WSP: Saeed Fathali

In the main part of his talk, our guest speaker will provide us with his insights for three fundamental questions related to the topic of seismic resilience: 1) What is it? 2) Why does it matter? and 3) How can it be pursued/achieved? The talk will include a brief history of when structural engineers started to think about the idea of resilience, the state of practice, and what is being developed for the standards and building codes. Additionally, the talk will address how seismic resilience and sustainability, which are expected to be on the same side of the design, may end up in a trade-off if resilience is misunderstood and mistaken as a synonym for robustness.  

At the end of his talk, and as a secondary topic, our guest speaker has agreed to take questions related to the career choices that graduate students may have in the field of structural engineering. With a PhD he chose to work for a traditional consulting SE firm instead of staying in the academic world. He then moved a couple of times to the other sides of the industry, including the construction/manufacturing and risk/resilience assessments. Recently, he completed a full circle and is back to the consulting world as Vice President of Buildings and Properties with WSP. He would like to share with us what he says was not available to him when he made those transitions: a reliable insight into the “other side.