Good, Thoughtful Hosts #403: Leading with the Fundamentals

Episodes transcribed by AI and proofed for accuracy and spelling by our team.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Civil engineering, infrastructure projects, longevity, ethical code, health safety welfare, climate change, AI integration, empirical evidence, historical techniques, public responsibility, project design, professional ethics, technological advancements, societal impact, engineering fundamentals.

Sarah Steimer 00:07
Hi everyone, and welcome to Good, Thoughtful Hosts. I’m Sarah Steimer, and today we’re talking about civil engineering, or rather, we’re using civil engineering as an example of how people can lead with their profession’s most basic fundamentals. When we talk about being at the forefront, as we have this season, it’s easy to automatically think of the hottest trend or the newest technology. I mean, there’s even an AI platform called Forefront. But forefront means being at an important, prominent, or leading position. Civil engineers, we’ll learn today, are often at the forefront of our built environment. They’re responsible for the design, construction, and maintenance of many infrastructure projects, giving them a key role in keeping us safe, and because the projects they deal with are far from temporary — you know, roads aren’t typically built for just a few months’ use — that also positions civil engineers as the first line of defense against poor decisions that could affect generations of people. Civil engineers themselves need to keep the fundamentals of their profession top of mind, regardless of how much the world may be changing around them, be it with technology, the environment, or even basic funding for their work. In our guest’s own words…

Michael White 01:35
We have a responsibility to everybody.

Producer 01:49
Today’s special guest.

Michael White 01:52
My name is Michael White. I’m the national director of civil engineering for Cushing Terrell.

Sarah Steimer 01:59
Awesome, Michael. Thank you so much for joining us. Do you prefer Michael or Mike?

Michael White 02:03
I like both. You pick. Just never Mikey.

Sarah Steimer 02:05
Never Mikey. Okay, got it. Actually, I have a friend that we call Mikey, so I’ll be careful. So just to begin with, here, you know we’re going to be talking a lot about, well, we have been talking a lot about being at the forefront in this season. That’s been the whole theme. We’re going to turn that on its head a tiny bit today. And the reason I want to start very basically here is because this is going to set the foundation for the entire conversation. So that being said, Michael, Mike, tell us just basically, what is civil engineering about? Give us the beginnings. Give us the start. Give us the foundation.

Michael White 02:41
Sure. Civil engineering is the oldest of all the engineering disciplines and goes all the way back, if you if you want to, to when human society started to move from a hunter-gatherer paradigm to more agrarian. And it starts with evidence of canal building 10,000 years ago, right as people identified the need to better manage their crops and better manage their food supplies. So you can trace it that far back, if you want to, and then even in kind of more of the maybe more understood historical ages, the Egyptians and the pyramids, perfect example there. A couple 1,000 years ago, the Romans were doing aqueducts and pavements, and some of that stuff survives still today. So it goes back a long way, and many of the principles that were established in those early phases of civil engineering are still, you know, in play today. We still hold to those. They’re all deeply rooted in Newtonian physics. And of course, water flows downhill, and, you know, everything kind of builds from there.

Sarah Steimer 03:43
I love that idea of, you know, it’s, it’s starting very basic, you know, you you start to become a civil engineer and, you know, it’s like, hey, people have been doing this for years. This has been around forever. This is something that, since we all started to live together, really, in a more organized fashion, this has had to exist. So now I want to talk about maybe what really hasn’t changed. I would love to hear some examples of things that absolutely have not changed in the profession. You know, when you learned about the history of civil engineering, what are some things — like you mentioned water runs downhill — that obviously has not changed?

Michael White 04:20
Yes, right? I mean, we benefit now from the ability to have pressure systems, which is how we get water uphill when we need it. But, yeah, the very basics, and this kind of goes back to maybe Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: food, water, shelter. We’re in the business of providing the resources to obtain those things. We want to bring clean water to people. We want to take waste away. We want to give people stable structure that provides shelter. We want to — now, kind of in more modern times — mobility and and access to transportation, whether that’s personal or mass, those are things that, again, we kind of serve the greater good for and and across, you know, different. Sectors of society.

Sarah Steimer 05:01
So it, so much of this, from my understanding, you know, this really does, in addition to the fact that this profession has been around forever, it’s so much about the longevity of the work as well. It’s not just what people need today, how to get them from point A to point B, or how to get their needs met. They need to be met for many years to come. I mean, you think of crazy old cities, maybe in Europe or Asia or wherever, and a lot of those old roads are being used still, you know. So those were still smart engineering choices in many ways. Talk to me a little bit about what it’s like to think in terms of longevity when it comes to doing your job.

Michael White 05:45
Yeah, you know, I was fortunate: Early in my career, I started in Philadelphia, which is one of the oldest cities here in the United States, and I worked for the water department. I spent a lot of time underground in Philly, which was fantastic. They have some very old systems that are still functional today. A lot of the sewers in Philadelphia were hand-laid brick in the early 1900s and so in many cases, those are still functional. They’re actually pioneering technology over the last couple of decades to rehabilitate those sewers and keep them in place and keep them active. And so, I mean, from that regard, a century, 150 years, some of those things are as old as, really, any technology we have, you know, in our modern world. And then you kind of touched on older than that in Europe and some other civilized societies. I visited England a few years ago and went to Hadrian’s Wall. And there are evidence of Roman construction and Roman engineering all over the place there. You know, there are bridge abutments that the Romans built that are still in the river and still functional. And you know, that’s 2000 years of an, of erosion trying to take that out of the river, and it’s still there. So yes, when we think about longevity of our systems, they aren’t just for today. They’re not just for right now. And now, as we start to move into materials like plastics and and using those and employing those in some of our work, particularly in underground systems like water and sewer, if those are undisturbed, they may be there for thousands of years now, so the longevity of our work is definitely something that we have to consider and along with that, we also have to consider that there are generations of people that will be served by those systems.

Sarah Steimer 07:27
This is a perfect jumping off point then for something that’s going to lead much of the rest of our conversation, which is this idea of, if it’s going to serve so many people, if it’s not just all the people who are going to encounter it today, but also their children and their grandchildren and their great, great grandchildren, and anyone who moves in, anything like that, there is an ethical component to what we’re talking about. Then talk to me a little bit more about the ethics of being a civil engineer and how much you guys maybe reference those ethics and remind yourself of those ethics.

Michael White 08:05
Yeah. So the American Society of Civil Engineers publishes our ethical code, and it’s been around for about 100 years now, and most engineering societies have some version of this. In fact, most professions have some version of this. Ours in civil engineering starts with our paramount concern, which is the health, safety, and welfare of the public, and then also, second only to that, is to enhance the quality of life for humanity. Those are direct quotes. Those are right off the page. And then there’s a number of other considerations that we have to make, but we have to hold those two things above all else, as far as kind of how often we reference it, I think your mileage will vary by the engineer. But here in Cushing Terrell in our group, we look at them annually. We make sure to make it a point to our understanding of it. And as we grow as people and professionals, our understanding of it changes, right? And I think the scope of it changes as we get more experience and as we grow. As a young engineer, as a new engineer, your world is very small. It’s very tight to the work that you’re doing. The more of that you do, and the more that you get exposed to, you recognize just the impacts that we do have and how wide that spreads. And so I think your perspective on it does change over time.

Sarah Steimer 09:14
So you know, you lead others, of course, in the organization, what has been sort of your approach to reviewing these ethics, reminding your colleagues of these ethics, things like that.

Michael White 09:27
We take a couple different approaches to it. We do bring the group together every month, and we talk about different things in the industry, and ethics is part of that. And then there are times when it comes up, kind of in an acute way, where we may be dealing with a particular issue in a particular project, and we identify that there may be an ethical issue in play, and then we have to examine it and make sure that we’re on firm ground.

Sarah Steimer 09:51
So it’s something that I think is really interesting about this that you and I spoke about briefly when we talked prior to this episode. There’re certainly a lot of ways in which your profession is affected by politics, you know, affected by whatever new rules and regulations and this and that, and what funding is given or cut, or whatever, you know, just all of the topsy turvy of what can possibly happen. How does this code of ethics play into that and sort of keep you out of that political fray, a little bit, keep you out of that partisan fray.

Michael White 10:27
As people, of course, we have our own motivations and our own political leanings and things along that line. But as professionals, we have a duty to everyone. We don’t get to decide who gets to have clean water. We don’t get to decide who has access to resources. That’s not for us to decide. We have a responsibility to everybody. And so you know, whatever you may think about funding for infrastructure, whatever you may think about public money versus private money, or any of those other things, you know, where all that comes from should matter less to us as civil engineers than the recipients of, you know, the work that we do and the people that are going to benefit from it. Within our ethical code is a bunch of language around, you know, not discriminating and providing equitable solutions that you know, service as many people as possible.

Sarah Steimer 11:16
You know, this is something to where, not only is it the jumble that you might have to go through because of regulations changing or funding changing. But then you also have things like climate change, where that is going to really shape what you’re doing. So there are so many of these outside influences to your jobs. And of course, that’s many people’s jobs, certainly, but yours affects how other people are living all the time. I’m curious to know how you think about leading with ethics, or leading with sort of the core concepts of your profession, when it comes to these constantly changing or even technology, technology constantly changing. How have you kind of led with these very basic, foundational aspects of your profession?

Michael White 12:07
I would say we lead with a healthy skepticism. And what I mean by that is not that we’re opposed to absorbing new advancements and new technologies and things along those lines, but I think that because, foundationally, what we do is so tried and true that, you know, and then a lot of these, you know, ancient or historical techniques are still effective today, that you should be generally cautious that these innovations are actually improving on on what are tried and true methods, along with that, particularly as it comes to things like climate change and AI and some of these kind of, you know, more modern topics that we’ve had to wrestle with. We have to build our design and we have to build our work on top of empirical evidence. And if we don’t have solid empirical evidence, we shouldn’t be using that as the foundation of our work. So again, some of these historically tried and true methods have been proven to be effective over and over and over again. So it’s tough for us to be early adopters, particularly when we know the ramifications of some of these decisions may last for a century. So we have to be very careful, and, you know, kind of to the point of climate change, there isn’t enough empirical evidence yet. There’s obviously evidence that it’s occurring. The facets of what we do in terms of drainage and storm water management design is rely on historic rainfall data that is rapidly becoming obsolete because we don’t have historical models that match current trends.

Sarah Steimer 13:59
I wanted to talk a little bit more also about AI coming into the picture. You know, even for myself as a writer, as a journalist, there is sort of this idea of, well, how can you use AI? How can I like, what am I like—How can I ChatGPT something, you know? How have you seen it come into your profession, and where have you kind of either felt like it was time to embrace or felt like you know what the ethics of this, or the background, or what I know to be true, it’s not time for us yet.

Michael White 14:33
So this is a big topic, and it’s on everybody’s mind right now because it is starting to integrate into the fabric of our reality. I use ChatGPT, I ask it all kinds of silly questions, right, in my personal life. Again, at work, though, we have to be, particularly as engineers, and particularly as civil engineers, we have to be very skeptical. The reason for that, at least in my mind, is that one of our ethical requirements is that we only, only approve or stamp work that has been prepared by us as the licensed engineer or reviewed by us under our responsible charge. And the complication with AI is that that software, that machine, however you want to refer to it, was programmed by someone that I don’t know, and was prepared, and that machine was taught based on a data set that I haven’t reviewed, and I can’t crack into their algorithm and understand how it synthesizes data. While we use software tools all the time, and I’m not saying that we shouldn’t, some of them are incredible for our efficiency. If I’m talking about a spreadsheet that somebody else created, I can open that up and look at the formulas that were used to provide the outputs. If we’re talking about an AutoCAD drawing that maybe used a tool to better grade a detention pond, I can look at those outputs and know whether it’s right or wrong. When it comes to an AI product that may be synthesizing reams of data, I don’t know what goes into that sausage. I don’t know what’s happening there. And so again, if I’m upholding my ethical responsibility as a licensed engineer with this duty to protect the public for generations, I’m not sure I can trust that without a tremendous amount of reassurance, a tremendous amount of research. That’s where we start to run into issues as this becomes more prevalent.

Sarah Steimer 16:26
Yeah, and to be clear, too, I— this is not like a AI haters podcast by any means. Like I I have ChatGPT create workouts for me. And should I do that many jump squats? Probably not, but I will follow along as best as I can. But I think you’re you’re making a very good point here. It’s, it’s easy to get excited about new technology. It’s easy to feel like that’s going to be what gives you the edge. That’s going to be what puts you ahead of the competition. However, if we don’t always know the inputs, like you’re saying, if we don’t know how this all came together — because what people often forget is that AI is not just robots. It is the information that we gave the robot. So it’s it’s just a really, to me, it’s refreshing to hear someone talk about pumping the brakes a little bit, because you can still make it to your destination using your brakes. It’s not just all like pedal to the metal type thing. I’m I’m throwing out the goofiest metaphors here, but still, the point is being made. I wanted to know though also, have there been other times in your career, maybe early on, or more recently, where you have been able to digest something through this foundation of simple engineering, through the foundation of your ethics, and kind of go, “That’s not going to be the best choice.” You know, can you, can you tell me a little bit more about some of those instances?

Michael White 17:56
Yeah, I mean, I can give you a very recent example. We were working with a software vendor that had a new kind of AI-driven tool that, what they were marketing as is a efficiency tool in doing storm water and drainage modeling, okay? And that’s an important part of what we do. And and they did a live demonstration for us, and at one point, this guy had a flood going through a house, and it was clear on the screen what was happening. And he was really doing a good job of trying to minimize the mistakes that the machine could make and and that there were ways around these sorts of thing. But their their demonstration basically had this house washing downstream, and it was an overlay to an aerial and they had all their graphics on top of it, but it was really clear what was happening. And we didn’t buy that software, right? That that was pretty clear. It’s not ready yet. And of course, you know, the human check on it is, yep, there’s a house there, and yep, your floods going right through it. And it’s really obvious. There may be instances where it’s not so obvious, right? And, you know, that’s a perfect example of it. But what if it’s not the house, that’s the issue. What if it is a little further downstream, and it’s a crosswalk at a school right? Then? Then it starts to get really dicey, because you may not be able to see that there’s a temporary obstacle there, but if your temporary obstacle is a kindergartener, you definitely don’t want them in the way of that, but those are cases where the machine’s not going to know what to do there, right?

Sarah Steimer 17:56
And it’s, I’m so glad that you use the word efficiency, because I do love that so much of this is pitched with this idea of, this will be more efficient. This will be more efficient. Does that ever ring alarm bells for you in terms of, but is it safe? Like, do you kind of go back to some of those words that are important, I’ll pull it back up. You know, from the code of ethics, like health, safety, welfare. Do you think those tend to be run over by things like efficiency, faster, better, or whatever.

Michael White 19:56
I think they can be. I think it’s ripe for that, honestly. And I think sometimes we get a little wrapped around the cult of productivity and forget what’s at the heart of it, which is, you know, the value of the work. You know, we as consultants are paid hourly, and we want to be efficient for our clients, but we also have a responsibility that is to something bigger than that. And I think, you know, if we’re careful about how we represent that. I think everybody understands the importance of it. There are times when that does break down, and it’s our responsibility as the engineer to, you know, represent those ethical concerns, to our clients, or to jurisdictions, or wherever it might be, sometimes to our own bosses.

Sarah Steimer 20:36
Well, okay, so let’s talk about maybe a time where, because it’s really we’re talking now, also about speaking up and, you know, being that stick in the mud maybe to somebody’s like purported, you know, profitability, or whatever it may be. Can you tell me about a time when maybe that was a little trickier for you? You know, if we’ve got some younger engineers hearing this, and they might be working with folks who are getting excited about X, Y, Z, whether it’s technology related or just something else, is not seeming right to them. Can you maybe give us a little bit of a walk through with that from perhaps your own experience?

Michael White 21:13
Yeah, there’s a couple that come to mind. When I was a young, new engineer, anyway, I had maybe been working in the industry for a couple of years, and was given a project by the firm that I worked for, and I met with the client. And the client was a transit district, and they were working on a new bus barn facility where they were going to store some buses. Okay, fine, not out of the, not unusual for the kind of scope that we were doing at the time. And when I met with them, they handed a map of the site to me, and it had a bunch of red squares on it. And my job was to design an underground drainage system for this facility. What they told me was, you can’t put anything in the ground here where these red squares are. And I said, Well, why not? And they said, Well, that’s where the toxic waste is buried, and if we dig it up, we have to clean it up. So you can’t dig there. That site was next to a river, right? So it’s really problematic that they knew it was there, but they didn’t want to spend the money to clean it up, and they had probably gotten the land cheap in order to, you know, build their bus barn, and that was the risk they were willing to take. Now, I understood my ethical obligation there to speak up, because I was young and new to the industry, I wasn’t sure what I should do there, and so I kept my mouth shut. And 20 plus years later, it still bothers me. And I know that that facility got built, and I know where it is. I don’t go anywhere near it.

Sarah Steimer 22:34
You’re not like white water rafting over there, or. Staying out of it, yeah.

Michael White 22:39
You know, so, so there’s, there’s a space where I didn’t speak up, and it never sat right with me. And, you know, lessons learned. Of course, a while later, I was a licensed engineer, and I was working on a school, and I was working with some other design professionals, and one of them, their responsibility was, was to basically beautify the site. And they had very, ideas about how to incorporate plantings and trees and kind of all these, these beautiful, beautiful elements, which looked great on paper. The problem was that a lot of the trees were blocking the bus drop off from the visibility of drivers that were using a similar space. And so the argument became, how are we able to keep these kids safe when they’re getting off the bus and free of conflict from from drivers? And ultimately, I decided, as the civil engineer, when that’s where my responsibility lies, that no, we couldn’t and we had to change this design. Now this other professional had spent a lot of time and effort on what they were planning to do, and of course, felt some ownership of it, and they were very disappointed and frankly angry that that I was asking them to move these obstructions so that there wasn’t an issue with life safety. In the course of having that argument, I found out that this person was also a board member at the school, and tried to have me fired.

Sarah Steimer 23:57
My idea over anything else, please.

Michael White 24:00
This is, yeah, exactly, and, and so. And in the end, though, because I was under contract to be the civil engineer of record, and it was my decision, she had to back down. I’ve never worked with her since and or for that school since, as a matter of fact, but the fact remains that I knew in that moment I had to stand up. I had to say, look, no, we’re not going to put these kids’ lives at risk for something that is essentially aesthetic, and that was a difficult thing to do, and it, you know, really maybe did almost cost me my job, but in the end, it’s what I had to do.

Sarah Steimer 24:31
Okay, so I’m not necessarily asking you to comment on your, you know, your entire profession, your entire field, anything like that. But have you noticed, or have you felt strongly recently at all about maybe the speed at which things do move, and whether or not people are taking a long enough beat, you know, pumping that break like I mentioned. Or do you maybe have a suggestion or a thought for young engineers? Engineers, or new engineers, kind of just moving into this space, especially in this era of sort of move fast, break things, and that’s kind of the opposite of what it seems like civil engineering is all about.

Michael White 25:12
Yeah. I mean, I think maybe said a different way, it should start with a curiosity: Am I doing the right thing here? And that should always be a question that any engineer should keep in the back of their mind, right? Yes, we have a responsibility to our clients. Yes, we have a responsibility to the companies that we work for. Yes, we have and we have this overarching responsibility to the public, and in an ideal situation, you’re serving all of those in a positive way, right? And and then everybody comes out happy. But when things start to break down, I think, is when one of those competing priorities starts to try to take precedence over any of the others. And, you know, you may have a client who is very motivated by schedule. They have a certain time to market, to get their building open, or whatever it might be, in order to meet their pro forma and understand their finance— and realize their financial goals. So we have to do our best to try and represent that for them. But at the same time, you also have a juristic process that you have to go through, and you have to sometimes negotiate with transportation departments and planning departments and things along those lines to make sure that we’re upholding those cities’ understanding of what their responsibility is, for access and for safety and for all these other things. And so there are a number of checks and balances along the way that do come into the process. And we do this every day with all of our different types of projects. We work in all kinds of different industries and all kinds of different regions, but it’s the same every, it’s the same everywhere.

Sarah Steimer 26:44
Well, Michael, again, this has been a really great conversation. I love hearing about these projects. I love hearing how people do their job and, you know, keep everyone accountable and so forth. But was there anything else that you wanted to mention on this topic today?

Michael White 26:58
You know, I think I would like to reiterate that we’re not opposed to advancements in technology, and we use all kinds of them. In fact, we have an R&D portion of our work that, you know, we’re trying out new things kind of all the time to see if they do make sense. We want to stay on the forefront and the cutting edge of our industry without sacrificing those values that this industry was built on. And I think that’s really kind of the parting message that that I’d like, you know, people to walk away from this with is, you know, we want to be responsible, but we also want to serve these different communities that are that are so important to us.

Sarah Steimer 27:33
Again, this is not an AI haters podcast or technology haters podcast by any means. Well again, thank you so much, Michael. I really appreciate your taking the time with us today.

Michael White 27:43
My pleasure.

Producer 27:51
Music for Good, Thoughtful Hosts was written, produced, and performed by Sam Clapp. Our moderator is Sarah Steimer. Editing by Travis Estvold. And a special thank you to our content development team, Marni Moore and Trisha Miller. For more information about the podcast, visit thoughtfulhosts.com. Thanks for listening.