Chuck Seim (Beta 1.0)
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Welcome to my Website.
I am Charles Seim (rhymes with time)
My friends call me Chuck, which I much prefer
My profession is Bridge Engineering
I find it a challenging, interesting, and exciting profession
I would like to share that interesting and exciting part with you
FIRST, SOME OF MY BACKGROUND:
I have been very lucky to be in the right place at the right time! I don’t know whether I was the right person or not, but I was there; I worked hard, and I did the best that I could!
The right place was the San Francisco Bay area, and the right time was in the mid 1950’s. This is when the Interstate Highway system was started, and, importantly for my career, this was when the building of the long-span Toll Bridges in California began. I started work as a Junior Engineer with the State of California, Division of Bay Toll Crossings.
My introduction to working on large toll bridges was the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, which was to cross the Northern Bay between these two cities. When this Bridge opened, the reconstruction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge followed. Then came the new replacement Crossing for the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, and The San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge quickly followed the San Mateo. Then the proposed cable-stayed Southern Crossing of San Francisco Bay was designed, almost to completion, but was not constructed.
Finally, there was the Dumbarton Bridge crossing the Southern end of San Francisco Bay. So I worked on all of the Nine California Toll Bridges until California ran out of toll bridges to build!
Over the next five years I was the Maintenance Engineer for the nine State-Owned Toll Bridges. During that time, I was asked to inspect the deck of the Golden Gate Bridge, which then led to my work on a project to replace the corroded concrete deck of the Golden Gate Bridge with a new orthotropic steel deck. So I am one of the few engineers fortunate enough to have worked on all Ten of the California Toll Bridges!
After these 26 years, I again was lucky enough to switch from the Public Sector to the Private Sector as a Senior Bridge Engineer for T. Y. Lin International, a well-known Consulting Engineering firm, headquartered in San Francisco. In that office, I consulted on bridges in the United States, South America, and in Asia.
After I worked 24 more years at TYLI, I retired and established my own Office as:
Charles Seim, P.E., F.ASCE,
Consulting Bridge Engineer
Copyright 2010 Chuck Seim. All rights reserved.
