Engineering offers tools to ‘make a difference’

Joe Elsinger feels fortunate to have worked on a variety of meaningful projects in his career as a civil engineer - including projects like building a concrete bridge in West Africa.

But when a derecho hit the Midwest this summer, he turned his focus to the devastation in his own backyard and on helping here at home.

'Like thousands of other Iowans on the afternoon of Aug. 10, I watched in awe out the windows of our office building as the derecho swept through the Cedar Rapids area,” he said.

'In the aftermath, our office has been extremely busy helping some area communities with cleanup efforts and navigating the funding processes associated with disaster recovery.”

CAREER PATH

For the past decade, Elsinger has worked for MSA Professional Services in Cedar Rapids, an employee-owned, multidisciplinary consulting firm that focuses on community and land development projects.

'Coming out of high school, I picked engineering as a career, simply thinking it was a stable profession with low unemployment, good compensation, and it fit my analytical mindset,” Elsinger said.

The work, he added, also fit his 'fundamental belief in improving the world around me. It seemed civil engineering could provide the skills to contribute to that in a visible way. I won't claim to be ‘called' to the profession. It was simply a choice that aligns with my priorities and my world view.”

This global mindset led the University of Wisconsin-Platteville graduate to join the philanthropic organization Engineers Without Borders-USA as a student. Established in 2002, it provides engineering expertise to communities around the world, often through partnering engineering students with practicing engineers.

With a desire 'to help make the world a little bit better,” Elsinger has traveled several times to rural Ghana in West Africa for projects like the design and construction of a 50-foot span, cast-in-place, concrete pedestrian bridge.

'We built the structure almost entirely by hand with a team of local residents, UWP (Platteville) students and two experienced mentors,” he said.

The work involved fabricating the framework, 'driving in dozens of micropiles with a sledgehammer, bending and tying the steel reinforcement and mixing concrete on site and then placing it, one agonizing wheelbarrow load at a time.” Although the work was difficult, 'that will likely remain the most impactful professional experience I ever have,” he said.

More than 12 years later, he can look at the bridge online, thanks to satellite imagery, and see the well-worn path across the bridge.

Elsinger has come a long way since graduating from college in the depths of the 2008 recession with a bachelor of science in civil engineering.

'Jobs were scarce, but I managed to get an entry-level engineering position with a consulting company in Illinois,” he said. 'A couple years later, my wife and I decided to move back to where we were raised in northeast Iowa.”

Today, with a master's degree in business administration from Upper Iowa University, he is a team leader at MSA and has served as a project manager, project engineer or construction administrator on a variety of municipal, civil and environmental projects.

'I now serve as a water service line team leader, responsible for management of MSA's Cedar Rapids office,” he said. 'I lead a team providing a range of engineering services to meet the needs of clients and personally specialize in wastewater, drinking water and storm water engineering.

'To a layperson, this can be described as making Iowa's waterways cleaner - water from your tap safe to drink and water from storms dealt with as safely and efficiently as possible.”

DERECHO DAMAGE

The August derecho unexpectedly ratcheted up demand for that work.

'As everyone knows, recovery across the state is still not complete, not for lack of heroic amounts of effort by so many Iowans,” he said. 'It takes an incredible amount of resources, planning and coordination to replace damaged infrastructure and remove and dispose of millions of cubic yards of debris from an event that caught everyone by surprise.”

It makes him happy, he said, to see how much progress has been made 'and that I was able to contribute to the recovery in a small way.”

'The Cedar Rapids area may never really look the same, but I believe we will never feel the same either, knowing what we have been able to overcome on top of everything else 2020 piled on our plates.”

REWARDING

Elsinger is quick to point out the benefits of working as an engineer.

'There are countless reasons to consider a job in the engineering field, whether it is in the form of consulting, public sector service or some other more industrially focused engineering application,” he said.

'Most engineers help create things, whether it's related to software, hardware or larger construction,” he said. 'That is a very rewarding feeling, and something most of us take pride in.”

A bonus is that the engineering field offers high job placement rates and is more recession-resistant than other professions.

In addition to his volunteer work with Engineers Without Borders, Elsinger is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the National Society of Professional Engineers.

'The world really does need more engineers, but more than anything else, it needs people who care and want to make a difference in a thousand different ways,” he said.

'Engineering can provide many of us a tool kit to do that, which is probably the simplest reason for why I am one. I try to keep that mindset with me every day.”