It’s snow season in a lot of places right now – which means salt season. And salt season isn’t great for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is contaminated water. So, Connie Fortin and Tim Olson have a new idea. They call it low salt design – a way of reducing the need for salt from the very start of the project. Fortin is a low salt strategist and Olson a water resources engineer, both for Bolton and Menk in Minnesota. In episode 185 of ASCE Plot Points, Fortin and Oloen discuss low salt design and why the solutions might be even simpler than you ever imagined. Learn more about low salt design, including a free download with suggested solutions. And dive deeper into the concepts in an article Fortin and Olson wrote for the ASCE Journal of Cold Regions Engineering.

After more than a decade of experience building teams that build airplanes, Lisa Schleuter has added a new job title to her resume: children’s book author. Schleuter has published a new book called Ollie the Civil Engineer aimed at entertaining and inspiring young children. In episode 184 of ASCE Plot Points, Schleuter talks about Ollie, her career in civil engineering, and how she came to find herself as a newly minted author.

AI takes up a lot of oxygen in the room right now. But when it comes to specific impacts, do we have a strong industry-wide understanding? Does anyone know? Mark Coates, vice president of the Infrastructure Policy Advancement team at Bentley Systems, set about finding out. His group helped lead a global study to better understand the topic, looking at AI in three main areas: readiness, risk, and returns. In episode 183 of ASCE Plot Points, Coates discusses the survey and what the results suggest about the future of the industry.