On Wednesday October, 26^th, Allen Yourman from Diaz·Yourman & Associates (DYA) joined 25 USC students majoring in planning and transportation engineering to share an engineer’s view of the Ports as part of the METRANS Lunch with A Practitioner Series.

The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are important for the United States and the world in terms of their capacity and impact on international trade, Yourman noted. The two ports combined handle approximately 40% of all imports to the U.S. and are related to 1 million jobs statewide, he shared, and added that the Port of Long Beach deals with 6.8 million twenty-foot equivalent shipping containers annually.

In order to operate with millions of containers, he explained, the ports need to use advanced technology. Billions of dollars are spent in building advanced cranes like ship-to-shore cranes, tandem lift, and dual trolley cranes, and automated stacking cranes. At the same time, automatic guided vehicles are also used to carry containers. All the vehicles are dynamoelectric and remote-controlled, which reduces the pollution and ensures the safety in these port areas.

At the end of the presentation, Yourman introduced major jobs for Civil Engineers in ports. This was quite useful for most students in attendance, and they appreciated the opportunity to talk with a practitioner in daily life. After listening to his presentation, students like me could know much more about what we can and should do, both now and as we continue to prepare for our upcoming careers.

The most impressive part of the presentation was the discussion of engineers who work in a broader role, serving in many aspects of transportation. First, they play a role in the protection of the public.  As Yourman noted in his slides, “In order to safeguard life, health, property and public welfare, any person, either in a public or private capacity who practices civil engineering shall be licensed accordingly.” Second, as environment is regarded as a very important factor in almost every field, engineers involved in transportation must take into account pollution or damage to the local environment in order to make the world more sustainable. Moreover, with the increasing collaboration among different agencies and departments, the number of stakeholders of a project will also increase in the following years, which means engineers have to learn about how to balance the benefits among different stakeholders. Finally, to keep pace with globalization, different cultures will collaborate on one project. Therefore, engineers also need to work with diverse cultures respectfully.

“As a planning student focused on transportation, I am really interested in how the ports impact and interact with the larger transportation network. Mr. Yourman’s presentation gave me some great insight into the challenges that engineers face when working along our shorelines,” said Eric Tunell, MPL ’18.

The presentation was quite meaningful in my opinion. I am very glad to have had a chance to be a part in this METRANS activity and look forward to the opportunity to attend more such events in the coming future.

Siyuan Yao

Siyuan Yao is a first year Graduate Student in Transportation Engineering at the University of Southern California. He is interested in traffic modeling and ITS. Going further, he wants to pursue a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering and become a University Professor.