Breakthrough Programming Tech in Structural Engineering

welcome to this episode of the structural engineering Channel a podcast focused on helping Structural Engineering professionals stay up to date on technical Trends in the field and to help them succeed in their careers and lives I'm your host Matt McArdle and in this episode I'll be talking with Santos bangala PE structural engineer at AECOM about the transformative impact of programming in structural design the importance of mastering engineering software early in one's career and the future direction of the structural engineering industry let's jump into this week's [Music] conversation satos can you start by telling us a a little bit about yourself and your career journey and your your journey into the field of Structural Engineering yeah um so I'm SOS wangala I grew up in India and I was there until I was 24 uh and growing up in a developing country um I was in the midst of all the development that was happening I was seeing all the roads being laided buildings being built I was also very passionate about math and physics growing up so um I just wanted to find something where I could combine my shared interest of math and physics with what was going on and um that's how like I got into the field of engineering not primarily structural but the more I deled into it the figured out that structural is better fit for me as I said like growing up like you always see buildings like Eiffel Tower and then leaning tower of piece of Leaning and that kind of fascinated me and that's how I chose structural engineering and um I did my bachelor's in India uh from IBU and then spent a couple of years there trying to gain some field experience and um realized that feeli was not for me and I wanted to learn more about design and try to do some designed some cool stuff that's how um I got into a master's program and then moved to the us about um in 2012 and uh since then after graduating with the Master's Degree um I've just been trying to work on anything that's challenging and sometimes like if it's not challenging just try to find something which kind of interests me so that that's like a really long answer of how I got into it yeah that's really cool what what were some of the challenging projects that you've worked on that was pretty fulfilling I think uh um there's a lot of challenges on every project we work on but the biggest challenge not not necessarily from a technical standpoint but from a management standpoint was um couple of years ago I was working under uh my supervisor who was the EO on that project and due to some change in scenario he just had to leave the company and all of sudden I was in the midst of uh handling this project with some prior experience but I never was in a situation like that and that's when I realized uh there's a lot of scope creep items and there's a lot of Coronation items and without having the guidance of someone it was a all CH like kind of challenging to approach that I did look at it like an opportunity more than a challenge because um yeah I think that those are the opportunities where you can grow and uh biggest thing I learned was like if you if you don't have a lot of experience managing project or you're just new or you're just thrust onto the scene cuz you can't plan for those things and uh basically there was a lot of lessons learn in terms of like how to handle scope creep and um just do a lot of coordination with other trades so that was the most challenging aspect that I ever encountered in my life yeah something similar happened to me as well during younger my career yeah one of similar case too one of the engineers uh leaves you're still or one of the senior Engineers leaves and you're kind of the engineer that's left with the project and but like you were saying you learn a lot of lessons because for me at least it was getting to learn what the entire design process was from design all the way to construction and then you get to look at the big picture of the project and see all the lessons learned that you could do that maybe if there wasn't a big crunch in terms of if the engineer was still there maybe you wouldn't get to learn all that stuff but uh jinking from a fire hose at that time but you get a lot of you get a lot of water yeah I agree I share the same sentiment now looking back it was a little in inating but I agree like it was a great learning opportunity yeah just not something that you want to be in every single day like okay here's okay let's let's get this project done let's let's learn from it hopefully yeah and uh I know you also use you're you're in coding and python I believe yeah could you tell us more about that and how you've Incorporated that into your structural designs sure uh I think it's uh primarily it started with like I learned python for some other reasons where I was just interested in writing a script for like a Fantasy Premier league program but um I work at a firm where they wanted to Leverage The automation the potential of Automation and uh given that I work in Python and uh Revit has a lot of like uh opportunities to write your own scripts and using Revit apis I I develop scripts and which kind of takes away some of these um opportunities for like human error or to minimize basic designers and the way it works is like if I'm trying to design a foundation um and and we're kind of human like we do make mistakes but if you write like a script that's automated and uh the opportunity to make a mistake is almost non-existent and so essentially like when I'm designing something um in Revit I write some scripts and in I use Revit in conjunction with other software tools to get the reactions and once I get the reactions for a column or a foundation the script itself is like um the script has all the process to check like the design and come up with the size of the footing so I don't have to manually hand calculate or have rely on a program to actually do that for me because once my script has been wetted by several engineers and it's deemed to be correct and appropriate I can just with a click of a button in Revit it can actually like design some stuff without any errors and it also can save a lot of times by just replicating designs or even like creating views and stuff which would minimize the process that we take to develop construction drawings so that's primar how I use it to basically like minimize errors because as humans we tend to make mistakes and um I just want to protect ourselves like to avoid doing that yeah it's like another layer of of quality control because from the looks of it it seems like you would do a maybe a column load takeown but instead of doing each and every Foundation calc you have a script that automatically ensures once it's been vetted and and all that that maybe that load is for that specific footing versus if you were to do it by hand yeah there's there's a lot of columns you might put it in the wrong you might uh bookkeep it incorrectly yeah and that has happened in the past and that's why like that's how I realized it like okay instead of me checking it 20 times by myself I'll check it a couple of times and then have python check it for me once and uh yeah that was the primary goal yeah what were some of the common mistakes that you were seeing that that had scripting helped mitigate those issues yeah I think the common some of the common mistakes I can think of are like essentially like once we design transferring all of the design from uh from a software or from your calc into the drawings that was the major like that that that was the uh that was where like I noticed we make a lot of mistakes because we have done the design correctly but to transfer the that you're manually transferring all of that design data into Revit you have to create like a foundation like uh rebar schedule and then you have to give the rebar and stuff but because you're manually doing it oh you have to be 100% sure that the rebar you getting from the software is the same as what you're listing it on the drawings and uh in addition to that depth restrictions of the beams Architects tell me all the time you cannot have a beam more than 12 in I assume that all of the beams are correct and when I place them but there's always like a rogue beam which is like deeper than it should be and so having a script which will just check all of the beams at once and then Flags the flags the one which are like deeper so essentially the biggest error U most of the major errors that I notice are transferring the design items from design into the drawings and that's where like I feel like uh python helped me quite a bit yeah that's I think that's a big one because that's another layer of QC right you got a QC the Cals all right the Cals are good the load paths are good that's the right column and then now you got to do another QC to transfer to the drawings and you can see how that where the automation helps right because it kind of alleviates some of that yeah make sure that it's right but also saves you a lot of time and okay so I'm always curious because for me I learned programming like mat lab and and grad school and whatnot but not so much python how do engineers that aren't familiar with python for example how do they get that or start using it at work or maybe make a program at work to get more people to use it h how did you go about implementing that and maybe yeah H yeah how do you use it at work essentially so essentially like uh that's actually a wonderful question because a lot of people like sometimes like feel intimidated but the mention of the word like python or like a programming language I would say that that's not true at all because most of our industry uses Revit and other like the structural analysis softwares which have these apis where we can use those apis to get all the reactions and whatever we want basically extract data and python itself if you look at it like it could be intimidating but if you start with like baby steps which is like all I want to do today is just get the foundation reactions if you start really small and in order to actually approach that the first thing I need to do is I need to open my programming interface and make it talk to rabbit or eabs that's the first step and once you like approach that step there's a lot of like open resources out there there's like a lot of really good channels out there py RIT and um I learned python as I said for different reasons but if you start writing simple programs to extract data that kind of gives you confidence and the more like the more confident you get like in in writing a script it only keeps improving from there like from thereafter yeah I it's if you could learn building codes you can learn python yeah yeah I I agree building codes cating bu building codes uh can get tricky but yeah I agree and what so since that's I'm trying to see how companies can try to implement this more I think some push back from companies might be if you get a script how do take care of the the backchecking of it the quality control of it I think you mentioned other Engineers could do that uh to help back check it similar to a spreadsheet to make sure that it's it's doing everything correctly and what other push back do you get in terms of if you're trying to do something with a company that no one really knows how to code and do you try to get more people to code or you just try to make it more user friendly so everybody could use it what are some approaches do you think that yeah Engineers could do I think the biggest pushback we get is like sometimes Engineers are just or even Architects are intimidated by just the word of using something they're not familiar with and I can sense that UNC uncertainty that they have and it's completely valid too I think uh one of the ways that we can resolve that in addition to that QC instead of writing a script you can kind of package all of that script into a simple button in Revit so in Revit you can create like a custom Tab and create a simple like with a click of a button it would be something like Foundation check and you just click on it that's a lot more simpler for people to use and we can create all of these like I would say buttons or in the ribbon and then we would package that as like an MSI installer and once we send that MSI installer across different offices all they have to do is like double click on it and install it because it's more of of an executable file and a new ribbon will appear in in Rev with all these tools that way they're less intimidated to use it they know it's just they can use it at the click of a button and all they have to just like use their Mouse to get there but in terms of like how they can get confident about using like what the tool is doing as I said there has to be a thorough QC process and I am I I sometimes notice that doesn't happen and I'm a big proponent of my code be it has to be checked by if I have 10 different offices at least one senior engineer in 10 different offices have to have these meetings once a month to check this code and say that okay this is correct this this CPT can be utilized and it will protect us against any liability and then we can propagate that so yeah I I still agree that initially it can you can get a lot of push back because we need to invest some times to do the QC and to install all of this but if you make it simpler for them um they're more likely to use it yeah I like that button where if I think you can get the offices more in line with it or the other Engineers where they have a spreadsheet and you have a button or an executable file they can see that and that could save them a lot of time and then maybe they could get more interested into it and then that way you can have more people that are able to do qes on it yeah and what about you mentioned resources so for engineers that aren't familiar with it do you have any of them that you know off the top of your head that are just good places to start Absolut what to Google specifically for Structural Engineering yeah absolutely as I said like I learned python for different reasons but I just learned python like um with corsera corsera just had like a $49 subscription when I was learning so they had uh introduction to Python 3 programming by University of Michigan an arbor and that course is very comprehensive so if you're able to finish all of that course um it'll kind of set you up for success and in terms of but that's only the first step you can't just directly use Python um to uh you you can just Learn Python and start using it for your Structural Engineering software or Revit the other step would be to learn how to use the apis for Revit and the apis for eabs or other structural software Revit there's a fantastic Channel on YouTube it's called py Revit and and that has at least like 10 different lessons which kind of guides you to the process of how to use the apis from Revit using python or any other programming language for that matter and similarly that's py Revit py Revit yes p i it's py py RIT py cool yeah I'll look that up too that that seems cool hi RIT oh go ahe yeah and for python as I said there are several resources the one I primarily used was a simple course but by University of Michigan on corsera gotcha yeah I'll recommend those and maybe check those out myself yeah for me it's it's something I've always wanted to learn and I I dabbled in a little bit of it but haven't taken like a full course or anything but yeah yeah it just seems like that's really helpful I've talked to other Engineers similar to yourself where they use it and yeah saves them a lot of time but yeah I think that intimidation Factor right you get over that as an industry it can help us out if it helps like the way I I always uh give someone a suggestion is I can do it I strongly believe like anyone else can do it so and I truly mean that because I don't believe like I I hated coding all my life like I never wanted to code at all but then I think you also need someone like to have confidence in you and then as I said um it's definitely doable and I know you've also been uh recognized as a top young professional by are the engineering News Record tell us about that yeah uh I think like sometimes like the way I approach individual Awards is they make you feel good but they actually don't paint the whole picture which is it's actually uh behind the background there's a lot of great work that being done by my team and uh so it's actually kind of representation of the great work that my team does and uh I'm fortunate to be nominated by one of my team members here and then uh in addition to actually like being good at what you do and I personally feel like being good at what you do is subjective because I constantly feel like I'm learning every day so I don't want to say that I I'm technically good or anything because I'm a constant work in progress so you have to be good at what you're doing or you have to work hard but in addition to that I think the biggest contributor like to me getting that award was like how are you giving back to your community uh and how are you contributing back to the civil engineering society and I I um so for I would strongly recommend engineers in addition to like um what they do on a day-to-day basis to try to like use their skills to like volunteer or help kids like I used to tutor sixth graders like on math uh basically it was a oncore temp program so I enrolled and I was helping the kids with that and I tried to also actively participate in ASC young members group and sometimes like we try to do some mentorship programs with high school kids and try to help them out and then basically try to like extend the whole stem Outreach so in addition to what you I feel like I sometimes feel like maybe I don't deserve the award but because there's a lot of brilliant Engineers out there but again um giving back to your community is like something to keenly look at and um it also brings you immense satisfaction like being stressed out at work if you go teach a kid I think that was my way to like uh that was my de-stressor so um yeah I just feel like uh I've just been fortunate to be surrounded by a good group of people who believed in me and also um I was just lucky I would say and feel worse that I even got that yeah I think giving back I me I think that's a huge thing that probably engineers in the middle of their career don't really appreciate I know for me I did start with the for example the ACF and recently started going to uh part being part of the Ace mentorship Program and helping the high school students out and yeah I think it's I think it's great it is more of a not only that you're helping out but it gives you a I say I think a new a new found respect or or passion for the structural engineering field on uh how important the things that we do are explaining it to to the next generation of potential engineers and kind of gives you a bigger perspective of the stuff that we're doing is is really important and you know the the industry is giving us a lot and how do we get back to the next generation of of Engineers and or the current Engineers to to for example in the yfs and whatnot so I I definitely think that's a huge part of and of uh why you got that award and definitely I don't think you need to be sigh about it you know yeah as I said I think you summarized it really well but I don't know I always feel like I'm a work in progress or you can always improve yeah yeah exactly I and I think that's what's what's cool about engineers I think a lot of us don't want to get recognition uh but you know I don't think that's what we need as an industry I think we need to to pet ourselves in the back more and pet and uh give give each other recognition so congrats on that like not only with the giving back to the community but all the projects that you've done and the contributions that uh I think the with the Python scripts and whatnot I think that's that's huge and not enough Engineers are using it so congrats on that yeah thank you what you think the future of Structural Engineering is heading for in the next couple years oh I'm actually kind of excited to answer this but also like it as an outsider I feel like there's going to be so much like so many cool things that are going to be happening in the next 10 years I think there'll be a lot of focus on Automation and uh I think the biggest thing I'm kind of fascinated by it the how they would leverage like Ai and uh how they can like probably use Virtual Reality to basically like try to create these augmented models where we don't even have to go to the site and then we can kind of do a QC just by like being in like a virtual reality room thousands of miles away so um I think uh there's a lot of focus on Automation in addition to uh ai ai utilization but and also like there's a lot of focus on um how we can make buildings more sustainable because with the climate change feel like we also have a lot of responsibility to be uh responsible um not just build a building but see like how we can make it more sustainable I think those three things I can think of are like most exciting things that that that we're going to see maybe in the next five six years not even 10 years yeah what do you think the role of the structal engineer is because you mentioned because you're familiar with Automation and then you mentioned AI too that maybe that could lead to more automation where do you think the role of the structural engineer is I I I I guess just my take it seems like we should still be using it as as tools but instead of needing 10 Engineers maybe you might need two in the future just because you uh I'm envisioning it like the the Tony Stark where he's he's got his AI uh but he's a oneman team designing something really complex what do you see it yeah that's a really interesting question and I would say like it's really not simple for me to answer that because I feel like they'll always be need for Structural Engineers like physically they do need engineers and I think we kind of like will be responsible for actually feeding all of these engineering like principles into these virtual realities or automation so the way I see it is like we are like primary like we we will still play the primary role in order to get this implemented but with the additional help of maybe a programmer or someone who's into virtual reality so it still has to go through us and I feel like it could also be possible that there might be some Engineers who might actually learn about programming or try to delve into this whole world of virtual reality because as you said if we can comprehend ACI codes and all these complicated design guides I think it's not going to be be a leap of faith for us to just switch into programming or use programming in conjunction with structural engineer so Fel still be that primary like uh uh individual who will be responsible for implementing it yeah because there there at the end of the day there still needs to be someone that needs to Stamp Those drawings right yeah oh stamping the drawings yeah yeah someone needs to Stamp Those and and in the end too I I feel like even with the construction support part of it too I don't really see that going away anytime soon in terms of I hope it's I'm guessing contractors would hate to what call call us up and they're building their project they got a construction question and then they have a AI talk to them or a robot kind of like a customer service call yeah they would definitely I don't think we're going to be there yet I think that yeah I mean I think the construction support part is where a lot of the human interaction comes in where you're communicating with the field and and humans I think the AI stuff and automation could definitely help us out in design and but yeah talking to the clients explaining what the design is and in human terms I still think there's going to be that human aspect of it where I mean that's a big part of our jobs communicating our designs to the clients to the field to The Architects and I think we'll have a lot of tools that can help us design faster more efficiently and yeah I still think you're going to hopefully we're still going to have the need for engineers and and all that in the future I don't think that's going anytime soon yeah I I think you put it nicely yeah do you have any final piece of advice for Structural Engineers who you know you're going to make a significant impact in the field of Structural Engineering yeah I think uh um there are a couple of things I can think of like if you're doing uh your job well I feel like you you you yourself are like making an impact it may not feel that way but um think if we want to talk about some tangible like advice I would say like if you're just try to be up up to date with all the industry advancements and um and also like try to seek like diverse project experience and uh and the last one is like a biggest thing that I'm a big Provident of is like document all your Lessons Learned and uh this will help us avoid mistakes but at the same time once you're doing all of these three things staying up to date and like seeking project experience and documenting lessons learn to avoid mistakes and stuff I feel like there's a way you have to like share this knowledge with the community and I think I can think of like engineering tips as like it's a great fantastic resource where there's a lot of like really cool like nerdy Engineers like chat like different brilliant ideas so um as I said like probably uh trying to get involved with the local community of ASC chapter try to Mentor people is the best way you can create an impact especially for kids like who are aspiring individuals and and as I said be an active member and try to help someone out on on an any Forum they might have a question about a beam that might be intimidating for you but um or might be intimidating for them but it's probably very simple for you just you sharing a your knowledge for a minute would probably like you you wouldn't realize it but it's probably helping a lot of individuals out there yeah I I think that's that's that's huge advice it's helping others out and contributing to the community I think is one of the the biggest things that people don't often realize that I think you said it nicely where if you can help people out you don't know the impact that you're making but it it makes a big impact maybe they just might change their view on the industry or want to get into the IND in the industry because you help them out and and I think it's just a great way to help your career as well because you're going to be learning things as you're teaching them agree yeah Santos thanks so much for for joining us I really enjoyed talking about this this type of things and you you helping me learn about python as well oh really appreciate it yeah last words like if if anything you actually helped me out couple of your videos actually helped me out and made me feel better as being an engineer so I just want to thank you as well so you as I said you're impacting a lot of other people out there so thanks yeah thanks again I hope you enjoyed the episode today we'd love to hear your feedback comments and or questions to leave them please visit structuralengineering channel.com there you'll find a summary of the key points discussed in today's episode as well as links to any of the resources or websites mentioned during this episode don't forget to subscribe to Apple podcast Spotify or wherever listen to your podcast until next time we wish you the best in all of your Structural Engineering endeavors

Channel: Engineering Management Institute

Views: 960

Keywords: engineering, civil engineering, engineering career, engineering management, engineering leadership, engineering career advice, leadership skills, project management, people skills, building information modeling, automation, structural analysis, programming, industry trends, structural engineering, architecture, innovation, technology trends, digital tools, structural design, BIM, robotics, future technology, construction, building materials., engineering software, building design

Id: S4geJy39OFU

Length: 29min 15sec (1755 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2024