Latest Writing
Insights
Short, practical writing on concrete and steel design, lateral systems, advanced analysis, and the Python and parametric workflows that support them.
The Technical Interview Questions That Actually Reveal a Structural Engineer
Most technical interviews test whether someone memorised the right facts. The questions that actually tell you who can engineer are the ones with no clean answer — where you're listening to the reasoning, not the result.
6 min read
What Separates a Strong Structural Graduate From a Weak One in the First Two Years
It's almost never raw intelligence or grades. The graduates who pull ahead in the first two years do a handful of specific things — and most of them have nothing to do with how much they already know.
6 min read
"The Software Said So" Was Never an Engineering Justification
The model gave a number, the number went in the report, and nobody asked whether it was right. That was a problem before AI. It's a bigger one now.
5 min read
The Skills Worth Building as a Structural Engineer When AI Can Do the Rest
AI is getting good at the parts of engineering that are easy to write down. The career-defining skills are the ones it can't — and they're not the ones most engineers are investing in.
6 min read
What the CPEng Assessment Actually Looks For — and What Candidates Submit Instead
Most CPEng submissions fail on the same gap: the candidate describes what they did, when the assessment is asking them to demonstrate the competency behind it. Those are different documents.
6 min read
Accidental Torsion: The Load Case Your Symmetric Building Still Needs
Your plan is symmetric, the centre of mass sits on the centre of rigidity, so torsion is zero — right? AS 1170.4 disagrees, and the eccentricity it makes you carry lands hardest on the corner elements you were least worried about.
8 min read
The Shear Modifier Everyone Forgets: f12 on Walls in ETABS
Most engineers diligently crack their walls for bending and leave the shear stiffness at full value. For squat walls, spandrels, and basement walls, that single oversight quietly distorts the entire lateral distribution.
6 min read
P-Delta in ETABS: What the Setting Actually Does, and When It Bites
Ticking the P-delta box doesn't mean you've captured second-order effects. ETABS handles one half of the problem at the global level and leaves the other half to member design — and the gap is where people get caught.
8 min read
Construction Sequence: The Loads Your Final-Condition Model Never Sees
Your model analyses a finished building under its design loads. The structure has to survive every stage of getting there — half-built, propped, eccentrically loaded — and some of those stages are worse than the day it opens.
5 min read
PT Slabs: The Secondary Moments That Quietly Govern Your Design
In a continuous PT slab, the prestress doesn't just balance load — the supports fight the camber it induces, and that restraint generates moments that survive all the way to your ultimate strength check.
5 min read
Differential Column Shortening: The Movement Your Static Model Doesn't See
Run a tall concrete building in one shot and every column lands at the right level. Real buildings don't get built in one shot — the core and the columns shorten at different rates over years, and the difference redistributes force you never designed for.
9 min read
The Capability Statement Is Dead: How AI Changes How Engineering Firms Win Work
When AI can produce a polished capability statement, a tidy methodology, and a credible-looking proposal in minutes, those things stop being proof of anything. What's left is the part AI can't fake — and it favours the specialist.
5 min read
AI Drafts the Report. A Registered Engineer Still Owns It.
AI can write the calc, the report, and the justification faster than you can read them. But in Australia the signature on the bottom belongs to a registered engineer who is personally accountable — and that gap is about to get sharper, not softer.
5 min read
AI Won't Replace Structural Engineers — But It Will Change What We're Paid For
The fear is that AI takes the job. The reality is subtler: it takes the parts of the job that were never the valuable part, and leaves the engineer holding the things that always were — judgement, and accountability.
5 min read
Modal Results That Look Fine and Aren't
The model ran, the periods came out, the building drew a nice mode shape. None of that tells you the dynamics are right. Here are the checks that catch the silent errors before they reach a design report.
8 min read
Wind or Seismic Governs — And Why the Answer Changes Up the Height
Comparing base shears tells you almost nothing. The governing action flips between shear, overturning, and drift — and between wind and seismic — at different levels of the same building. Here's how to read it.
8 min read
Cracked Section Properties in ETABS — What Most Engineers Get Wrong
Applying 0.7 to all columns and 0.35 to all walls and moving on is the most common stiffness-modifier mistake I see — and the one with the biggest downstream consequences.
8 min read
Load Paths: The Concept That Separates Engineers From Software Operators
Anyone can run the model. The engineer who can trace every force from where it lands to where it grounds — by hand, before the model — is the one who catches what the model hides.
5 min read
AI Will Make You Faster. It Won't Make You a Structural Engineer.
AI can hand a graduate a load take-down, a draft calc, and a plausible answer in seconds. The danger isn't that it's wrong. It's that the struggle it removes is the exact struggle that used to build judgement.
5 min read
Setting Up a Lateral Stability Workflow That Actually Holds Up
Most lateral systems fail in review for the same reason — the workflow skipped straight to modelling. Here's the order that catches problems before they become rework.
7 min read