Abstract
The technical and STS components of my capstone project were largely independent endeavors, with each one complimenting the other in terms of the required skillset of a good civil engineer. The steel bridge competition emphasized structural design and fabrication, requiring tough decision making, precision, and optimization. Conversely, my STS research on the South Fork Wind Farm focused on stakeholder dynamics, regulatory processes, and the role of non-human actors in infrastructure development. While different, the motivation for pursuing both civil engineering related projects concurrently stems from the recognition that engineering requires robust technical knowledge and execution within a complex social and political landscape.
Our capstone team designed and fabricated a 24’ long steel bridge to compete in the 2026 Virginias ASCE/AISC Student Steel Bridge Competition. The bridge was designed in the fall semester as a mock 1:10 scale bridge crossing the Rio Grande in El Paso. The bridge design had to conform to multiple dimensional, fabrication, and construction requirements to be eligible for competition. We designed the bridge in SAP2000, Solidworks, and Revit for validation and fabrication requirements. The bridge was fabricated in the spring in Lacy Hall, where we utilized grinders, welding equipment, water jets, and vertical mills before fully painting the bridge. Our team won 3rd place out of nine schools this year with a bridge that was 150 pounds lighter than last year and a build time of just nineteen minutes, a drastic improvement compared to last year’s disqualification. Additionally, we expanded club outreach and undergraduate involvement, which will hopefully contribute to next year’s success. Next year’s team should look to validate modeling results, reduce weight, and design a deeper main section for stiffness.
The South Fork Wind Farm is a 12 turbine, 132 Megawatt offshore-wind farm located 30 miles from the coast of Long Island that was completed in 2024. During development, the project faced opposition and scrutiny from local stakeholders, primarily focused on local industry, the price of power, and environmental impacts. This paper applies Actor Network Theory to analyze this opposition, arguing that specific non-human actors such as marine life, physical infrastructure, and market conditions simultaneously functioned as persistent sources of opposition and support, mediating stakeholder alignment and controversy throughout the development cycle. I employ Callon's concept of translation and Latour's notion of inscription to examine 200 pages of public comments from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) environmental impact review meetings, showing how Ørsted and BOEM operated as Obligatory Passage Points that constrained how and when stakeholder concerns could enter the network, often after key decisions were already made. While most non-human actors produced contradictory alliances across stakeholder groups, the Right Whale protections inscribed into project scheduling represented a rare instance of stable enrollment, suggesting that timely and honest translation of non-human actors is essential to network stability. I conclude that the SFWF's successful completion depended on a few such moments of partial stability, and that future offshore wind development must reproduce these instances earlier and more deliberately.
Working on both projects simultaneously highlighted the limitations of focusing on purely technical work. Steel bridge largely abstracted away social, cultural, and environmental meaning, instead focusing on structural design, efficiency, and precision. In contrast, the STS research project showed how negotiations and uncertainty cannot be solved purely through technical analysis. Engaging in both projects underscored that successful engineering requires meticulous technical execution and awareness of the larger systematic influences that govern how people directly and indirectly interact with infrastructure.
