ASCE East Central Branch Newsletter

DECEMBER 2020

Greetings!

Along with cooler temperatures, December brings to end a year that has challenged us to do things differently, taught us to become more adaptable. As my parents always told me “If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you”. I was so happy to see the enthusiasm with which all the branch, institute, committee and student members, officers and leaders stepped up and found ways to remain active throughout the year, organizing a host of virtual technical as well as social events.

We had more than 35 events including our annual scholarship golf tournament and the virtual officer installation luncheon. All the hard work was handsomely rewarded at our annual Florida Section awards where we not only won the Large Branch of the Year award but also Engineer of the Year (Frank Caruso), Project of the Year (NeoCity Academy), Student Chapter of the Year (University of Central Florida), Student of the Year (Chris Carrino), Graduate Student of the Year (Khanh Tran Olka), and the Student Outstanding Service Award (Hannah Waddell). I would like to congratulate all the winners for making this year successful.

Happy Holidays and stay safe everyone. See you all in the new year.

Sincerely,

Jignesh S. Vyas, P.E.

ASCE East Central Branch President

CONSTRUCTION INSTITUTE

Please send your interest to Louis Bramblett, P.E. at Bramblettl@etminc.com.

Structural Engineering Institute

SEI would like to thank our members for making our first web-based luncheon a success. The presentation on Ultra-High-Performance Concrete by Dr. Haber from the FHWA Turner Laboratory was attended by 20+ members. Dr. Haber offered a brief background on the development of UHPC, insight into the practical application of UHPC, and a showcase of projects that utilized UHPC. Dr. Haber offered to be a resource to those interested in utilizing UHPC on their projects. The funds raised by this luncheon will be utilized for the SEI annual scholarship.

The Structural Engineering Institute is seeking submissions from fellow structural engineers about their past or present projects. The submission is to quickly discuss the project's highlights, uniqueness, and/or challenges the structural engineer encountered during the project. This will provide ASCE-ECB members and aspiring student engineers with insight into the current structural engineering practices, and provide an opportunity for local or regional structural engineers to showcase their work. The submittals must include the following:

At least one photograph of the project location.
A summary of the project setting and background, such as location, new construction/restoration, private/government, etc.
A summary of the challenges and/or unique aspects of the project, such as new design technology or use of new construction material not typically used in similar designs.

The submittals shall be sent to Mike Olka (molka@lakecountyfl.gov) in which we will review and prepare for presentation in the next ECB newsletter.

Student Activities

December Update

We are excited to have guest speakers from BGE to present and gave us an insight into what it’s like to work at BGE and what goes into their current projects.

On November 10, we were honored to receive the student chapter award cup passing down to us which was help in the engineering atrium. Right after the ceremony, our past President Chris was able to host an AutoCAD workshop over zoom to teach our current and new members some common CAD functions as well as some techniques that can save time when they are trying to sketch and design something.

During the same week, our fundraising chair Sidnee was able to partner up with Blaze Pizza to do a partial proceed event to raise funding for the club. Also, during the weekend, we gathered a group of members and officers to participate in the beach clean-up located at Cocoa beach to earn some volunteering hours while cleaning up the environment.

On November 17, we also held a scheduled meeting for the 2021 southeast student conference to go over more details regarding the events and team layout.

We held our last General Body meeting for the Fall 2020 semester on November 19th with Inwood Consulting Engineers which was very informative as our guest speakers talked about different subfields each of them does and how they were able to solve real-world problems through design.

Sincerely,

Khanh Olka, E.I.T.

Communications Chair

East Central Branch

Florida Section

asce-ecb@outlook.com