NOVEMBER 2020
Greetings,

Someone is turning a year older!!!!!!!!!

ASCE Day celebrates the Society’s founding on November 5, 1852. Twelve esteemed engineers gathered at New York City’s Croton Aqueduct to establish what would become the American Society of Civil Engineers. 2020 marks ASCE’s 168th anniversary. So, from all of us at the East Central Branch, I would like to wish everyone a Very Happy ASCE Day.

Keeping the pandemic in mind, ASCE held its first ever Virtual Annual Convention. The event covered a wide range of topics, from significant projects like the SoFi Stadium and Gerald Desmond Bridge Replacement, to State of the Industry topics covering Artificial Intelligence and its various applications in Civil Engineering. One of the topics that was quite fascinating was FUTURE WORLD VISION. ASCE launched Future World Vision (futureworldvision.org) as a bold, comprehensive project to anticipate, re-imagine, and prepare for future changes. At last year’s event they presented Floating City and this year it was Mega City 2070. It is an interactive virtual world set in the future that reimagines infrastructure that will have to support large populations while preserving the city’s historic character, promoting accessible green space, and supporting a diverse array of lifestyles and economies. Please make sure to check these out.

Membership retention and membership increase were also discussed at the event, and to that effect the society encouraged everyone to inform not just current but also potential members about all the ASCE Member Benefits. Members not only get to interact (virtually!!!) with other members and share their knowledge and experience, but also have access to a multitude of career development tools, technical resources, mentorship, merchandise discounts and so much more. With the upcoming P.E. renewal deadline, I am sure the 10 free PDH credits will come in handy.

Lastly, in this month of Thanksgiving, I would like to thank all the people who volunteer their time and effort to further our profession and inspire a new generation of Civil engineers. Thank you for your continued support to your local ASCE branch.

Stay safe everyone and have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Sincerely,
Jignesh S. Vyas, P.E.
ASCE East Central Branch President
Editor's Note

Due to changes within Constant Contact many functions previously used no longer function in the Newsletter this includes:
  • Side bars hyperlinks
  • Hyperlinks to institute sections

I apologize for any inconvenience that might cause. Comments please email to asce-ecb@outlook.com.

Thank you for your continued support of the East Central Branch.

Sincerely,
Khanh Olka
Communications Chair
This issue
  • History & Heritage
  • Structural Engineering Institute
  • Environmental & Water Resources Institute
  • Transportation & Development Institute
  • Younger Member Forum
  • Student Activities
History & Heritage

First National Bank
By Rocio Rodriguez
History & Heritage Committee Chair

The First National Bank is located at 190 South Orange Avenue in Downtown, Florida. The building was built in 1930 during the great depression and designed by Orlando architect Howard M. Reynolds. The First National Bank moved out of the building in 1960 due to space issues. In the 1980’s, Valencia Community College began using the building as part of its downtown campus. The original cost of the building was $300,000 [1].

The Valencia Community College Foundation has taken responsibility for preserving the history of this magnificent beautiful building. The building changed names from First National Bank to Sun First National Bank of Orlando to Chicone Building. Nowadays the building is known as the Valencia Downtown Center[3].

Figure 1: First National Bank, 1930’s[2].

The style of the building is Art Deco, with etched columns and Egyptian motifs (Figure 2). The original brass and terrazzo staircase leads from the first floor to the second. Hidden staircases offer emergency exits out of the building, and a basement offers additional storage space [3]. The present appearance of the building nowadays is that of a new building. The beauty of the details and the preservation of the exterior makes it one of the most beautiful buildings on the block (see Figure 3).
Figure 2: Egyptian motifs (left) and etched columns (center and right pictures) on the exterior of the First National Bank building.
Figure 3: Picture of the building nowadays.

The building was nominated a Historical Landmark on 2/27/1978.

References:
[1] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/classified/realestate/os-bz-orlando-historic-buildings-20170915htmlstory.html
[2] http://www.florida-orlando.org/first_national_bank_trust_company.html
[3] https://www.cpexecutive.com/post/valencia-college-puts-historic-chicone-building-on-the-market/
Structural Engineering Institute
2020 SEI Scholarship

It is our pleasure to announce the recipient of the 2020 SEI Scholarship, Khanh Olka. Khanh is an ASCE SEI member currently pursuing a master’s degree in Structures and Foundations at UCF. Khanh also serves as the Newsletter Editor for the East Central Branch. Khanh was a member of the UCF ASCE Visual Display Team and helped sew together the flag for the 2020 Southeast Regional Student Conference. In July of this year, Khanh was awarded Graduate Student of the Year by the Florida Section. If you know Khanh, please be sure to congratulate her on her accomplishments.
Environmental & Water Resources Institute

Green Infrastructure Site Assessment with New ICPR Water Quality Tools Webinar

This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education credit.

When
Thursday, November 19, 2020 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

Presenters
 Mark Ellard, PE, CFM, D.WRE, ENV SP
Mike Hardin, PhD, PE, CFM
Pete Singhofen

Topic
Pinellas County has a challenge in identifying effective pollutant load reductions strategies to address TMDL and other water quality regulatory requirements. The project goal was to develop a rating and suitability framework for siting green infrastructure as part of the new green infrastructure program, taking into account where the County owns property or has right-of-way, TMDL priorities, and considering site suitability (soils, water table, etc.). The end result provided a framework and toolset for the County to evaluate water quality benefits and suitability to conceptualize and prioritize future green infrastructure projects.

To identify locations conducive to implementing green infrastructure, the County developed a GIS based screening tool whereby these suitable sites can be easily identified and screened for applicability.

As part of the overall project efforts, a new version of the hydrologic & hydraulic model ICPR4 was updated to include water quality and green infrastructure BMP pollutant load evaluation functionality. This new water quality module of ICPR4 is based on event mean concentrations (EMC) for basin runoff. Constituents are tracked through the drainage network based on mass balances at the nodes.This updated model functionality was used to evaluate water quality benefits and narrow down the list of potential projects based on water quality benefit provided, preliminary projected costs, TMDL priorities, etc.

This presentation will present the background and goals of the project, discuss details of GIS tool development and execution, and introduce the new ICPR model pollutant load functionality.
Transportation & Development Institute
Younger Member Forum
Student Activities
On October 18th, Our club officers and members got together to clean up our shop and rearranged the layout of all the tables to make sure there is optimal space for both steel bridge and concrete canoes current and future projects since the original layout of the shop was very crowded. The new layout was proposed by our shop manager Michael back in early July during our officer planning phase. Through the use of this new layout, we will be able to work a lot more efficiently to ensure our projects meet our set deadline.
This past weekend, some of our members got together to volunteer at the Run/Walk for Cancer Awareness event to not only earn some volunteering hours but also get attention on the issue.
 
At our 4th General Body Meeting of the fall 2020 semester, we have our guests speaker Donald from Granite Construction who speaks with us about the company itself and what they look for, what they do, their missions as well as currently ongoing projects. We also had a little Q and A session at the end to answer any questions our member might have about the Granite.

This week, our officers and members got together to bond by playing a very popular game right now called “Among Us” which emphasizing the importance of teamwork and strategy planning and we all of us had a blast!
During the same week, we had our biweekly officer meetings which we got together to discuss what’s going on with each of our officers and what are some future plans we are looking at and address any problems that have arisen.
Employment Opportunities
Sincerely,

Khanh Olka, E.I.T.
Communications Chair
East Central Branch
Florida Section