Aine Brazil: Tougher Task, Wider Role for Engineers

Faster project delivery, more sophisticated designs, and greater demands for project team collaboration from owners are transforming the role of the structural engineer – and that’s a good thing.

Aine Brazil is a managing principal with New York’s Thornton Tomasetti, which is structural engineer on projects such as Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, the new football stadium at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, Hudson Yards in Manhattan, and Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.

NYC: Are structural engineers busier today?
AB: We’ve always been busy. When I joined in 1982 we had 55 people. We’re 550 people now. There is definitely more work for the whole profession. The whole industry is hot. And we are in a very exciting time because there is a growing sophistication of design – a really strong commitment by public and private sector owners to the quality of building projects. This quest for excellence makes for more complex buildings.

Another challenge is that there is very little land to build on, so we’re all building on either tiny sites with very tall buildings or planning future development on platforms at Hudson Yards or Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. The bar is being raised and as a result there is a lot more work for firms that can deal with that complexity.

NYC: Are these market forces affecting the structural engineer’s role?
AB: Two big factors changing our industry are speed and project delivery. It’s kind of foolish to even talk about the ever-increasing speed. Fast track is the normal delivery process. And there is a growing use of different methods – using BIM as a form of basic delivery, for instance. And because of these changes, we have a new role as workflow manager.

It’s not a linear process anymore from the architect to us to the contractor. It’s all merged. The main relationship used to be between the ownership and the design team. But now to accommodate these ever-faster schedules, it becomes much more of a melting pot. We’re all in this together. You need both the tool side of it and the relationship side of it. If the collaboration doesn’t happen, the tools are useless.

The engineers who aren’t ready to manage that flow will definitely lose out long term because real estate developers want excellent designs and a commercially successful project. The industry is still learning how best to adapt.

NYC: Are these changes good or bad?
AB: It’s a fantastic time to be a structural engineer, especially in New York. A lot of what we’re doing is trying to use a crystal ball to figure out future needs. We’re creating platforms for the support of buildings, some of which will be built today and some of which will not be built until down the road. You have to use a bit of creativity to help your client. We used to be a reactive profession – people would ask us, ‘What is the impact of doing this?’ We would give them an answer. I think today, we have to sit and listen really carefully to the goals the client has, so we can make a greater contribution and develop better solutions. We’re seeing complex issues of air rights or future development potential, where we can be more than just a purely technical adviser. The engineer can be proactive, but has to look at the discussion more from the client’s standpoint.

NYC: It’s still a struggle to find new talent?
AB: Yes. With the growth that we’ve been seeing, we need to keep bringing in talented professionals. The entire country has a shortage of engineers. And what’s disappointing to me is that compared to 10 years ago, there are even fewer women engineers coming out – graduating or entering engineering schools. And overall, we’re not seeing an increase in engineering enrollment. We have a long road ahead of us. ACE is a great program – that’s hitting 14 and 15 year olds. Our associations are also trying to go into the middle schools to talk to students about engineering. I look for the opportunities to get more women in here. If you could quadruple the number of women, it would make a big difference.

NYC: What’s next at Thornton Tomasetti?
AB: Richard [Tomasetti] and Charlie [Thornton] started an ownership transition plan in the mid 1990s. They owned about three quarters of the company, and they planned to sell their stock over a period of 10 years, and a group of us made a serious commitment to buy up the bulk of the stock. But that was our first step. We have continued the process and we already have our next generation of ownership transition occurring in which the second generation of owners all have agreed to start to sell at age 55 and be completely divested by age 65. The younger people who are the new leaders are buying. And I’m happy to say there is far more demand for stock than there is stock available.