2004 Courses Take on Special Issues in the Engineering of Older Buildings
Summer 2004
Each year in the United States, 94 cents of every construction dollar is spent on the existing built environment. Annually, more than $3 billion in construction is directly attributed to the availability of federal historic preservation rehabilitation tax credits. Rehabilitation of existing commercial, residential, and public sector buildings exceeds $400 billion per year.
Recognizing the challenges of the existing built environment represents a significant and increasing percentage of work produced by U.S. architectural firms, NCPTT recently introduced training to teach engineering professionals about specific issues involved in engineering for older and historic buildings.
This national training was held July 13-23 and was attended by engineers and related professionals who have structural engineering experience and an interest in the specific engineering issues of historic structures. Participants studied nationally-significant structures at Melrose Plantation, located at the Cane River Creole National Historical Park.
“Many times, builders of historic buildings didn’t necessarily follow the same rules of construction we use today,” said Donna Isaacs, a student at the University of Florida’s M.E. Rinker Sr. School of Building Construction who attended the entire two-week institute. “The information we’re learning is helping me rethink how I look at these buildings and giving me a firm foundation to address these issues in my future career.”
The Summer Institute consisted of four two-day courses that could be taken individually or as a full two-week introduction to preservation engineering.
Nationally-Recognized Experts
Four nationally-recognized experts conducted the training. David C. Fischetti, PE, president of DCF Engineering in North Carolina, led training on Building Pathology. Melvyn Green, PE, of Melvyn Green and Associates in California, instructed a course on Materials and Older Buildings; Michael C. Henry, PE, AIA, founding partner of Watson and Henry Associates in New Jersey, instructed Investigations and Diagnostics Methodology. Finally, Samuel Y. Harris, PE, FAIA, JD, who teaches historic preservation and professional practice at the University of Pennsylvania, led training on Treatment Strategies and Interventions.
Harris’ Treatment Strategy and Interventions course concluded with a group presentation of proposed stabilization strategies for Melrose Plantation’s African House. Scott Falvey, an architect from Knoxville, Tennessee, attended the class and says it provided him tools needed to enhance his professional development.
“The course has taught me how to set up matrices of different solutions which will help communicate all the options for intervention to my clients,” he said. “Working in group settings has been very effective for teaching the materials for the course. Having access to the case studies along with the teaching style has made the course one of the best continuing education unit courses I have participated in.”
Professional development consideration for the training was made available through the American Institute of Architects Historic Resources Committee and the American Society of Civil Engineers Architectural Engineering Institute.
Training Emerges from 2003 APT Effort
The Summer Institute grew out of NCPTT’s “Engineering for Older Buildings, including Heritage Buildings” course offered during the 2003 Association for Preservation Technology International Conference in Portland, Maine.
At the Portland conference, materials and pathologies were studied, addressing vulnerability of materials, materials performance, building pathology and processes of deterioration. Working from the engineer’s standpoint, the courses introduced the specific issues, technical challenges and illustrative solutions that are encountered in older buildings.
More than 30 professionals in the field attended the training, which was taught by both Henry and Harris. According to Harris, the training was useful in tackling some of the field’s most persistent, hard-to-address issues.
“Two things emerged during the training session which confirmed in my mind the validity of our hypothesis that preservation engineering has definition and the definition is not well understood,” he said.
“In an exercise involving the calculation of an engineering value, the younger engineers tended to retreat to the over-conservative safety of published values and non-engineers were overly willing to defer to such youthful insecurity. One of the important points of preservation engineering is the development of confidence in the presence of uncertainty.”
NCPTT plans to continue its training for architects and engineers at next year’s Summer Institute. While the 2004 program focused on Engineering for Older and Historic Buildings, future offerings may include courses in Materials Research, Archeology & Collections and Historic Landscapes programs.