Dallas ISD’s Bond Passed. Voters Still Have a Job to Do.
Dallas ISD recently passed a multi-billion dollar bond issue. Elections of this type frequently pass, and frequently lose sight of the public eye after-the-fact. However, the months and years following passage are perhaps more important than the run-up to the election. Education is, clearly, an important priority, securing bipartisan support in elections. As is the […]
Temporary Traffic Signals
My consulting engineering experience up to this point was only to produce traffic control plans on paper during the design phase of a project, as opposed to administering traffic control, much less on one of the largest transit projects on the North American continent. Perhaps the most foreign concept to me was that of the temporary […]
Thirty Years Old, Newly Licensed, and Handed a Bridge
I was 30. I had just moved to the Transportation Office at the City of Dallas, over from Stormwater Management. I had worked and gotten some experience in flood control, floodplain, wetlands, and storm drainage, and wasn’t really aware of the magnitude of projects that lay in front of me at City Hall. Just the […]
Who Builds the Road Matters Less Than Who Repaints It
Valley View Pavement Markings In the summer of 2006, I was working as the most junior engineer in the transportation engineering group in the basement of Dallas City Hall. We had a federalized project, being designed by the Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT). Similar to other state departments of transportation, TXDOT had a research and development arm. One […]
Beacons By Design – The structural & optical engineering of lighthouses
Lighthouses are among the most elegant intersections of civil, structural, and optical engineering. Built to guide mariners through hazardous coastlines, shoals, and harbor entrances, they embody a blend of durability, precision, and visibility. While they may appear simple from a distance—a tower with a light—their design involves complex considerations of structural stability, environmental loading, optics, […]
From the Same Barrel: The Engineering Divide Between Gasoline and Diesel Refining
Refining crude oil into finished transportation fuels is, at its core, an exercise in molecular sorting and transformation. From an engineering standpoint, the divergence between producing unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel reflects both the inherent chemistry of crude oil fractions and the performance specifications demanded of spark-ignition versus compression-ignition engines. While both fuels originate from […]
Vapor Intrusion (VI): Engineering Assessment and Mitigation of Subsurface Vapor Migration
Vapor intrusion (VI) is the process by which volatile chemicals migrate from contaminated subsurface media—typically soil or groundwater—into overlying buildings. From an engineering standpoint, vapor intrusion represents a coupled transport problem involving multiphase flow, diffusion, and pressure-driven advection through heterogeneous porous media and across building envelopes. It is most commonly associated with volatile organic compounds […]
Manual J: The Cornerstone of Residential HVAC Design
Manual J is the cornerstone of residential HVAC design in the United States, providing a standardized methodology for calculating building heating and cooling loads. Developed by the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, Manual J establishes a rigorous, physics-based framework that allows engineers and designers to move beyond rule-of-thumb sizing toward precise, data-driven system design. From an […]
A Texan in Iowa on a Cold January Day
David Recht Two weeks ago I visited Des Moines, and I’m glad I did! I live and work in Dallas, and have a couple of clients in Iowa. Along the way, I picked up some insider knowledge about an interesting part of the country. I arrived late on a Monday night at the airport. I […]
Brown Water Advisories in Hawaiʻi: The Civil Engineering Systems Challenge
Brown water advisories in Hawaiʻi represent a uniquely local intersection of hydrology, wastewater infrastructure, and coastal engineering. From a civil engineering perspective, they are not merely public health warnings but visible indicators of watershed-scale system performance—revealing how land use, drainage design, and legacy infrastructure interact under storm loading. Definition and Context A brown water advisory […]