya

The Outreach Committee has been busy over the past year. Outreach has continued to develop informative and educational programs in collaboration with Mola Models, with the goal to expose youth from all backgrounds to the structural engineering profession. As part of this effort, we ran activities with local high schools, where SEAONC members were able to present in-person, engaging activities so that they understand what we do as structural engineers.  

Building on last year, where Outreach first reached out to groups, such as Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Jr. (SHPE Jr.) and National Society of Black Engineers Jr.(NSBE Jr.), we expanded our efforts to additional organizations. 

In June, Outreach continued and expanded our work to make AEC Experience Week a signature event. We worked on planning to potentially make the event bi-annual or even quarterly. The events would include new teachers and new host firms, to reach more teachers and schools in addition to providing a more diverse experience. The year’s event continued in conjunction with Ignited and was hosted by SmithGroup, KPFF Structural Engineers and Hensel Phelps was another huge success. 

We continued our efforts to organize more social events for our committee members, to provide a chance for the committee to mingle outside of our planned events. We successfully orchestrated two Rebuilding Together Events in October and April, garnering significant participation, excitement and a sense of accomplishment from the volunteers.  

We continued to build our presence in local infrastructure or science related events, such as “Stem Frenzy” and sent groups to attend various Earthquake Fairs. We looked into a potential event to remember the 1906 Earthquake anniversary and stayed active with these bay area groups. The committee will strive for future events where we can stress the impact and importance of structural engineers.  

Outreach is always looking for new members who enjoy connecting with their communities. In 2023-2024 we hope to build on our success with AEC Week, reaching the public outside of the education sphere and focus on helping our communities with San Francisco Community Emergency Response Teams, Science Fairs and other events. Contact us at outreach@seaonc.org for more information or if you’d like to get involved.

Seismology

Committee Chairs: Solmaz Jumaluliyeva

The main Seismology Committee focused on various technical topics with key presentations to inform our SEAONC members. To present these topic, Seismology organized multiple mini-series for the Kahramanmaras Earthquakes in Turkey/Syria, a recap of the changes and updates for the 2022 California Building Code for HCAI, and presentations on current topics from the BSSC Provision Updates Committee (PUC) Investigation Teams(ITs). In particular, Seismology focused on the ITs focusing on engineering creativity and base isolation. In addition to the main committee, the Seismology sub-Committees kept themselves very busy. 

The University Research Program (URP) had another successful year. In its third installment, the program sponsored and coordinated four research projects at 3 different northern California Colleges and Universities. To culminate the research the students presented their results to the Seismology Committee at our June meeting and will also showcase their research as part of a 45-min session presentation at the SEAOC Convention in Maui.

The wood sub-committee has been looking at best practices as our profession incorporates Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) into our structures.  The committee is focusing on how best to model the stiffness of panel-to-panel connectors of CLT diaphragms and will issue a paper in the future. The concrete subcommittee also focused on educating our members, with the chair joining the SEAOC/NCSEA presentation on coupled wall lateral system design. This example was developed by the subcommittee produced a few years ago.

The Ground Motion group organized their own mini-series with discussions on non-ergodic ground motions: what they are, how to calculate them, how they impact the overall hazard at a site, how to implement them in practice, and how to apply them if required by the code. The Nonstructural group focused on revisions to the “Practical Guide to Nonstructural Anchorage and Bracing,” considering and incorporating rigorous comments from both external and internal peer reviews. The updated guide will be shared with the SEAONC members once it has been sent to the Board of Directors and final review comments have been incorporated.  

Contact us at seismology@seaonc.org for more information or if you’d like to get involved.

Young Members Forum

Committee Chairs: Hagen Tam, James Gaitan

The YMF had another busy year as we worked on events to bring our younger members together. Our events were a combination of big and smaller social events, with a common goal of increasing member activity, encouraging networking and the development of friendships within SEAONC. For bigger events we continued the traditions of a ski trip, camping trip and a Spring Picnic. We also organized Committee Involvement night to encourage the younger members to join the SEAONC Committees. After this event we reached out to Committee Chairs to come to YMF events to foster and encourage connections with the younger members. We continued our efforts to encourage the younger members to attend committee activities, dinner meetings and the annual SEAOC Convention.  

On the education front, we provided young and continuing members assistance with their PE and SE exams. The YMF provided information packets to ease the registration and preparation for the exams. The YMF also hosted technical and non-technical presentations, presented by the younger members, to help new presenters practice their public speaking and gain experience presenting to the SEAONC community in a less formal setting.   

Our efforts did not stop within SEAONC. The YMF also reached out to similar committees in the AIA SF, ASCE and SEI.  These combined social events allowed our members to foster relationships with professionals in other industries and professions, providing a unique experience for members of the YMF.

Contact us at ymf@seaonc.org for more information on what we have planned in the next year.

Have you been a member in good standing for twenty consecutive years or more in the Member, Member SE, Affiliate, or Corresponding category? Are you now retired from the industry but still keen to keep active in SEAONC and its many activities and educational opportunities and to keep current on industry updates? We have splendid news for you.

You have reached candidacy to transition your membership to Life Member status! This opportunity offers the rights and privileges of the grade you currently hold and a considerable benefit on the annual dues pricing.

Please get in touch with the Membership Department today to apply for a status change.

Final approval is granted by the Board of Directors following verification.

Thank you, and to Life!

The new Communications Committee manages our social media accounts—including our NEW Instagram account! Follow us on all platforms for updates and fun content. If your committee has something they’d like to share on any of our platforms, reach out to communications@seaonc.org.

SEAONC Instagram Page - @SEAONCalifornia

SEAONC LinkedIn Page - LinkedIn Page

We post regular updates, calendar events, awards, and other exciting news on our social media accounts.

Structural Design Engineer (3-5 years) / Structural Senior Design Engineer - San Francisco, CA

Staff Engineer - San Francisco, CA

Structural Technical Engineer - Santa Clara, CA

California Structural Engineer - San Diego, CA

SEAONC welcomes your feedback on our newsletter and on any other Association endeavors. To share your input email us at office@seaonc.org.

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