DeSimone Consulting Engineering employee Jeff Dragovich and his colleagues led a team that won a recent contest in Italy promoting the best construction practices using reinforced concrete walls to maximize protection against earthquake damage.
Dragovich, an associate in the Chicago office of DeSimone, and the company’s applied technology group director, and a group of fellow civil engineers submitted the winning entry in the Blind Prediction Competition at the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Milan. The conference drew 4,000 people in July from the scientific and engineering communities. Belgian university UCLouvain organized the contest.
“As we strive towards progressively more reliable analytical methods to predict earthquake response of structures, our work shows clear progress is being made,” Dragovich, who has a doctorate in civil engineering, said in a statement.
DeSimone said the team’s work can help with future revisions to building codes and promote community resilience.
The company was joined on the team in Milan by Bentley Systems, a Pennsylvania firm that provided software used in the competition to predict how concrete walls hold up under stress.
“We are thrilled to see our team’s work in the field of seismic engineering and software development gain international recognition,” Stephen DeSimone, the company’s president and chief executive officer, said in the statement.