Writing skills are important. Communication is key to managing public input and questions. Designing to just the standards v/s innovation – have the standards beaten the ingenuity out of us?
Carnot Evans, PE, Chair of the Florida Professional Engineers in Industry, covers a wide range of topics with your Engineering Florida host Sam Yates in this episode of Engineering Florida.
Engineering Florida is presented by the Florida Engineering Society.
The Florida Engineering Society, Engineering Florida podcast, is produced by Yates & Associates, Public Relations & Marketing. Contact Sam Yates, Sam@Yatespro.com.
Writing skills are important. Communication is key to managing public input and questions. Designing to just the standards v/s innovation – have the standards beaten the ingenuity out of us?
Carnot Evans, PE, Chair of the Florida Professional Engineers in Industry, covers a wide range of topics with your Engineering Florida host Sam Yates in this episode of Engineering Florida.
Engineering Florida is presented by the Florida Engineering Society.
The Florida Engineering Society, Engineering Florida podcast, is produced by Yates & Associates, Public Relations & Marketing. Contact Sam Yates, Sam@Yatespro.com.
Engineers are engenious professionals. Engineers invent, design, verify and qualify, engineers are the professionals who make our lives and businesses prosperous and safe. The Florida Engineering Society is proud to put our engineering professionals in the spotlight so that they may educate, share information and introduce you to the world of engineering that is thriving in Florida. Here's your host of the Engineering Florida podcast. Sam Yates, with today's guest
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Florida Engineering Society, Engineering Florida podcast. It's a mouthful, but it is very important that we talk about the various things that are happening within the Florida engineering circles. And today, we may not be on the road again. But we are on the road topic again. Pardon me, Willie Nelson, what better way to go over the topics that are related to transportation services than to speak with an engineer who is top of the field notes transportation, like the back of his hand, and my guest today is the Senior Project Manager for Dewberry dewberries, a nationwide firm with planning design construction. As I mentioned, they operate all over the country. They've been around for more than a half century. And Carnot Evans, welcome to the program today.
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:Thank you, Sam, I'm honored to be here.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:Now, I have to say that when I made the introduced introduction and was introducing you, I didn't want to in any way infer that you've been there for 50 years. But you know, that company's been around. You have quite an impressive bio, and I want to get into a lot of your areas of expertise. But before I do that, tell us a bit about yourself first.
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:Sure, Sam, as you mentioned, I'm a Senior Project Manager and I've been working in the transportation planning and design field for about 18 years now a little over 18 years. I grew up in a few different areas around the country, St. Louis, Missouri, New Jersey, Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio. But I've lived in Orlando now for about the past 30 years since coming here to go to UCF. I started at UCF as a mechanical engineering major. And while I was there, I worked at a co op on school and I moonlighted a bit as a pizza delivery driver at the time to make some extra money. The franchisee of that pizza company liked how I was working and making deliveries efficient not just for me, but for the whole driver staff. And he offered me a management position. And it paid very handsomely more than I probably could have made as a graduate engineer out of school at the time. So I left school and I did that for about seven years, I was managing restaurants around Orlando, and doing really well, money wise. But after seven years, it was really kind of heavy on the hours I was working lots of long hours, not a whole lot of days off, doing well financially. But I'd gotten married and I wanted to start a family and that just wasn't going to work well with with raising a family. So I decided to go back to school. And at the time, I also decided to switch to civil engineering and get into transportation design. Once I started, I once I graduated, I started working with a firm here in Orlando, and I really never looked back I couldn't be happier with my choice. As I said, I'm a project manager I'm working with as the deputy program manager of the general engineering consultant to the Central Florida expressway authority as being my main task at this point. I'm managing major projects for them and other aspects of their$4,000,000,000.05 year work plan. And I have a son in college at UCF. He's studying engineering and another one still in high school and I'm really enjoying my career as an engineer.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:Alright, I'm going to ask a question and for those who are not in the pizza industry, they may not get the question but you have spent a number of years in the pizza industry. Did you dock the dough?
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:dock the dough by using the rollers with the spikes on it? Not at first but that became a company policy after about five years and I really I was kind of hesitant when they did it and I thought it degraded from the quality a little bit to be honest.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:The reason I asked that question when you were talking about being in Ohio, I also spent a good number of years in Ohio the the Dayton Cincinnati Columbus area as a television reporter, anchor investigative reporter but I also did public relations and One of my clients was in the pizza industry katsanos pizza.
Unknown:I remember Cassanos Yes. Yeah, awesome pizza.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:And that was one of the first things that if you're going to represent a client, you always have to do a bit of what the client is doing. And I made pizzas. And then the most intriguing thing was, Sam, do you know how to dock the dough? And I was like, No, I do not. So I'm glad that we share an experience there, that's a lot of people don't get that. And for those of you who are going, Okay, move on, move on. It's an experience, it definitely is. Now, with your background, you are all over the world of transportation. So of the many aspects, whether it be street cars, Turnpike, fast, bus transportation, your favorite, if you had to pick out a particular area?
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:Well, I got in this field to really do highway design. And that is by far my favorite mode and in aspect of the profession. I do like all the other modes, too. And I think that having the understandings of the challenges of those other modes helps me be a better engineer. But it really kind of stems from, you know, when when I was growing up, when I was five, my father would take us out for drives around town and around the countryside outside of town. And as most little kids would do, as they, you know, driving around before they had portable video games, and smartphones and other things to keep them occupied, I did fall asleep in the car. And I'd fell asleep, fall asleep. And I'd wake up, you know, half hour or hour later and not know anything about where we were. So I would ask, Hey, Dad, where are we, and my dad being a little bit of a tease would say, Oh, we're lost. And I would just get scared and cry, and I would lose it. So my dad would pull over into the parking lot. And he brought out the map the road map of the area, and he showed me look at the street sign. Look at the map match that up. And this is where we are, this is what the road looks like. You see that curve there. That's the curve on the map taught me how to read a map. And from that point, I was hooked. And I would absorb every map I could get my hands on. I really loved the Rand McNally road atlas. And by the time I was 10, I had memorized the entire interstate highway system even though I had never driven a car at that point. But I really liked roads, especially highways. And that is by far my favorite aspect of of transportation design.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:You know, I do have to say that I miss maps, I mean GPS is okay. But there is just something very ethereal about pulling over looking at a map and get out just it's the identification process. So I'm right there with you, our kids today need to know a little bit more about maps and plotting. But as your has you have had that experience in the the highway industry highways in particular, I know that having been there and been to various public hearings, there is the public hearing, there is an approval process. There are different municipalities, government agencies, you have to work with all of them through a process. And probably I if I had to guess one of the stickiest points of that entire process is the public. So when it comes to the public, and they're wanting to get the pitchforks out, because not in my backyard, or whatever they might be wanting? How do you deal with a public that sometimes does not have the best attitude from your experience?
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:Well, here's where I get to draw a little bit from my experience in the restaurant business, the best way is to deal with an angry customer, or something much the same as dealing with an angry member of the public or an angry politician. There really is two rules you need to follow. First is you can't be defensive. I know it's it's your project, your design, you've poured hours and hours and years into it. But you can't be defensive about it, you have to understand there's a different perspective out there. And that's okay. And then the second is, you just have to be open minded and listen, people just want to be heard. They want their concerns, not only understood, but relayed back to them in a way that helps them understand that you understand that project their concern. And, you know, we hold public meetings and receive public comment mostly to inform people about the project, but also to solicit comments and ideas. And as engineers, we tend to delude ourselves at times that we know what's best. That's that's a delusion. You know, sometimes that's true, but I kid I kid, it's not always true. But there's always learning opportunities from every public meaning I've come across I have I've, I've yet to have one, even one where I only had one person show up, I still learned something from the public and that public meaning. And it really helps us make that connection, and especially to the community. For example, I was working on a project in St. Cloud, Florida, where we're widening an already busy highway. And there was a gentleman there was absolutely apoplectic about this roadway widening and it was getting closer to his mom's house. And he was screaming at the staff at the meeting. And abs, I mean, just absolutely tearing into. And so I went over to him. And I started asking him a few questions, not really trying to talk to him about the projects, asking questions about him and himself and trying to understand his viewpoint a little better. And it turned out, we had a connection, he worked with a good friend of mine. So once I able, once I was able to kind of establish that rapport with him and calm him down and get him to talk a little bit more civilly, we were able to really kind of get a good dialogue between us on the finer details of the project. And in the end, he became actually an advocate for the project. And he invited us to his community meeting to speak about the project, and we got his community's buy in on the project and move forward. And it turned out great at the end. Now, that's not going to happen with every project and every irate citizen. But being able to get to that point, even on someone who is not going to have their mind changed, at least you can help have them help understand that they're heard and that their concerns are valid, and that we're not just dismissing them. And the project may or may not be something that they like, but we can at least try to get that input and seek that connection with the community.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:I think that communication process is vital. When it even comes to when it even comes to working with your client or whomever the project might be. There's sometimes there's a different point of view there consultant versus clients view, and that one can be critical. How do you work around those?
Carnot Evans, PE:Well, I think it's good. You know, I've had roles where I've been on on the consultant side, and now I'm on a role where I'm I'm really kind of more of the owners rep client side, I'm not exactly the client, but I'm, I have to take on that viewpoint. In that aspect, it is differing from the perspective of the client wants to see the project and they want to see it move, and they want to understand what the challenges are. And they want to understand how those solutions to those challenges get developed. On the consultant side, the consultant just wants the project done, done quickly moved and built. And and we just want to move ahead. And there's two ends, I mean, there's two ways to get to the same answer there. But the reality is, the more we can try to understand both sides of that coin, the better off we as engineers can operate on either side of the house. You know, it's not all clients are out, hell bent for profit. But, you know, not all consultants are held on for profit. Some consultants are, you know, are but that's okay. That's what we're in business to do. We are in business to make money and the clients are in business to service the public. So we can find that happy marriage between those two ideas. It's just, you have to sometimes look at it from a different perspective.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:I find that in every podcast that I'm doing with a member of the Florida Engineering Society, that engineers are, in many, many cases, problem solvers of one sort or another. And what you're describing there is part of that I know it I've seen it. Engineering is a wonderful industry, because you are you have a built in Problem Solver mentality to begin with. When it comes to to solving those problems, quality assurance, quality control, they sound like two things that could be diametrically opposed, which is important and which should you strive to do?
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:Well, they're both important, Sam, they're absolutely both important. And yes, you're right, they sound like they should be the same thing and they're just not. They're both important steps to a successful design project. And from an engineer standpoint, you really can't skimp on either one. Where you know, quality assurance is essentially looking at the project holistically and making sure that every aspect of that design is incorporated. You know, everything that should be included in that design is incorporated that every thing that should be part of that submittal is there. And then you've got quality control to make sure that all the T's are crossed, all the i's are dotted, all the math is correct, et cetera. And a lot of times, I think we lean more on the QC side, as engineers than the QA side. And we end up sometimes there's projects that get submitted, you know, everything looks great. You know, from a, from a technical perspective, all your your cross sections look great, all your use, details are great, except the sheets are out of order. So you kind of missed that step. Or things that, you know, we made all this, this decision to design this project and to, to phase our traffic control in a certain way to build it. And it, the drainage trunk line got designed on the wrong side of the road. So it was actually built in phase three instead of phase ones. So the design didn't get, you know, couldn't build the drainage design correctly. And those things eventually get caught. But when they get caught by the contractor, it's expensive, both for the client as well as the firm. And it's those sorts of issues that make it equally important, if not more so important to kind of lean on the QA side than on the QC side. But they're both heavily vital to a correct and precise design.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:You know, ladies and gentlemen, when I speak with guests, or we communicate with guest I, I always look for a golden nugget. And in writing the the introduction, the Music introduction for this, this particular program, I came across the phrase that engineers design and innovate and innovation is a passion for some. And it's interesting, when I was looking for a good definition, that was one of the first definitions for engineers, during that jumped off the pages of the book to me, and it was like, Yeah, that's exactly what they are doing. But you had a different way of talking about something that I wish I had thought of.
Carnot Evans, PE:It's something I've seen, as again, this is coming from my role as a engineering consultant, and I'm managing a program for a client. So I get to see a lot of different design firms approaches. And I see a lot of times where consultants or design engineers will get stuck on. You know, the standards, and the standards are great, but are the standards beating the ingenuity out of us as engineers, right. And what I mean by that, let me start off by saying the standards we have in Florida, and I've worked in a couple of different states, the standards we have in Florida are great, they're fantastic. They're a great tool and a great reference to help streamline a lot of the roadway design process. Where we run into problems or where the standards don't quite fit, US particular proud aspect of a project. And I see in my role, I just see too many engineers that gets stuck by that. They, they either ask the client, or me how to design the solution, or just say we can't do it. And point to the standards, since standard says this, and we have to do this and that and it doesn't work like that. And so if there's a, you know, sometimes, you know, asking for direction from a client is a valid opportunity, and especially if there's certain ways the client wants things done, or how one thing you don't want them to look. But it seems like that opportunity where the standards don't quite fit is an opportunity for that engineer, to shy and come up with an opportunity for them that a lot of engineers just seem to be missing. I'm not saying everybody, I'm just you know, it's it's here or there. But it is seems to be a little bit of a trend to me. I don't think there's any shame at all and asking for help, whether that's within your company to a partner consultant to the client itself. But sometimes, you know, that seems like some of the attitude is if the standard doesn't work, then we can't finish the design. And that's what frustrates me. So I love it best. And I see this a lot to where the engineers see an issue and come up with a solution or multiple solutions even better, and recommend a solution that fits the best and then asks, Is this okay? And that's where I'm really excited because that's where I see the ingenuity coming in. And sometimes it means maybe we draw from this other standard that kind of sort of fits the mold and sometimes it's is a brand new design. And those are that opportunities that I think that really allow us to express our creativity and our ingenuity. And I just, I just don't want us to be beaten down by the standards to the point where we can't do that. What's that,
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:for anyone in any career, when you get to the point of it becomes rote, and you're just doing it because let's get up, go to work, come home, go to bed routine, you're probably wasting a lot of your time. So that innovation is a critical factor. And I have to stress that so I totally agree with you on it. One thing that we have a number of things in common, but you and I both have a commonality in communications, whether it be verbal or whether it is in writing. The way you communicate can have a tremendous impact. I spent years learning to write as people talk versus the textbook style Associated Press textbook of this is a sentence this is a verb, this is a transition. People don't talk that way. So in my particular profession, it took a lot to unlearn the school lessons to write, as people communicate. But writing is critical. How you write is extremely critical when it comes to engineers.
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:Absolutely, Sam, absolutely. The the ability to write well, as an engineer, you know, a lot of us, you know, will say we did great on the LSAT math, but not so great on the verbal. But that's not really an excuse for us, because we I actually spend way more time writing reports and emails and memos, and helping to, to do quality control on messaging to the public and setting up scripts for presentations than I than I do actual math actual calculator calculations. And it's the ability to take that idea, put it on paper, or put it into a viable memo or report that can be understood by a wide range of people. And it's really easy to especially in our profession, to get bogged down into the dry language of this curve is this degrees and this angle and this radius. And it's, it's hard to break out that into something that the public is going to digest, but there's ways that you can expand your writing into something that can be used, like saying an executive summary, or a summary position that helps bring that technical knowledge into a wider range of understanding by the public, by clients, by other engineers, et cetera. So you kind of have to write with the audience in mind, for one, and you know, whether that's a report that's going to get reviewed by the client or federal highway or federal rail or whatever, or is that going to be something that you're going to eventually have to present to the public. And you kind of have to keep the, I like to write with that in mind, so that when I'm explaining something, I kind of try to explain it in a way that makes sense to the most amount of people I'm trying to use common words and, and phrases that help understand the topic. So use of analogies is great, but you don't want to get too bogged down into that. You definitely want to try to write in a voice and not just everything wrote as you as you mentioned everything APA style where it's just the facts, ma'am, kind of Joe Friday stuff, you definitely want to add some personality to it but you don't want to go overboard with that either. Because then kind of lose the the professionalism of that particular report or memo.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:It is an art now before i go much further into the program, I want to know can you come back for another episode? I'm having a great conversation, but I know the clock of the wall is gonna count me down here. Can you come back again for another episode?
Carnot Evans, PE:Absolutely. I'd love to.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:Before I forget it, though, let's let's talk about that surface transportation. That is so important that that was really you know, the the baseline for where you are today.
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:You've had experience in rapid transit. I mentioned street cars, street car corridors, transit station, people movers, we're seeing a push for autonomous passenger vehicles. Over the the the Lakeland area. There's actually I believe a test To track where a lot of the things are being tested before they're put out onto the turnpike. And actually, I think we have autonomous vehicles with a backup driver semis on the on the turnpike being tested now, but there's also a big push for electric as we all know, electric vehicles, autonomous electric vehicles are coming. There's also verta port. And I mentioned that because back in our stomping grounds in Ohio, Dayton, Ohio, Joby aviation, is going to be producing 350, electric taxis, air taxis. And that too, is going to require charging stations, your vantage point,
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:can we get to that point to support everything charging station wise? Or how do we how do we do that?
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:That's an excellent question, Sam. And, you know, we've been looking at that problem. I mean, people have been looking at that problem for over a decade already, even when we started really kind of looking at the whole electric vehicle aspect to transportation. From what I understand, and part of my job with with with CFX, is we're working with a group called a spire, which is a university consortium that's funded by the National Science Foundation, based out of Utah State University, where we are looking at providing electric induction pavement charging at highway speed. So it's a really exciting concept, it's, you know, essentially like the, the little path that your phone light rests on to charge up your phone wirelessly. But for a car moving at highway speed, or a truck moving at highway speed. So we're actually going to be doing a pilot project on a new expressway, out in Lake County, where we're going to be putting in a segment of pavement that will allow for this wireless charging and highway speeds. And it's such it's an exciting technology, but it it also allows us to realize some of the limitations of of the system overall electrification, for the whole country, our electric grid is just simply not up to the task as it stands today. Something to the around once the vehicle fleet if we kept the same sort of charging apparatus that we have today, and just expanded more charging stations, more electric buses, etc. Once we get to about 40%, maybe 50% of the vehicle fleet on the road being electric vehicles, the grid cannot support that much. And that's only half at best. So we need more support from the grid infrastructure, more more electrical generation more electrical transmission to be able to have this all electric dream. And from that perspective, no, we're not ready for and but we understand what those challenges are and how we get to from from where we are today. To that future point is going to be the critical path of how we really develop that next generation of vehicle propulsion.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:Please keep me posted on that, that highway test with a built in charging system. One of my partners in the the 5g industry with cell towers had been experimenting with that with Tesla a number of years ago. And it was it was just so fascinating. So I'm glad to see that that is actually getting out into the field. It is that innovation back to that word again that we were talking about earlier.
Carnot Evans, PE, Florida Engineering Society:There are some there are some stationary charge wireless charging out there. Already. There's a couple a couple of companies that sell it to electric bus fleets. There's a couple of companies that are looking to install it for people in parking lots for the basically you drive your car over and it charges while you're in the store whatever. But this would be this is really kind of the first pilot in the United States that would use it at highway speeds.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:With rail and I know highways are your your forte but with rail here on the east coast of Florida where I've located. We now are seeing 32 trains a day from bright line Miami to Orlando 500 yards from my office and I can tell you mornings are very busy. afternoons are very busy. It's all it's almost that hub approach to air traffic but it's at the rail corridor. Big difference in constructing highways per mile of construction cost versus rail is right line up in your opinion based on cost and everything else that's happening. A good model
Carnot Evans, PE:I think brightline is a good model because they were part of their corridor, they took over the existing Florida East Coast railway line, and repurpose that and made some adjustments to that design to allow for higher speeds and higher speed trains. But it wasn't really that full speed, European, Asian, maglev train kind of thing. But, but then they have the new corridor between the airport and runs along 528 out to Coco, where they can and then built a sealed corridor where every crossing is grade separated crossing and, and they have fencing on both sides, so you don't have animals or pedestrians potentially crossing into it. And they can achieve that higher speed 120 130 mile an hour running speed, which would be absolutely great to run a high speed train, but in for intercity passenger rail, I think that's the good model. And that's really closer to what the European or Asian models are for running that high speed rail. But that does come with a rather significant price tag, especially with how our development has occurred in this country from now from from years ago until now. So, you know, building a new sealed corridor is pretty much only achievable kind of like the brightline did along an interstate highway, where you already have kind of a sealed corridor and just kind of have to enhance that to, to build bridges, additional bridges, and so forth. So I do think that aspect of bright line is the model for the future of high speed rail in this country.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:excellent observation, we covered a lot of territory. And I just want to make sure there any other items that you would like to touch on before we wrap the program up today?
Carnot Evans, PE:Not today. But again, I'd be happy to come on and talk about things that are future podcasts, this has been a great conversation.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:And ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to hold him to that because, you know, again, for our audio listeners, you can't see the expressions and and as you were saying that the smile was beginning to spread. And it's like I know you have more that we could talk about. So rest assured that we are going to have you back and I want to thank you very much. You are the chair of the Florida professional engineers in industry segment. And I get that right? That's correct. Yes. And that is is important because it says that you are the leading edge of the industry and a lot of people. Hopefully, as we do more of these programs will begin to understand that there is not a cookie cutter mold for engineering engineers do a lot of things. And they make life better for us.
Carnot Evans, PE:You flatter me Sam. Thank you.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast:All right. I'm gonna look forward to that. And that's going to wrap up this edition of the Florida Engineering Society podcast, Engineering Florida. I'm your host, Sam Yates. And until our next episode, have a great day, everybody.
Sam Yates:Thanks for listening to another informative episode of the Engineering Florida podcast. Our goal is to help educate and inform everyone who listens to our podcast about our members and topics of interest to the Florida Engineering Society. On behalf of the Florida Engineering Society, and the Engineering Florida podcast, have a great day everybody