Carry Your Professional Engineer License With You Everywhere...Yes, Even to Cocktail Parties.

So one evening, my wife and I get an invitation to join John Henry at his home and studio for cocktails. Unbeknownst to me, that evening would take an unexpected turn with the posing of just one question, “Are you a licensed professional engineer?” asked John Henry upon meeting me for the first time.  “Why yes, yes, I am”, and I reached for my wallet which contained my license. At the same time my wife, Carol is elbowing me and saying, “ I can’t believe you carry your license around with you in your wallet. What on earth ever for?” I just shook my head, and responded with “Well, I always have done so and see no reason to stop doing so now. “

Henry then began to explain that he needed a professional engineer to perform a stress analysis for a massive sculpture that he was designing for the city of Doral, Florida.  It had to be able to stand up to hurricane force winds and the city officials were not convinced that his 50+ years of experience of designing and installing sculptures all over the world was adequate for this particular sculpture. They wanted a professional engineer and one with a license to prove it.  So, hence my journey began into the professional art world. And what a journey it was for an engineer more accustomed to analyzing oil wells than fine pieces of art.

The first fly in the ointment, so to speak, was the request by the city not only for a licensed engineer, but for an actual stamp of my seal. Now, I don’t think I have ever actually had to use my seal, and it has been about forty years since it was first bestowed upon me.  So, I wasn’t looking forward to the search that I envisioned would be required to put my hands on it.  I began the search bright and early one morning and as things rarely go, it was right were it should have been – in the top drawer of my desk. Who would have imagined that I would have that kind of luck? Maybe this project is going to go smoothly, after all, I began foolishly thinking.

So, the second indication that this project was not going to be like those I am accustomed to was the lack of plans available to me. I had based my bid on the fact that there would be plans for how the sculpture was to be constructed. After all, it was a massive structure (30 feet) that was going to frame the entrance to a city. So, it just seemed like something of this magnitude would be planned out. But, I momentarily forgot that I was dealing with an artist and not just any artist, but a world-renowned one. And of course this is a creative endeavor so every single piece was custom made on the spot and adjusted accordingly to how it looked. This meant that I had to actually visit onsite and measure as the artistic process evolved. Oh, did I mention that this was taking place in the dead of winter? I was soon to find out that winter brought an additional challenge to this endeavor. About halfway through the measuring process, my ballpoint pen stopped working. So, I rifled through my coat pocket and found another pen, thinking that the prior one had just run out of ink. Then, the second pen stopped working – at that point, I realized that the ink had frozen in the ballpoint pen. Frozen -- this was something I had not planned for or for that matter, ever even thought about, since usually this part of research/analysis is done in my nice, warm office sitting in front of my computer.

But the learning didn’t stop here; it continued throughout the project. All in all, it turned out to be a quite a rewarding experience. I got to work with a very gifted artist, but would I do it again? Let’s just say it was definitely a learning experience, and that seal is safely ensconced back in my desk drawer. And as you can see, it did make a stunning entrance to the city of Doral.