After a successful round of "JeopardEngineering" at the 2024 ASCE Region 2 Assembly in Reston VA Pat Sullivan, PE, Program Director for the Pittsburgh Section, AND a Water Resource Principal with Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc., brought the real-life game board to CMU.   On April 15, 2025, Mr. Sullivan, with financial assistance from Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc. treated 20 students with pizza and cookies, and followed dinner with the game of Jeopardy.  Following the same rules as the TV show, Pat did his best impersonation of the great Alex Trebek, divided the students into 4 teams, and played Jeopardy.  Pat brought with him 4 buzzers and with the help of CMU officers Jordyn Le and Lillian Keith functioning as judges to identify which team buzzed in first, started the show.

The Jeopardy round provided 5 categories…. UNITED STATES PRESIDENTS, WHAT I LEARNED IN COLLEGE, SPORTS, ENGINEERING MATERIALS, and ASCE.

The categories for Double Jeopardy round included “IT WAS ‘MENT’ TO BE, CIVIL ENGINEERING MARVELS, REGION 2 ASCE, FOOD AND DRINK, and EXTREMELY RANDOM CALCS.

Throughout the game, some students ignored, or bent the rules a bit.  Some answers were not made in the form of a question, resulting in the disqualification of the team’s answer.  Other teams buzzed in quickly using their answer, but in the correct form of a question.  Other teams buzzed in to provide the answer, not in the form of a question, and were quickly reminded by their team members to phrase it in the form of a question.  Pat gave them a pass on that last-second adjustment.  Some of the CMU students did not accept the official answers and went to AI to verify.  They received a stern look from me!  We had daily doubles, just like in the show, and Final Jeopardy.  The category for Final Jeopardy was US GEOGRAPHY.  If you want to know the answer….come to the next show!

Winners were presented with a championship certificate to proudly display in front of their defeated classmates, and some CEC bling items!

  

Thanks to everyone who participated and to Lilian and Jordyn and Dr. Jerry Wang for helping arrange the event.

Authored by: Pat Sullivan, PE

On February 17, 2025, the Pittsburgh Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers hosted their annual Engineers Week banquet at the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania in downtown Pittsburgh.  Engineers, award winners, professors, students and student award winners and parents and families were in attendance.  All were greeted at the door by Nadeen Fatfat, ASCE’s newly appointed member on the Board of Directors (effective May 2025), who provided nametags for all attendees.

The banquet started with a social hour from 5 pm until around 6:10pm. At that time, and with the help of ESWP President Dave Teorsky dimming the lights, Pat Sullivan, PE, our customary emcee, used his microphone like voice to ‘recommend’ that people start their trek upstairs to the banquet room.

Once upstairs, Pat’s 15-minute tradition of freelancing what he feels like on that day began…this year, it was new and vintage cartoon TV shows!  Pat spent numerous hours doing research to identify 11 TV shows from his childhood days.  Then he asked the attendees under 50 years old (Pat’s decision) to quickly yell out the name of the show once it appeard on the screen, for a chance to win a gift card.  Pat was impressed by how many ‘youngsters’ recognized the characters of the shows.  How many of you remember….Underdog, The Banana Splits, Beanie and Cecil, Speed Racer, Pebbles and Bam-Bam, The Jetsons, and Yogi Bear?   

Then Pat turned the tables!  He asked the over 50-year-olds to identify TV shows that Pat’s grandkids watch.  Many parents and grandparents knew Bluey and Miss Rachel, but Pat stumped everyone who did not know ‘Superkitties’!

There is always fun to be had at the ASCE Eweek banquet!

As is also his tradition, Pat invited each of the Corporate Sponsors for the Eweek Event to the podium to receive a certificate of appreciation for their gracious sponsorship and to talk about whatever they wanted.   Thanks again to our corporate sponsors… American Geotechnical and Environmental Services, DLZ, and Alcosan!  

 

This years’ keynote speaker was Cam Baker, PE, from Sippel Steel Fab.  Cam’s presentation discussed some of the unique design aspects and construction of the new Pittsburgh International Airport Landside Terminal and Victory Heights, the new athletic center on the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus.  Many thanks to Cam for presenting.

Following a great buffet dinner of Chicken, Italian pasta, prime rib and vegetables, and chocolate AND vanilla cake for dessert (dessert selection was under a last-minute agreement between Pat and Alma Rettinger, ASCE President), the awards portion of the banquet began.  ASCE Pittsburgh Section Past President Tom Batroney, PE and President-Elect Taylor DeCanal, PE provided the introductions for the ASCE and Student award presentations, respectively. 

The 2024 award winners are as follows:

• SAF American Bridge Leadership Award                  Amber Mauer, Slippery Rock University
• SAF Italo V. (Ody ) Mackin Achievement Award       Trey Blystone, University of Pittsburgh
• SAF Honorable Mention Awards                             Kate Volna, University of Pittsburgh                                                                                    Mia Constantin, Carnegie-Mellon University                                                                             Amina Tandukar, Slippery Rock University                                                                               Jacob Singer, PennState University

• 2024 Civil Engineering Achievement Award                  Charleroi Locks & Dam
• 2024 Sustainability Award                                          Dornbush Road GSI Project
• 2024 Project Award of Merit                                       Chestnut Street Rehabilitation Project     

• 2024 Professor of the Year Award                                               Steven Sachs, PhD, EIT
• 2024 Civil Engineer of the Year Award                                         Mark Styler, PhD, PE   
• 2024 Young Civil Engineer of the Year Award                                Dan Phillips, PE          
• 2024 Young Government Civil Engineer of the Year Award              Mike Panzitta, PE        
• 2024 Government Civil Engineer of the Year Award                        Ben DeVore, PE          
• 2024 Service to the People Award                                                 Lisa Werder Brown     
• 2024 Journalism Award                                                                Ed Blazina      
• 2024 Employer of the Year Award                                                  Alcosan          

The event concluded with a second thanks to our Corporate Sponsors and also to our Gold Sponsors, Kleinfelder, the University of Pittsburgh and Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc.  The event concluded with a prize raffle of 7 gifts, and was again highlighted by the annual humongous CEC food basket.

Please visit the ASCE website www.asce-pgh.org for all of the pictures from the banquet.

  

Thanks to everyone who attended, and we will see you at the next Section event, the Lifetime Member Recognition Banquet, at the LaMont Restaurant in September or October.

Author: Pat Sullivan, PE

Pittsburgh had the distinct privilege of hosting the 2024 ASCE GeoInstitute GeoStructures Conference, which took place from November 17 to 20 at the Sheraton Hotel in Station Square. This legacy conference, held only once every 8 to 10 years, brought together engineers, contractors, and educators from around the world. In addition to numerous insightful technical presentations, the conference provided invaluable opportunities for networking and collaboration with industry professionals.

On Monday, November 18, the local ASCE GI Pittsburgh Chapter hosted a Young Member’s social event at the Hard Rock Café in Station Square. This event provided an opportunity for the next generation of leaders to network, socialize, and build long-lasting professional relationships.  With 36 attendees, the gathering was a great success and offered a fun and engaging atmosphere.

On February 17, 2024, the Pittsburgh Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers hosted their annual Engineers Week banquet at the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania in downtown Pittsburgh.  Engineers, award winners, professors, students and student award winners and parents and families were in attendance.  All were greeted at the door by Alma Rettinger, PE, ASCE’s President-Elect, who provided nametags for all attendees.  The banquet started with a social hour from 5 until a bit after 6; that is about when the Emcee for the event, Pat Sullivan, PE used his microphone like voice to ‘recommend’ that people start their trek upstairs to the banquet room.

Once upstairs, Pat, in what has become a tradition at this event, spent ‘about’ 15 minutes talking about whatever he had on his mind…this year it was dress attire! 

 Pat pulled out his bright red sport jacket with his red, white and blue patriotic tie!  Thinking he was the best dressed, he had to give kudos to Dr. Jerry Wang from CMU, who sported a red and black plaid sport jacket with a matching tie!  He also had to close a loose end from last years’ presentation of “Who were they before they became ASCE officers?”, by showing a picture of his lookalike, a University of Louisville quarterback from 2011.  Pat had to embarrass himself, since he wasn’t able to do it last year.  Pat also took credit for working the room during his annual monologue, noting that the Society’s President-Elect, Feniosky Peña-Mora, copied his routine at the recent ASCE Region 1, 2, 4 and 5 conference in Miami, FL!  The attendees got a good laugh from Pat’s ‘antics’!  

As is also his tradition, Pat invited each of the Corporate Sponsors for the Eweek Event to the podium to receive a certificate of appreciation for their gracious sponsorship and to talk about whatever they wanted.   

Thanks again to our corporate sponsors… Anser Advisory, Michael Baker International, Slippery Rock University, and Civil & Environmental Consultants! 

By: David A. Dzombak, PhD, PE, BCEE, BCWRE, Dist.M.ASCE

Summary of ASCE Pittsburgh Section participation in the 2024 ASCE Multi-Region Leadership Conference for Regions 1, 2, 4, and 5 in Miami, Florida, January 26-27, 2024

The ASCE Pittsburgh Section was very well represented at the 2024 ASCE Multi-Region Leadership Conference (MRLC) for Regions 1, 2, 4, and 5 in Miami, Florida, January 26 and 27.  Representatives included Pat Sullivan,

 a Region 2 Governor and Chair of our Section Program Committee; Greg Scott, an EWRI leader and Chair of our Government Relations Committee; David Dill and David Dzombak, current Section Board members; Kaitie DeOre, President of our Younger Members Forum; and Andrew Dawson, Connor Gibson, and Justin Komp, current YMF members. 

   

The MRLC had plenary sessions for all attendees, and separate sessions and workshops for the different leader groups at the conference. 

 The plenary presentations included informative and motivational talks by ASCE President Marsia Geldert-Murphey and ASCE Executive Director Tom Smith; a thought-provoking talk by ASCE President-Elect Feniosky Pena-Mora on “The Five Ps” for professional and personal success; and a two-part, inspirational talk on “Leader Lessons” by Colonel Aaron Hill, Professor and Head of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy, and Chair of the ASCE Committee on Education. 

All attendees also experienced a preview of the ASCE-sponsored new Imax movie “Cities of the Future”, which premiered on February 16 in theaters across the country, including at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh. Our Pittsburgh Section representatives engaged with other ASCE section, branch, and institute leaders in focused workshop and breakout sessions, sharing what we are doing in our section and getting a lot of ideas about new kinds of activities and approaches from others.  The Pittsburgh Section is a leader in a number of ways, such as having five active local chapters of ASCE institutes (EWRI, Geo-Institute, SEI, T&DI, UESI), active engagement with numerous student chapters, and a very active Younger Members Forum.  It is the enthusiastic involvement of our Pittsburgh Section members that makes our Section so vibrant.  Please attend Section events, get involved, and help keep the vibrancy of our Section going!

Pittsburgh, PA -- Seth Pearlman, P.E., D.GE, NAC, has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering Class of 2024.  Pearlman is the North American Director (CEO) for Menard and is on the board of Menard’s global group. He is directly responsible for management and board oversight of Menard USA, Menard Canada, Earth Tech (Florida), Farrell Design-Build (California), and ConeTec.

 

Election to the NAE is one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer. NAE members are among the nation’s most knowledgeable engineering experts and have distinguished themselves in business and academic management, in technical positions, as university faculty, and as leaders in government and private engineering organizations. Pearlman is being recognized for ground improvement technologies, geostructural design, and geotechnical construction techniques.

 

“Being elected to the National Academy of Engineering is an honor, but an honor that comes with a service obligation,” explains NAE President John L. Anderson. “As leading experts in their field, NAE members volunteer their time on initiatives that help guide the development of federal laws and regulations, improve the effectiveness of government programs, shape the direction of research fields and engineering education, and inform public knowledge and dialogue about issues of critical importance,” he noted.

 

Commenting on the prestigious honor, Pearlman said, “I am surprised and honored that my work has been recognized.  This could only have been possible by the tremendous efforts of all the people that I have been able to work with over the last 40-plus years.  I very much look forward to the opportunity to contribute to the betterment of our collective practice.”

 

Pearlman has more than 45 years of engineering experience with the last 38 in the geotechnical design and build construction industry.  Pearlman joined Menard in 2003. He is active in numerous industry organizations and served as the president of the Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) from 2006-2008. He has been honored many times. Among his awards are the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Henry Michel Award for Research in Industry in 2015, the ASCE Geo-Institute Wallace Hayward Baker Award for achievements in ground improvement in 2020, and he was elected to the National Academy of Construction in 2022. He has also won several Vinci and Soletanche Freyssinet awards for innovative solutions. Pearlman is a member of the ASCE, the Moles, and the American Concrete Institute. He currently serves on the DFI Scholarship Trust Board, where he helps establish funding for university scholarships. He earned bachelor's and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He was honored with alumni service awards from Carnegie Mellon University and the CMU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He and his family reside in Pittsburgh.

About Menard

Menard USA is a subsidiary of the Menard Group. The Menard Group operates in more than 80 countries, developing and implementing foundation solutions based on ground improvement and reinforcement technologies. Menard’s proven solutions eliminate the need for the deep foundations traditionally used to support structures. Contact Menard USA at info@menardusa.com or  www.menardusa.com/contact-us

 

About the National Academy of Engineering

The mission of the National Academy of Engineering is to advance the welfare and prosperity of the nation by providing independent advice on matters involving engineering and technology, and by promoting a vibrant engineering profession and public appreciation of engineering.

Sabrina Steinberg, MPH
Communications/Media Associate
National Academy of Engineering
SSteinberg@nae.edu

By: Shirley Tang

On January 20th, the 2024 Future City Pittsburgh Regional Competition was held in Robinson Township, Pennsylvania. This STEM program involves teams of middle-school students addressing sustainability issues to design and build a future city. This year’s theme was “Electrify Your Future”, with participants tasked to build a 100% electrically powered city with energy generated from sources that prioritize the safety of the citizens and environment. The challenge involved producing a city plan and essay, constructing a scale model of the city complete with moving parts, and presenting their city to the judges.

Eight teams from Western Pennsylvania participated in this year’s Future City Pittsburgh Regional Competition. The overall award went to Fort Couch Middle School, whose team designed a comprehensive city of multiple renewable energy resources, various options for accessible public transit, and a high priority for healthcare access and availability of emergency services. The team will advance to the National Competition in Washington D.C. in February 2024.

The special awards for this year included recognition for Best Use of Green Construction, Outstanding Future City Project Plan, Most Innovative Design of Infrastructure Systems, and many other achievements. Members from the ASCE Pittsburgh Section attended to judge the overall competition and two special awards.

The ASCE Pittsburgh Section presented the special award for Quality of Life, recognizing a team that incorporated concepts such as accessibility, community, and equity within their city design. The award went to Derry Area Middle School, which had an impressive city layout that prioritized accessibility of residents to public services and promoted traveling by foot or bicycle as an energy generation method. This team’s city also incorporated a disaster mitigation plan to address the proximity of their future city to a dormant volcano and to prioritize the safety of the residents.

The ASCE Pittsburgh Section also presented the special award Best Visualization of a Smart, Sustainable City on behalf of ASCE National. This special award was won by The Ellis School which incorporated multiple sources of renewable energy integrated with an AI system to efficiently harness available energy. Their city design also incorporated smartwatch technology to connect residents directly to city resources such as healthcare, community information, and updates regarding energy accessibility.

The event was an impressive showcase of the students’ awareness of the renewable energy sources and technologies that may be implemented in the future for the benefit of our communities. Some recurring solutions included: wind turbines, solar panels, maglev trains, and vertical farming.

This event also aligns with ASCE’s Future World Vision initiative, which reimagines the potential of infrastructure into various future scenarios with a focus on the impact of six key trends. These six trends are: alternative energy, autonomous vehicles, climate change, smart cities, high tech construction, and policy & funding. The film based on Future World Vision research, Cities of the Future, premieres locally at the Carnegie Science Center in February 2024. Read more about ASCE’s Future World Vision Initiative here: https://www.futureworldvision.org/

From Left to Right: ASCE Pittsburgh Members Erin Feichtner, Shirley Tang, Taylor DaCanal, and Kenneth Anderson.

ASCE Pittsburgh Section at Carnegie Science Center Educational Events – By Shirley Tang & Ben Briston

The ASCE Pittsburgh Section recently sponsored and participated in two educational events hosted at the Carnegie Science Center. These educational outreach events brought students in from dozens of local schools to showcase a wide range of STEM topics and engage with professionals to learn about careers in various fields.

In March, the Pittsburgh Regional Science and Engineering Fair (PRSEF) was held to showcase the projects of over 500 6-12^th grade students. A wide range of topics were covered by these students including Biology, Computer Science, Engineering/Robotics, and Medicine/Health/Microbiology.

ASCE Pittsburgh Section representatives participated as Sponsor Judges to present an ASCE Pittsburgh Section award for the Senior Division of the fair. At the fair, judges got an overview of the projects during a poster session and had the opportunity to interview individual students to determine an award winner. The ASCE Pittsburgh Section Selected Outstanding Project Award went to the project Abandoned Mine Drainage Water Bioindicators, for which the student monitored the reproduction rate of Daphnia in water samples to determine the impact of different filtration methods on water pollution and subsequently, the microorganisms’ quality of life.

Many other projects showed the impressive work done by students, including Measuring Exposure to Atmospheric Chemicals Using Passive Samplers: Problems with PFAS, in which the student tracked exposure levels of participants to Per and Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are linked to health issues widely used in consumer products. Another notable project was A Novel Computer Vision Based Device for On-Site Detection of Microplastics in Water, in which the student designed and 3D-printed portable system that detects microplastics using a microscope USB camera and a trained custom computer-vision model.

The students’ interest, creativity, and skillfulness in developing these experiments was very inspiring to see and the event was very successful in highlighting the hard work put in by the participants.

Left, From Left to Right, ASCE Representatives Shirley Tang, David Ulmer, and Ben Briston at PRSEF.

The ASCE Pittsburgh Section also participated in the April SciTech Day, a monthly themed STEM event held at the Carnegie Science Center. The April theme was Earth and Environment as a celebration of Earth Day.  The students were engaged in different booths and activities to learn about various topics such as natural sciences, the importance of pollinators, wildlife conservation, engineering, and mine reclamation.

The ASCE Pittsburgh Section hosted a booth demonstrating through an enviroscape model how watersheds work and how different processes in our environment are connected. ASCE Volunteers also discussed the role of engineers in developing solutions such as designing proper drainage systems and addressing and mitigating water pollution. Additionally, the ASCE volunteers participated in career panels, which were roundtable discussions between professionals and small groups of students to answer questions on their professional work.

Above, ASCE Representative Ben Briston discusses his work as a Senior Project Manager at Gannett Fleming with students.

Below, ASCE Representatives Ben Briston, Shirley Tang, Tom Batroney, Taylor DaCanal, and Matt Stevens at the ASCE booth.

   

Over 600 students from local middle and high schools attended the event in addition to the over 500 visitors to the museum throughout the day. The event was a great opportunity for students to explore different topics with a focus on appreciating, celebrating, and preserving our environment.

The PRSEF and SciTech events were both great events to interact and discuss the field of civil engineering with students. The ASCE Pittsburgh Section appreciates the opportunity to participate in these educational events and engage with students and the public about the impacts of civil engineering in our communities.