Something is happening this week at the American Society of Civil Engineers that hasn’t happened in nearly 12 years. ASCE has a new leader at the Headquarters building in Reston, Virginia. Peter O’Neil officially started as ASCE’s new chief executive officer March 30. This is big news for not only the organization but for the entire civil engineering profession. O’Neil brings a wealth of executive leadership experience, in episode 187 of the ASCE Plot Points podcast, O’Neil talks about why he’s excited to join ASCE, what members can expect, and the essence of culture building.

Civil engineering risk management is not only an important topic, it can be a nebulous one.

Gray areas, assumptions, communication breakdowns, in other words: a real mess.

So ASCE has launched a new Risk Management Community of Practice – a space for engineers to share and learn and compare notes in hopes of removing some of the confusion around risk.

Bill McAnally and Mitch Winkler are members of the ASCE Committee on Infrastructure Risk Management and together they have been the driving force to establish the new CoP.

They’ve even developed a Risk Management Primer, to help simplify risk management for civil engineers.

McAnally is a water resources engineer in Columbus, Mississippi. Winkler is a structural engineer by training with decades of experience in the oil and gas industry in Houston.

In episode 186 of ASCE Plot Points, McAnally and Winkler talk about risk management.

Listen to the episode above, and subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

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And join the ASCE Community of Practice on Risk Management today and start sharing.

It’s snow season in a lot of places right now – which means salt season. And salt season isn’t great for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is contaminated water. So, Connie Fortin and Tim Olsen have a new idea. They call it low salt design – a way of reducing the need for salt from the very start of the project. Fortin is a low salt strategist and Olsen a water resources engineer, both for Bolton and Menk in Minnesota. In episode 185 of ASCE Plot Points, Fortin and Olsen discuss low salt design and why the solutions might be even simpler than you ever imagined. Learn more about low salt design, including a free download with suggested solutions. And dive deeper into the concepts in an article Fortin and Olsen wrote for the ASCE Journal of Cold Regions Engineering.