ASCE Plot Points Podcast

May in Washington D.C., means United For Infrastructure Week. ASCE marked the occasion by releasing a new economic study called Bridging the Gap, analyzing the additional potential costs to both the U.S. GDP and the American taxpayer if IIJA levels of infrastructure investment aren’t continued beyond 2026. Infrastructure Week also is a great opportunity for collaboration. Case in

Diniece Mendes is director for freight mobility at the New York City Department of Transportation and serves on the ASCE Transportation and Development Institute’s Board of Governors. She’s also – as of this spring – a movie star. Mendes is one of five ASCE members to feature in the new IMAX film Cities of the Future, playing on giant screens around the world. In episode 16

Los Angeles is No. 1 on the 2024 list of ASCE Best Places for Civil Engineers. That’s three straight years for L.A., if you’re keeping track at home. So what’s the city’s secret to success? What’s so special about the civil engineering scene there? Ruwanka Purasinghe, P.E., M.ASCE, civil engineering associate for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and president

Aaron Shavel is New York through and through. Born and raised there – and now works as a project manager for TCE, specializing in rail infrastructure. And New York breeds a certain kind of toughness. Where did Shavel learn his civil engineering toughness? From his civil engineering mom. In episode 164 of ASCE Plot Points, Shavel talks about growing up around his mom’s civil eng

Erin Novini has blended chemical engineering with environmental engineering as an engineering specialist for consulting firm Trihydro since 2005. And in that nearly two-decade span, she’s seen sustainability develop in the corporate world quite a bit. In the conclusion of the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute Environmental Health and Water Quality Committee’s sus

It’s part two of the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute Environmental Health and Water Quality Committee’s sustainability mini-series on the ASCE Plot Points podcast. Christopher Chini started his undergrad studies at Texas A&M majoring in computer science. But found he wanted to make a more tangible, direct impact on communities and on the environment. Today, he�

This Earth Day, the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute’s Environmental Health and Water Quality Committee is a launching a sustainability mini-series on ASCE Plot Points. Three podcasts this week; three different sustainability professionals discussing how they’ve navigated their careers to keep issues of sustainability at the forefront. Up first is Emily Grubert,

Is civil engineering leadership about people? Or is civil engineering leadership about technical expertise? Yes. Civil engineering leadership is all of that and more in 2024. Lauren Taylor is a great example of civil engineering leader in the modern era, blending people skills with project management. Taylor Taylor works for WSP, based in Austin, Texas, as the Texas planning and ad

“We all want to do something that matters,” Isabella Salgado says. She is a civil engineer for the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering and the social activities chair for the ASCE Los Angeles Younger Member Forum. And one way she’s found recently to connect to something larger is advocating for the profession as part of the ASCE Legislative Fly-In. In episode 159 of ASC

Travis St. Louis and Michael Palmer are evangelists of sorts for modular construction and design. Each took their backgrounds in architectural engineering and moved into the modular construction practice from different angles – St. Louis on more of the civil engineering side as an enclosure engineer and associate principal for Simpson, Gumpertz, and Heger based in Oakland, Califo