The car bounced merrily up the unfinished ramp toward the unfinished Caiyunba bridge. The driver skillfully managed to avoid puncturing a tire despite piles of rebar and other construction clutter, and soon we were standing on the unfinished deck of what would be the world's longest tied-arch span incorporating both rail and highway traffic, at 420 meters. The total length of this Yangtze River crossing in Chongquing is about twice that.

I was with two Chinese engineers, and I honestly don't remember their names. They barely spoke English, and of course my Chinese literacy is nil. But I would be quickly reminded of an enduring truth: Engineers around the world speak the same language.

"Steel?" I asked, pointing here and there. "Meters?"

He smiled, took my notebook and began to sketch a profile of the bridge. From his sketch I deduced that there were 800 meters of total steel girders—420 m long main span, two 102-m-long adjacent spans and two 88-m-long end spans.

I pointed up the river at the Shibanpo, another record-breaking bridge with a 330-m-long steel box girder span. "Kilometers? How far?" I asked. "One point five," he answered triumphantly.

It's tough trying to get down accurate lengths, widths, depths, heights when there's a language barrier. Working for ENR, knowing my readers are engineers who will note every last possible inaccurate measurement, only compounds the anxiety. But give any engineer in the world a writing utensil and writing surface, and he'll communicate beautifully.

Chongqing has two rivers running through it, and that makes for a lot of bridges—and a natural comparison to Pittsburgh (maybe the International Bridge Conference should consider a change of venue). TY Lin International is staking its claim with an impressive, stylish new office building in a new office park and a staff grown from 6 to more than 100. More than 20 new bridges are planned in the area over the next decade.

With 31 million people, the former Chinese capital is bustling. The government wants 12 million of that population to shift from rural farmlands into the city center, and that means "much construction is needed," says Man-Chung Tang, chairman of TYLI.

And so is engineering talent. "There's too much work and not enough good people," says Tang. TYLI visits the engineering universities to recruit young talent, but they tend to prefer the idea of going to the more sophisticated cities of Beijing and Shanghai, he notes. Indeed, the native TYLI engineers in the Chongqing office were notably young (although you know what they say about Asians looking younger than they are—now that's one stereotype I hope holds true for me).

Chwen Siripocanont, a vivacious, accomplished traffic planner from the Bay Area, now spends much of her time as senior vice president for TYLI in Chongqing. She remarked on the impact of the Cultural Revolution: a generation of engineers was lost.

Tang added that when drawing from the Chinese engineering talent pool, his firm looked for those with an entrepreneurial spirit. Those working for governmental design and engineering institutes work in groups, and have more security. Private firms offer less security but better money and bigger challenges.

Be it the language of engineering or the need for it, some things never change, even when you're in a completely different country.

January 1, 2007

I grew up on drawing freehand and started my career in the construction industry as a draftsman after several years of training in board drafting and engineering/construction practices.

Everyday I work with Engineers in the US that have only rudimentary knowledge of drafting and drafting techniques which in no way diminishes their capability as an Engineer but makes it extremly hard to build what they're designing.

In fact I spend much of my valued experience interpreting what was meant by their design and looking for the inserted table that will provide me with the correct measurement for the construction condition I'm building.

Maybe we should redefine what "Good People" are in the industry and give them the right tools and training to communicate effectively. Otherwise we may only get what the best and the brightest have to offer.

Todd Wilson
Civilized Solutions

November 6, 2006

The real problem is engineers are trying to solve today's problems with 1960's methodologies. Instead of complaining about the lack of people entering the profession, we should be more focused on doing more with less.

Chris Garlick
Civilized Solutions