SEAOSC Field Day 1999

Wednesday

Aug. 4

Brookside Golf Course #1

1133 N. Rosemont Ave.

Pasadena

Golf: 10 a.m. shotgun start Amer Soudani, Chair

Tennis: 12:30 p.m. game start Atila Zekioglu, Chair

Softball: 4 p.m. game start John Loevenguth, Chair

Overall Field Day Chair: Amer Soudani

Sports Awards Door Prizes

Emcee: Rawn Nelson

Complimentary Beverages

Don't miss out! Sign up today!

See reverse side for details and sign-up sheet

Golf…Softball…Tennis…Dinner

During the year 1998 to 1999, with the help of a vigorous board of directors and our committee chairpersons, your association has continued the efforts of many of our most recent past presidents. We have also covered significant new ground. I would like to take this opportunity to recap some of the highlights and accomplishments.

• While attendance in our regular dinner meetings and seminars may have decreased, we maintained a steady growth in membership to over 1,630. Our subsidiary chapters in Orange County and the Tri-County areas have also been very active. I would especially like to recognize the efforts of the board members Bill Nelson and Fred Schott, representatives from those two chapters.
• In July 1998, the Board and the Computer Application Committee took a giant step to change the domain name of our website to SEAint.org, which stands for SEA International. The CAC operates and maintains this website, the list servers of which we have dedicated to the technical exchange and advancement of the structural engineering profession worldwide. The list servers have made leaps and bounds in popularity and are becoming more user friendly. These list servers have become good communication tools for the board and committees, as well as a forum for the membership to address the board and the technical committees. Engineers from other states and other parts of the world have also used the list server extensively to post technical issues for discussion. Today we have over 15,000 subscribers. We get over 26,000 visitors on our website every month, which results in over 90,000 hits per months based on an average of three visits per visitor.
• In conjunction with the SEAOSC Auxiliary, and with the strong support from various member firms and individuals, we were able to fund four student scholarships for a total of $5,000 in February this year. In order to encourage more engineering undergraduates and/ or post-graduates to pursue structural engineering as a profession, I firmly believe that this Association must take a strong role to support academic programs.
• Our Convention Committee is making final preparation for the SEAOC Annual Convention. The 1999 Convention will be held in the Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara between September 30 to October 3 this year. The technical as well as the social program being planned will be superb.
• We started this year an exchange of visits by the regional association presidents to each of the four SEAOC member organizations. In our May board meeting, we invited the other three member organization presidents to our meeting. In turn, I visited SEAOCC at their May board meeting. I took part in the SEAOSD dinner meeting and served as one of the judges of their competition for Excellence in Structural Engineering. On June 1, I also attended the annual meeting of SEAONC.
• You will note that we started a past president’s column in our NEWSletter this month. Author Dick Phillips captured the voice of many of us in addressing the keys to success in one's career. The column is open to all past presidents on any subject they desire. I hope that in time this column will set an example for our younger members in striving for excellence in the structural engineering profession.

As I join the illustrious roster of SEAOSC past presidents, I feel deeply honored to have served this Association. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

We are looking for a few people to serve on the SEAOSC Quality Assurance Committee.

For some time, our constructed product has been "completed" with a serious lack of quality. We can turn this around and put quality in our future buildings and in structural rehabilitation of existing buildings.

Monthly meetings on 2^nd Tuesdays at SEAOSC / ICBO offices from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Current subcommittees: Construction Documents, Inspection Practice, Design Build, Materials Specifications, and Materials Testing

For information: Dave Breiholz, Chairman

(310) 530-3050

(310) 530-0184 Fax

dave@bqe.com Email

In keeping with our new tradition, this is my third "monthly" President’s Message. The purpose of these messages is to provide a status/summary of State and National items of concern to the membership. This message will present more details on the SEAOC 99 Convention, the Seismic Design Manuals and seminars, the IBC Code, the RFQ for the SEAOC Executive Office, a new bold venture to educate the public about the practice of structural engineering, and two new groups to watch.

The SEAOC 99 Convention "SEA SANTA BARBARA" will be at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort starting Thursday 30 Sep 99 through Sunday 3 Oct 99. The technical program theme is "Structural Solutions for the New Millennium - Beyond Vision 2000 and Current Worldwide Design Practices".

Engineers from California, national and international engineering communities will present over 30 papers in a two-track program, new technology and more conventional practical subjects. Specific project presentations will encompass both large and small structures, including both new projects and retrofits of existing buildings. Other topics to be addressed include shotcrete, blast design, wood buildings, seismic grading, base isolation, IBC 2000 seismic design, seismic risk analysis, dynamic analysis, passive control, damping devises, steel moment frame connections and performance-based design. In addition, there will be a special Seismic Design Manual seminar on Thursday morning and a special SAC presentation on Saturday afternoon.

The outstanding social program will include a very special dinner dance on Saturday night where a raffle (entries must be in paid attendance) for a $2,000 travel package will be awarded, followed (a few hours later) by a special croquet tournament with gin fizzes on Sunday morning.

A most important new event for this convention is the "Nabih Youseff and Associates 1999 Technical Convention Young Members Grant Poster Board Competition" ($500 each for 10 engineers):

• Members under 35 years of age
• One young member from SEAONC, SEAOCC, SEAOSD and SEAOSC plus six at-large members will receive $500 each towards their accommodations at the Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara.
• Submit abstract of 300 words or less and a sketch of the poster board layout:

TO: TOM HARRIS

BY: 25 JUNE 1999

• Awardees will be notified by 15 July 1999

The Seismic Design Manual Volume I is available through ICBO. There are three SEAOC Seismic Manual seminars currently scheduled:

12 June in Los Angeles

24 June in Sacramento

30 Sept in Santa Barbara

Seismic Design Manual Volume II and the Blue Book are scheduled for completion by June/July 99, followed by the Seismic Design Manual Volume III in Aug/Sep 99.

The Building, Prescriptive Residential Code Committee (of which SEAOC is a voting member) voted on Wed 19 May 99 to recommend the IBC/IRC Codes to the 2000 Code Partnership and its Executive Committee to be adopted as the model code for California. All things going as scheduled, the IBC Code would become effective in Jan 2002.

Just a short status/activity report on NCSEA. A group of names were submitted from NCSEA (SEAOC is a major participant) for positions on the ICC. ICC then selected the following five individuals for the noted committees:

1. Structural Committee for the IBC:

• Jim Rongoe (BOCA and General Design Expertise)
• John Hooper (IBCO and Seismic Design Expertise)
• Jim Delahay (SBCCI and Wind Engineering Expertise)

2. Residential Code Committee for the IBC

• John Loscheider (Sole Practitioner in Seattle)

3. Performance Code Committee

• Mary Ann Phipps (Degenkolb in San Francisco)

These appointments have received a lot of notice in the code development community. The appointments (all practicing structural engineers) are full voting members, with just as much say so as the building officials. ICC funds the entire effort. The hearing for the final changes to the draft codes were held in Costa Mesa, Calif., 15 to 26 March 1999. The window of influence of SEAOC on the ICC and IBC code is through NCSEA. California is the chair for the NCSEA Lateral Force/Seismology, Code and Existing Building Committees.

Because of the decision of both Allen Goldstein (current SEAOC Executive Director) and Lori Campbell (current SEAOC Executive Secretary) not to seek an extension of their current contracts (both contracts terminate 1 Oct 99), it is necessary to issue a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for "Executive Director and Supporting Administrative and Management Services". The following advertisement will appear in the July edition of the Wall Street Journal, other newspapers and various professional management association publications:

On Saturday, May 8, SEAONC, in conjunction with their "Bold Venture" program and the Engineers’ Alliance for the arts (EAA), sponsored a special performance of the critically-acclaimed Diablo Ballet at the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, Calif. It was a captivating evening, attended by a vibrant sold-out audience. Over 250 members of the EAA and their guests attended the elegant pre-performance reception. Attendees included SEAONC Past Presidents David Messinger, Steve Johnson, Mary Anne Phipps and current President John Paquette and many social, cultural, business, professional and political leaders.

The Engineers’ Alliance for the Arts was founded by a group of structural engineers with a mission to encourage engineering professionals to take a leadership role to ensure that the arts remain a vital part of our lives and the lives of future generations. In their pre-performance on-stage address to the enthusiastic crowd Gwen Regalia, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek and Ashraf Habibullah, structural engineer and president of Diablo Ballet, congratulated and thanked the engineers and emphasized the importance of the EAA in these times of national cutbacks in the support for the Arts.

This type of public education and exposure of the practice of structural engineering is essential to the future development of our profession. We must work to expand this "Bold Venture" first to all of California and then to the Nation.

There are two additional new groups that SEAOC should watch. First is "The Engineering Alliance". This group was recently formed by "The American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES), an umbrella organization representing 26 national engineering societies (i.e. ASCE). The purpose of the Engineering Alliance is to improve public awareness and understanding of engineering itself and to find ways to reverse the drop in engineering degrees. The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded overall has increased by more than 18 percent since 1986, while the number of students earning undergraduate degrees in engineering has fallen by 19.8 percent. The Engineering Alliance is compatible with the goals of SEAONC’s Bold Venture - public awareness and education about the practice of engineering. We (SEAOC) will focus on the practice of structural engineering.

The second group to watch is the Associated Owners and Developers (AOD). This is a for-profit group which is currently working on the development of the AOD 2000; an owner-driven, project focused set of contract documents intended to appropriately distribute project risk to ensure delivery of quality facilities, on time, within the budget. Four contract subcommittees consisting of almost 40 industry professionals, including a growing number of major owners and developers, are now fully energized. This group appears to be working towards a construction industry that may be more restrictive and litigious towards the practice of structural engineering.

As a reminder, the committees have posted one-year and five-year plans on the SEAOC web page for your information/review/comment. The purpose of these plans is to provide guidance for the work of the committees and to inform the membership of planned committee activities. The way to get on a SEAOC/State technical committee is to first become active on the respective regional association technical committee. The way to become active on a regional committee is to contact the committee chair and show up at the meeting. All meetings are open to all members - observers are always welcome.

SEAOC Committee timelines need to be completed. (See Table posted on SEAOC website.) Committee chairs are requested to complete the timeline so that members can adjust their schedules and calendar the event they plan on attending. Note the timeline will be sorted and posted by both committee title and meeting dates.

Both the publications committee and the computer application committee are still looking for a "few good engineers". Check the SEAOC web site for scope of work (one- and five-year plans) and contact Douglas Thompson (Chair of the Publication Committee) or Mark Deardoff (Chair of the Computer Application Committee) if you are able to help. Like all volunteer organizations, the quality of our products is directly related to the number and quality of our volunteers. Check the SEAOC website for the electronic roster.

In closing, mark your calendars for the next SEAOC Board Meetings:

DATE LOCATION

24 JULY SAN DIEGO

29 SEPTEMBER SANTA BARBARA

Observers are welcome. A time for members to address the Board "for the good of the association" (similar to city council meetings) is scheduled at the start of each meeting.

In summary, recall that it is the responsibility of the SEAOC Board to serve the members. The responsibility of the members is to inform the Board as to what they want. Send your comments/suggestions to the Board - they will be considered. Recall seaocboard@seaint.org is a doorway into your organization - use it.

Thank you,

John G. Shipp

Clarkson Pinkham, SEAOSC member since 1966, recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute for Steel Construction (AISC). Pinkham, President of S. B. Barnes & Associates in Los Angeles, is a long-time member of the Specifications Committee and a leader in the design and construction of composite systems. He also is well known for his work on seismic design. He has served on the the SEAOSC seismology committee and is a past president (1971) in addition to being an Honorary Member.

Fyfe Co. LLC and its northwest applicator, Contech Services, received a 1998 Excellence in Concrete Award for its work on the Horsetail Falls Creek Bridge in the Columbia River Gorge outside Portland, Ore. The award was presented by by the Oregon Concrete and Aggregate producers Association and the Oregon chapter of the American Concrete Institute (ACI)

Contech Services installed the Fyfe Co. LLC-designed carbon and glass fiber reinforced composite system. The TYFO System was used to increase the flexural and shear strengths of the reinforced concrete support beams of the historic bridge.

Fyfe is represented in the SEAOSC membership by Scott Arnold, an Industry Member since 1995. Brian Armor, who represents Contech, has been an Industry Member since 1997.

Those sending messages should remember that sending a message does not make the sender a member of that list server. Some lists are open for membership to committee members/board directors only. This means that while a certain list may receive your message, you may not receive any responses unless the list member(s) e-mail you personally. In fact, list members may respond on the list server and continue discussing your topic, yet you may not see any of these posts unless the members of the list e-mail you personally.

In the body of the message type the words:

Join [list server name]@seaint.org.

Questions? Send e-mail to

SEAINT website address: http:/www.seaint.org

Make reservations online via the SEAOSC web page at the seaint.org website. Members are encouraged to utilize this method to expedite the reservation process.

6 2 p.m. COLA/UCI Testing Subcommittee SEAOSC Office

11 ? Auxiliary Party Pringle Residence

13 2 p.m. Quality Assurance Committee Mtg. SEAOSC Office

13 4 p.m. Existing Building Committee Mtg. SEAOSC Office

14 Noon Board Meeting Luminarias Restaurant

22 3 p.m. Testing Standards Committee SEAOSC Office

24 9 a.m. SEAOC Board Meeting San Diego

31 7:30 a.m. Seismic Design Manual Vol. 1 Seminar Wyndam Garden Hotel

3 2 p.m. COLA/UCI Testing Subcommittee Mtg. SEAOSC Office

4 9 a.m. SEAOSC Field Day Brookside Country Club

4 Noon Deadline for Sept. Oct. NEWSletter

10 2 p.m. Quality Assurance Committee Mtg. SEAOSC Office

10 4 p.m. Existing Buildings Committee Mtg. SEAOSC Office

19 3 p.m. Testing Standards Committee Mtg. SEAOSC Office

* Reminder: NO DINNER MEETINGS IN JULY OR AUGUST

Joseph A. Dobrowolski, SEAOSC Member since 1965, has authored the revised edition of Concrete Construction Handbook to reflect the range of modern concrete technology and advanced practices.Extensively revised are sections on materials, formwork and shoring, batching, mixing and transporting, finishing and curing, special concrete, and leading-edge building construction systems.

Joe is considered a specialist in concrete materials and construction technology and has worked with the California Division of Highways and the Portland Cement Association.

SEAOSC welcomes its newest members:

Ted Beckwith, Member SE, Scott Fazekas & Assoc. Inc., Irvine

Eugene DiLuigi, Industry Member, DiLuigi Enterprises Inc., Anaheim

The following students from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, are new student members: Jeremy Andreasen, Alicia Danyeur, Kelsey Deering, Mario, Esola, Guadalupe Rivera, and Kent Yankee.

The cause of death was infection after hip surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said his son, Michael H. Birnbaum.

Although Birnbaum was involved in such landmark projects as the Spruce Goose and the retrofitting of the Watts Towers, his influence may be more widely seen in mundane projects, from drive-in movie screens and fast-food stands to most of the International House of Pancakes, Check E. Cheeses, and Sizzler restaurants on the West Coast.

"There is probably not a single person in Southern California who has not entrusted their own life or that of their family to the safety of a structure designed by Gene Birnbaum," said Peter S. Higgins, a structural engineer and longtime friend.

Birnbaum also pioneered methods that made construction involving major excavation safer. He was the first engineer in the U.S. to use computer modeling to study how high-rise commercial buildings respond to earthquakes or other stress, known as post-elastic behavior.

The son of Polish and Latvian immigrants, Birnbaum was born in 1915 near Framingham, Mass. He grew up during the Depression working a variety of menial jobs, including cleaning cesspools and laboring with a pick and shovel on construction sites. Unable to afford to attend college, he studied civil engineering through correspondence courses, earning his license in 1943.

During World War II, he worked at Hughes Aircraft and was assigned to make stress calculations for building the Spruce Good, Howard Hughes' gargantuan wooden seaplane. In 1952, he became a structural engineer, opening Eugene D. Birnbaum & Associates on Silver Lake Blvd., in Los Angeles three years later.

In 1959 he won international acclaim for his engineering work on the Dusseldorf Theater in Germany. The spans and arches that he helped design were so pure and simple that renowned architect Richard Neutra left much of the inner structure exposed or outlined.

Birnbaum "was not only incredibly practical but a real genius," said L.A. architect Harry Newman, who had Birnbaum's help in designing the A&M Records building on the same La Brea Avenue site as film star Charlie Chaplin's former studio. Architects "need someone who can take your dreams and improve on them. Gene was able to do that."

Though slightly disheveled -- Newman remembers Birnbaum's rumpled collar and ubiquitous slide rule sticking out of a shirt pocket-- Birnbaum was known for his ability to craft elegant and simple solutions to complicated problems. An example was his idea for a safer and cheaper way to shore up excavation sites.

Before the 1950s, when contractors had to dig a big hole in the ground, they buttressed the sides of the excavation with beams and struts that were cumbersome, expensive to install and hard to design around. Inspired by the techniques that German engineer Karl Terzaghi used in building the Berlin subway system, Birnbaum found a way to support the sides of the hole by pushing the earth from the backside of the foundation wall, a method known as tie-back shoring.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, when downtown L.A.'s skyline was growing, Birnbaum was the engineer most called on to ensure that "the city didn't fall into the great big holes" being dug for high-rise buildings, Higgins said.

Other Birnbaum contributions include two Southern California icons. He developed a quicker and cheaper way to encase and erect drive-in movie screens, using concrete instead of steel. And when a contractor asked him what could be done with a huge post-World War II surplus of aluminum alloy, he came up with the prefabricated fast-food stand. Many of the 1,300 stands he designed are still in use, Higgins said.

In the 1960s, Birnbaum also design and wrote the building codes for a common tool of modern life, the earthquake-safe storage rack used widely in warehouses and discount barns such as Costco and Home Depot.

Well-known for his sense of humor, Birnbaum regaled colleagues with lyrics about engineering set to famous Christmas carols. One favorite, an ode to the building code, was sung to "Let It Snow": "Oh the building code is frightful/Plan checkers less than delightful…"

Birnbaum, a past president of the Society of American Structural Engineers and a fellow of the Society for Advancement of Science and Engineering, taught engineering to several generations of architects as a member of the UCLA Extension faculty from 1953 to 1985. He also provided engineering scholarships at UCLA and Cal State campuses at Fullerton and Northridge through the Eugene Birnbaum Foundation.

Sons Stevan and Michael and four grandchildren survive him.

Stanley Hart, 80, passed away in February from prostate cancer in Altadena. A member of SEAOSC since 1951, he obtained his S.E. license in 1953 and a bachelor's degree in mining engineering from the University of California.

Drafted into the service shortly after Pearl Harbor, he served in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters and was aboard one of the first ships to arrive in Tokyo Bay for the signing of the peace treaty with Japan.

After WWII, he was a bridge designer/field engineer for the State of California and senior bridge engineer for the L.A. County Road Department. From 1958 to 1972, he worked in the Orient for DMJM and in Paris for UNESCO. He returned and worked for the Division of the State Architect before opening a consulting engineer practice.

He was politically active and as transportation chairman of the Sierra Club, was known for his letters to the L.A. Times, in which he admonished automobile manufacturers for producing oversized gas-guzzling cars.

"Stan enjoyed skiing and did remarkably well considering that his equipment was almost as old as he," Frank Burke recalled fondly.

Two sons, Peter and Daniel, and their mother Daisy survive him.

The Consulting Engineers and Land Surveyors of California (CELSOC) will hold a one-day seminar entitled "Recruit and Retain Exceptional Employees" Friday, July 16, at the Ontario Hilton.

Topics will include where and how to find and build a quality workforce. In addition, the seminar covers overtime and wage-hour issues, time-off issues, and lawful termination and documentation (for those times when employees perform at "less than par").

Employee and labor relations consultant Gene Fredricks of Del Jones Associates will present the seminar. With more than 44 years of experience in
industrial relations and personnel administration, Gene has managed labor relations with businesses such as Litton Industries and Paramount Pictures Corporation. He earned a bachelors degree in Personnel and Industrial Relations from the University of Southern California and a certificate in Employee Relations Law from Antioch School of Law.

Fast-growing Glendale firm, freeway close to all Southern California, is looking for you. Work in private and public sector. Needs structural engineers at all levels. Flexible working hours allow you to cut your driving time. Opportunity to grow. Modern working environment. Grossman & Speer Associates. Fax resume: 818-507-1556. 

Santa Barbara structural engineering firm seeks project engineer for structural design of buildings in all construction materials. Firm designing schools, hospitals and commercial buildings. Minimum three years experience with California C.E. registration required. Send resume to Ehlen & Spiess Inc., 1119 Garden St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101 or fax 805-564-8865. 

Orange County-based structural engineering firm seeks experienced structural/civil engineer in design of residential Type V construction and field observation. Minimum four years experience. P.E. preferred. Fax or mail resume to Gouvis Engineering, 4400 Campus Dr., Newport Beach, CA 92660; fax: 949-752-5321. 

The Allen Company, an O.C. structural engineering firm, seeks California licensed P.E. or S.E. Five years structural design and detailing experience in steel, concrete, masonry and wood construction. Perform PML studies and building inspection. Exceptional written, verbal and computer skills and experience with ETABS, SAP90, DRAIN. M.S. degree preferred. Fax: 949-363-5848. 

Howard & Van Sande, a structural engineering firm, seeks motivated and energetic structural engineer. Five to 10 years of structural design experience with steel, concrete, masonry, and timber. California C.E. or S.E. preferred. Excellent communication and teamwork skills essential. Resumes to H&VS, 1 N. Calle Cesar Chavez, #200, Santa Barbara, CA 93103. 

Howard & Van Sande Structural Consultants seeks strucutral drafter with AutoCad 14 experience to work on timber, concrete, masonry and steel building projects. Resumes to H&VS, 1 N. Calle Cesar Chavez, #200, Santa Barbara, CA 93103. 

Integrated Structural Software Inc. is a rapidly growing company in Palo Alto developing and marketing software for structural analysis and design. We need technical and sales structural engineers. Minimum BSCE in engineering with two to five years experience in finite element structural software. Visit us at http:/www.robot97.com. Fax your resume to 650-853-8490. 

City of Sunnyvale seeks temporary part-time and one permanent full-time plan check engineer. Minimum three years experience in structural/seismic design. P.E. license required. Plans Examiner, Masters in structural engineering, S.E. license desirable. Salary: Negotiable. Resume: Building Official, City of Sunnyvale, P.O. Box 3707, Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3707.

Fax: (408) 730-7715.

We are a Los Angeles area manufacturer, designer and erector of large-span aluminum architectural and industrial structures with a worldwide market

We need a structural engineer with project engineering and design background. Approximately three to five years working experience, preferably in designing large structures such as bridges or other steel structures. Essentially manages a project or projects. Civil or mechanical degree acceptable. Strong communication skills a must. Knowledge of engineering and drafting software, i.e. Microsoft products and AutoCad preferred.

AutoCad/Designer: Selected individuals need two years of experience in structural, mechanical and/or sheet metal detailing/drafting. Strong AutoCad 13 experience and 3D expertise required. Good communication skills essential. EEO.