Editor’s Note

The first five papers in this issue appear as a special section on the performance of the Pentagon in response to the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Paul Mlakar, leader of the Building Performance Study (BPS) team established by ASCE immediately following the attack, coordinated the preparation and submission of these manuscripts. The papers, written by members of the BPS team, present a summary of the team’s findings that were published by ASCE in 2003 in The Pentagon Building Performance Report. This comprehensive report is available for purchase on the ASCE publications Web site.

The concept of this special section emerged from the Third Forensic Engineering Congress held in San Diego in October 2003. Several members of the BPS team reviewed their report at a special session of the congress. Following this inspiring presentation, Paul Mlakar and I discussed the value of disseminating the results of the investigation in an archival journal to ensure access in the future and throughout the world.

These papers focus on lessons learned from the exceptional performance of this remarkable structure. The guest editorial by Paul Mlakar and the concluding paper in the series are effective in their brevity. The message is clear. This building demonstrated the inherent advantages of continuity, redundancy, energy-absorbing capacity and reserve strength in extreme events. The attack was tragic and far beyond design expectations, but the response of the Pentagon was not disproportionately catastrophic.

The Technical Council on Forensic Engineering (TCFE) is planning the Fourth Forensic Engineering Congress, to be held in Chicago in mid-October 2006. Mark your calendar and watch for further details. A call for papers will likely be available by the time this notice is published, and the exact dates for the event will have been established. Forensic engineering congresses are held every three years. Previous congresses were in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1997); San Juan, Puerto Rico (2000); and San Diego, California (2003).

The TCFE Committee on Education is seeking sample course syllabi for continuing education courses and university courses (graduate or undergraduate levels) that are directly related to preparation for forensic engineering practice. Included in the study are courses covering a wide range of subjects, including managing a forensic engineering business, performing competent investigations, destructive and nondestructive evaluation procedures, construction litigation and alternate forms of dispute resolution, qualifications of forensic engineers, providing expert testimony, and the ethics of forensic practice. If you are teaching such a course, the committee would like to hear from you. Please provide an outline of the course content and indicate required texts, if any. With your permission, the committee would like to post your syllabus on its Web site, where you will be acknowledged for your contribution. Send your course syllabus to: Kevin L. Rens, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of Colorado at Denver, Campus Box 113, P.O. Box 173364, Denver, CO 80217-3364, or as an e-mail attachment to: [email protected].

In addition, the publications committee for this journal is always interested in manuscripts related to forensic engineering education. Should you wish to discuss your course, either in a technical paper, technical note, or forum contribution, please let me know. I can be contacted by mail: Kenneth L. Carper, School of Architecture & Construction Management, College of Eng. & Architecture, P.O. Box 642220, Washington State Univ., Pullman, Washington 99164-2220; by telephone: (509) 335-1229; by FAX: (509) 335-6132; or by e-mail: [email protected].