In Memoriam: Passing of Rubin M. Zallen

Rubin M. Zallen, P.E… is the recipient of the 2010 Forensic Engineering Award. He is principal of Zallen Engineering, located in Framingham, Massachusetts, providing consulting services in structural and forensic engineering. He has experience in structural design, structural investigation, and construction of buildings, bridges, and special structures.

Mr. Zallen received a bachelor of civil engineering degree from Syracuse University in 1951 and a Master of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1959. While studying at MIT, he took advanced studies in structural and geotechnical engineering.

The first and formative part of Mr. Zallen’s career was in construction, first at the Bethlehem Steel Company and then working for a general contractor doing construction supervision, field layout, and estimating. Among his early projects were a multistory industrial building in the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, a nine-story building with a control tower at Logan International Airport in Boston, and a Nike missile site. These early years in construction gave Mr. Zallen a sense of structure, a solid foundation in construction procedures, and an understanding of the workings of the construction industry, which had a great influence on his subsequent career.

Rubin Zallen moved over to the design and structural engineering side of the construction industry at the end of the 1950s and worked for a number of engineering firms, starting as a structural designer and working up to chief structural engineer. In 1966, he established his own consulting firm, Rubin M. Zallen Associates, performing design of buildings, bridges, and special structures. One of his more substantial structural designs was that of the Massachusetts Civil Defense Center, a partially underground structure designed to resist a nuclear blast. Mr. Zallen was required to undertake innovative research to establish design criteria and methodology. Other significant structural designs were the Eastern Airlines Hangar at Logan International Airport, a 73-m (240-ft) guyed microwave tower, and the Brandeis University Science Center. The latter project was the first in the Boston area to use posttensioned concrete.

In 1982, Mr. Zallen changed the name of his firm to Zallen Engineering and began to specialize in forensic engineering and the retrofit of structurally deficient structures. Zallen Engineering has made numerous structural investigations, including structural steel framing collapses, a roof collapse caused by snow load, the collapse of a trunk storm sewer in Boston, partial failure of supports for prestressed concrete single tees in a parking garage, and the collapse of flying formwork. Other investigations involved the stability of lift-slab buildings, fire damage to steel-framed buildings, and investigation of cracking and water infiltration of exterior insulation and finish system curtain walls. Mr. Zallen has testified in court and in arbitration on several occasions regarding his investigations.

Rubin Zallen is a founding member of the ASCE Technical Council on Forensic Engineering (TCFE), which was formed in 1985. He was chairman of the Committee on Practices to Reduce Failures (CPRF) and was the fifth chairman of the Executive Committee of TCFE. He was an associate editor of the ASCE/TCFE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities. Mr. Zallen was a member of the TCFE Task Committee on Lift-Slab Construction and with David Peraza coauthored the book Engineering Considerations for Lift-Slab Construction.