tallbridgeguy

A roundup of average faculty salaries in four year universities. Engineering does rather well compared to the rest.

Check out a design competition for wildlife crossings, highlighted at the Happy Pontist.

Design teams must meet certain criteria in order to qualify. For example, they must include registered, professionally-licensed landscape architects, and structural engineers, and they may opt to include professional architects as well as other specializations. The expectation is that wildlife biologists, ecologists, transportation specialists and other experts will broaden the teams’ interdisciplinary design approach. In Phase Two, design teams must include at least one firm licensed to practice in the State of Colorado.

I want to sign up but at the moment I do not qualify. I have to find a registered, professionally-licensed landscape architect….

Am I the only one tired of bad news? Bury yourself in the World Cup and cool looking bridges.

• Beautiful bridges of the Oregon coast
• Oregon DOT Historic bridge photos
• Conde McCullough – minor engineering deity – one of my top ten bridge engineers

A speed digital painting of our dog that went horribly wrong….

I want to get back to learning to oil paint but I just don’t have the time. Soo, I tried photoshop painting. No mess and no cleanup but I have a long way to go. I took a picture of a local bridge on the way to work and thought I would start with it.

Here is my first ever, photoshop painting. It took me about an hour and it sucks but its a start.

Actual bridge.

Photoshop bridge – speed painting style. It needs more contrast on the left side.

Like doctor’s, engineers sometimes get asked for design help by their friends and acquaintances. Obviously the scale is different but I bet our responses are similar. You really should discuss that with your doctor engineer.

Liability is the problem because of all the possible safety concerns. One of the issues I get asked about, as a bridge engineer, is how to build a low cost bridge that a property owner can build to access their property. Typically these are short structures and the property owner may already have some materials on hand.

Designing for a highway is different than a two car a day bridge. But the liability could be higher on the small bridge because of the home built nature of the structure and the lack of professional builders.

So how do you handle request to design a “pond jumper bridge”? Do you have any good links you can share about building a small bridge?

The place I would start my journey to the center of the earth. The sinkhole has shot around the web but it is still amazing.