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ARTICLE for Engineering Legends Column in ASCE’s LME Journal – Part 2 of Column No. 25
Editor: Please include at least two photos with this article – one of Weingardt and one (or two) of his projects. Credit for photos: Richard Weingardt Consultants, Inc.
By Kenneth R. Wright, PE, Dist.M.ASCE
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Popularizer of the catch phrase “the world is run by those who show up,” Richard “Rich” Weingardt is an internationally renowned structural engineer, successful entrepreneur, industry activist, community pacesetter, author of eight books, long-time magazine columnist, accomplished artist and sought-after public speaker – and an adventurer. He has traveled extensively on all seven continents and lectured on six of them – Antarctic being the exception. “Weingardt is truly a 21st century Renaissance Man,” stated Sal Galletta, chairman of the American Engineering Alliance (AEA). “His wide-ranging and powerful actions have both greatly impacted the engineering profession and served the public interest and good,”
When Weingardt received AEA’s Herald Award in 2003, Galletta added, “His extensive writings and lectures consistently beat the drum for empowerment for engineers, exhorting them to step up and take their rightful place of leadership in society. He has expanded on these themes with practical advice to guide individual engineers and other professionals on the path to these goals. He has presented technical engineering information to the general public in a manner that is easily read and understood, and he has extensively exposed this country’s youth to the wonders of engineering.”
Weingardt is the founder of the Denver-based engineering firm Richard Weingardt Consultants, Inc. (RWC). By year 2000, four decades after its inception, RWC completed more than 4,500 significant projects worldwide, many of them engineering excellence award-winners. Among Weingardt’s far-reaching body of work are countless cutting-edge and innovative structural designs – some projects ranked as the newest or largest ever when completed.
Representative Colorado-located projects that fall in this category are the post-tensioned concrete roof over the ballroom at Northeastern Junior College, steel-truss tube tension-ring dome of the Jefferson County Courthouse, thin-shell light-weight-concrete roof of the Adams County Community Center, buried gondola complex at the top of Keystone Mountain, and underground Gold Hill reservoir near Greeley.
Weingardt’s books and 500-plus papers and articles address a wide array of subjects ranging from native-American history to engineering, business, leadership and creativity. Many of writings have appeared in numerous publications around the world and have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic.
In 2003, Weingardt was awarded the Journalism Award of the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES), the first and only engineer to ever receive the national award. Its citation spotlighted two of his books, Forks in the Road: Impacting the World around Us and RAUT: Teacher, Leader, Engineer. His latest book Engineering Legends, which features the contributions of civil engineers in developing America, from the Revolutionary War to present, was the focal point for his presentation to the Library of Congress in 2006.
A motivational speaker and practitioner, Weingardt has been active in both professional and community groups. He was the 1995-96 national president of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) and has served on numerous boards and commissions appointed by three governors of Colorado. He is a registered professional engineer in 29 states.
Born on March 23, 1938 in Sterling, Colorado, Weingardt was the oldest son of Martin and Caroline (Bauer) Weingardt. His siblings are Ronald, Janice and Dianna. Their grandfather John Weingardt, a German house builder and master cabinet-maker, emigrated to the U.S. from the German colonies along the Volga River in Russia, settling in Colorado in 1912.
Rich attended St. Anthony’s Catholic School in Sterling for 12 years. Active in sports, he lettered in basketball and football in high school, excelling as a star halfback and linebacker, back in the days when athletes played both defense and offense. His nickname with sports reporters and his teammates was “Ace.” As a youth, Weingardt was an altar boy, and earned money mowing lawns and delivering the Sterling Journal Advocate newspaper. In junior and senior high, he worked summers and weekends for his father, a prominent Colorado general contractor, doing construction work.
Being good at math and science, as well as the humanities, were not the sole factors in Rich’s decision to pursue engineering as a career, a choice he made early. His exposure to the spectacular Royal Gorge suspension bridge – spanning a half-mile-deep granite canyon carved by the Arkansas River – on a family vacation into the Colorado Rockies excited him into wanting to become a structural engineer. He was in grade school at the time. Plus, he always liked the satisfaction derived from creating and building things. That he greatly admired his father, who thought highly of the engineers and architects, made becoming an engineer totally natural, in order and logical.
Weingardt graduated from high school in 1956, top in his class as valedictorian. He attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, earning degrees in civil-structural engineering – a bachelor’s in 1960 and a master’s in 1964. His graduate school thesis on thin shell analysis was the basis for his first book Thin Shell Design published in 1973.
On May 30, 1959, Rich married his high school sweetheart Evelyn “Evie” Scheberle at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Sterling. She was the oldest of the four children of Harold and Dorothy (Engle) Scheberle. Rich and Evie would have three children – Nancy, Susan and David – and would travel the world together.
Armed with his bachelor’s degree, Weingardt went to work as a GS-7 grade level engineer for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) in Denver in 1960. During his four years with the USBR, he was involved in a wide array of structural projects from bridges and towers to buildings and power plants, and spent nine months in northern California at the construction sites of the Trinity Dam and Power Plant, and the Lewiston Dam, Power Plant and Fish Hatchery. His design projects included the USBR Administrative Offices in Montrose, Colorado, Flaming Gorge Dam Visitors Center in Utah, Yellow Tail Dam Visitors Center in Montana, Red Willow and Willard Canal bridges in the Missouri River Basin District.
In 1964, Weingardt became a registered professional engineer in the State of Colorado with license No. 5606. The same year, he went to work for the distinguished Denver consulting engineering firm Ketchum Konkel Ryan and Fleming. There, he served as project engineer on such projects as the Antlers Hotel and Holly Sugar Towers, both in Colorado Springs, and Currigan Convention Center in Denver.
In January of 1966, Weingardt established RWC, with offices in Denver and Sterling, Colorado, and Lincoln, Nebraska. Among the firm’s first major projects were three multi-million-dollar university buildings at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling and dozens of schools and hospitals in western Nebraska.
A dozen of RWC’s more prominent award-winning projects were the (1) Concourses A, B and C at Denver International Airport, (3) Discovery Learning and Integrated Teaching Engineering Laboratories at the University of Colorado, (4) Harrah’s New Orleans Jazz Casino, (5) Cowboy Hall Of Fame Museum in Okalahoma City, (6) Jefferson County Courthouse in Golden, Colorado, (7) Gold Hill Buried Reservoir near Greeley, Colorado, (8) Dallah Towers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, (9) Ceres Agricultural Mills in western Russia, (10) Farmers Insurance Regional Headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, (11) Keystone Mountain Gondola Interchange, Keystone, Colorado, and (12) 92nd Avenue Overpass, Westminster, Colorado.
Weingardt, himself, is the recipient of numerous industry and community honors, including:
2006. The History and Heritage Award. American Society of Civil Engineers.
2005. Inducted into the U.S. Hall of Fame for Engineering, Science and Technology by the International Technology Institute.
2003. Herald Award. American Engineering Alliance.
2003. Zabel Gold Medal. International Technology Institute.
2002. Engineering Journalism Award. American Association of Engineering Societies.
2001. Designated an Honorary Member in the American Society of Civil Engineers.
2000. Silver Medal (Outstanding Engineer). University of Colorado at Denver.
1998. Distinguished Service Award (for Life Achievement). Regents of the University of Colorado at Boulder
1997. Gold Medal (for Life Achievement). Colorado Engineering Council.
1996. Orley Phillips Award. American Council of Engineering Companies/Colorado.
1996. Engineering Leadership Award. The Massachusetts Engineering Center.
1995. George Norlin Medal. University of Colorado at Boulder
1994. Edmund Friedman Award. American Society of Civil Engineers.
1994. Centennial Gold Medal. University of Colorado at Boulder, College of Engineering
1994. Engineer-of-the-Year Award. American Society of Civil Engineers/ Colorado.
1992. Alfred J. Ryan Award. Professional Engineers of Colorado.
1992. The George Washington Award. American Council of Engineering Companies/Colorado.
1988. Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award. University of Colorado at Boulder.
When Weingardt was elected into the Hall of Fame for Engineering, Science and Technology (HOFEST) in 2005, Dr. I. S. Tuba, Executive Director of International Technology Institute (ITI) and Secretariat to HOFEST said, “Weingardt’s distinguished creative achievements as an eminent leader and world-renowned structural engineer of the highest order – and his notable efforts at elevating the profession – have greatly enlightened the public about issues concerning the impact of engineering on modern society, especially with regard to the creation of wealth and the protection of everyone’s standard of life.”
In addition to serving on a number of university advisory boards over the last 25-years, Weingardt was the chair of the 100th Anniversary Committee for the 100-year celebration of College of Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder in 2001. College boards he has been on include:
Along with being active in leadership in numerous engineering and professional groups, nationally and locally, Weingardt has held several public service positions. Internationally, he was the USA representative at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization’s First Consultation Conference on Consulting Engineering and Architectural Services in Vienna, Austria, in 1995.
Nationally, he was a co-founder of Architects and Engineers Insurance Company AEIC) in Greenville, Delaware, a professional liability insurance company for practicing design professionals. He served on AEIC’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee from its incept in 1987 until 2001. His involvement in Colorado includes:
An international lecturer, Weingardt has made major presentations on engineering and business at:
On the cover of his book Engineering Legends, Henry Hatch, former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, states, “Weingardt, as an eminent engineer and an accomplished author, is a legend himself. His collection of inspiring profiles is a fitting celebration of Civil Engineering’s true heroes. By showing how regular people became extraordinary people, this work inspires all engineers to reach beyond their assume limits and ‘be all they can be’.”
Weingardt has long been an activist in challenging engineers to assume more meaningful leadership roles in society. “As the single most important group responsible to maintaining a nation’s infrastructure and standard of life, engineers must get beyond just making things run and start running things,” said Weingardt. “Increasingly, the world will become more technologically complex. Major public decisions will need meaningful input from those with a solid knowledge of engineering and technology. Because of this, large numbers of engineering leaders will be needed, not just in the engineering industry, but in the public arena as well. The demands on tomorrow's engineers requires they develop both their technical and people skills to the highest level possible.”
After his second book Sound the Charge, dealing with the nation’s last Plains Indian battle on the Central Plains of Colorado, Weingardt’s sleeping interest in oil painting was rekindled. Long a witness to the changes and moods of the western landscape – and curious about America’s Indians and pioneers – his expressions on canvas bring to life the land as native-Americans and the nation’s first immigrants must have experienced it. Weingardt’s oil paintings hang in the lobbies of corporations throughout the Rocky Mountain region and in private collections nationally and internationally.
Weingardt remains active in his firm, serving as CEO and Chairman of the Board. He and his wife Evie reside in Denver in the summer, and in Glendale, Arizona, in the winter, and continue to travel to as many exotic places as possible.
Richard Weingard, P.E, Hon.M.ASCE
Engineer, successful entrepreneur, industry activist, community pacesetter, author of eight books, long-time magazine columnist, accomplished artist and sought-after public speaker – and an adventurer.