William Bast is a Principal at Thornton Tomasetti and oversees projects in the Windy City and across the Midwest. Bill has extensive experience in building renovations and restorations, façade evaluations and repair programs, due diligence and condition assessments.
How did you become involved in the construction and design industry?
I moved to Chicago in 1983 to work as a structural design engineer for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Since then, I’ve worked as a construction manager, specialty contractor, and restoration and forensic engineer in the general construction, architecture and engineering industry.
What is something that your company is doing that you consider innovative?
We are developing software that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to identify damage or defects from photos or videos taken by camera or drones.
What poses a challenge, risk or opportunity for your clients and what is your company doing to address it?
One of the risks for our clients is engaging multiple engineering services for a given project. We have diversified the services that we offer to include not only structural engineering, but technical architecture for building envelope solutions, construction engineering to assist contractors in means, methods and Advanced Project Delivery, protective design for blast and accidental impact, and façade engineering for high tech walls and roofs. The offering of these services within one firm provides the opportunity for better and closer collaboration, and less risk for the clients.
What is something you view as an emerging trend in the industry and what are your perspectives on it?
One of the emerging trends involves the renewal or reuse of existing building stock, which provides great socio-economic opportunities in today’s market and offers a very sustainable solution for the built environment. We are well positioned in this field with our knowledge and expertise in working with building foundations, structures and building envelopes to include the facades and roofs. The use of drones and AI as mentioned above also help address this challenge.
Any final thoughts on what to keep an eye on in the near future in the construction and design industry?
It will be interesting to see the changes that will occur post-COVID-19 and how they will affect our industry. Considerations include the need for less office space due to remote working, but short term larger office space for social distancing; flexibility in medical office buildings and hospitals to consider future pandemics; changes in travel for business in particular and the effect on airport design and construction; and others we haven’t yet discussed or considered.
Learn more about Thornton Tomasetti in this article:
A Steel "Base-Lift," Modern Steel Construction, July 2020
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