NASCC: The Steel Conference

Annual event offers the latest design concepts, construction techniques, and research for steel buildings and bridges.

Registration opened in early January for NASCC: The Steel Conference, incorporating the World Steel Bridge Symposium and the Structural Stability Research Council’s (SSRC) Annual Stability Conference. According to the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), The Steel Conference is the premier opportunity for professionals involved in the design or construction of steel buildings or bridges to be immersed in the latest design concepts, construction techniques, and cutting-edge research while engaging with thousands of industry professionals.

The 2019 educational and networking event takes place April 3-5 in St. Louis and offers nearly 150 sessions of topics ranging from properly specifying welds to connection design to tackling the skilled trade shortage. The conference also offers an extensive trade show featuring more than 200 exhibitors with products ranging from structural design software to machinery for cutting steel beams.

 “Our goal is to focus on the practical, rather than the theoretical,” said Scott Melnick, AISC’s senior vice president. “While some conferences have too many sessions essentially consisting of executive summaries of researcher’s papers, we try to go more in-depth with information you can use today. We want you to learn something you can apply when you walk into your office tomorrow. But beyond that, we want to bring together engineers and fabricators to exchange ideas that will improve the design and construction of steel buildings and bridges.”

Attendees can earn as many as 17 PDHs by attending the conference’s expert-led sessions, plus an additional 4 PDHs if they participate in an optional short course on Tuesday afternoon (April 2) and another 8 PDHs for the optional short course on Saturday (April 6). The World Steel Bridge Symposium and SSRC Annual Stability Conference also offer PDH for session attendance.

Pre-conference short courses on Tuesday from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. include “The 15th Edition Steel Construction Manual and the 2016 AISC Specification for Structural Steel Buildings” and “Nonlinear Structural Analysis Methods Used in Modern Steel Design.” The post-conference short course on Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. is “Seismic Design Manual, 3rd Edition, and Applications of the 2016 AISC Seismic Provisions.”

With topics of interest to engineers, architects, fabricators, detailers, and erectors, seminar tracks focus on design and analysis, seismic, project management, constructability, connections, erection, case studies, detailing, ethics, sustainability, legal, business, innovation, technology, roundtables, and quality.

The World Steel Bridge Symposium brings together bridge design engineers, construction professionals, academics, transportation officials, fabricators, erectors, and constructors to discuss and learn innovative practices for enhancing steel bridge design, fabrication and construction techniques. The symposium includes 26 sessions. View past conference proceedings at www.aisc.org/nsba/events/wsbs/conference-proceedings. 

The Structural Stability Research Council’s (SSRC) Annual Stability Conference has been held in conjunction with The Steel Conference since 2001. In addition to 12 sessions with more than 30 papers, the SSRC Conference includes the 2019 Beedle Award and MAJR Medal presentations. SSRC Conference also holds its annual meeting immediately prior to The Steel Conference on Tuesday. Admission to all SSRC Conference sessions is included with your registration. For more information visit www.ssrcweb.org/asc-nascc.

This year’s conference also features three keynote sessions — one each day. The first will feature Ozan Varol, a former rocket scientist turned law professor who has the reputation for stimulating a whole new way of looking at a problem. His topic is “The Power of Contrarian Thinking.”

The second keynote, “The Joy of Steel…So Many Possibilities,” will feature a presentation from Jon Magnusson, S.E., P.E., NAE, senior principal from MKA. The third keynote is the 2019 T.R. Higgins Lecture, “Structural Stability — Letting the Fundamentals Guide your Judgment,” presented by Ron Ziemian, Ph.D., professor at Bucknell University, for his work on brace stiffness for compression members.

One registration fee provides access to all of the technical sessions (including NASCC: The Steel Conference, SSRC Annual Stability Conference, and the World Steel Bridge Symposium), the keynote sessions, the T.R. Higgins Lecture, and the exhibition hall.

The Steel Conference does not offer conventional proceedings. Instead, approximately 45 days after the conference, AISC posts slideshows (complete with audio) of most of the sessions to its education archives at www.aisc.org/educationarchives. Proceedings for the SSRC Conference will also be available in the archives.

Visit www.aisc.org/nascc to register and to view more conference information, including the advance program.

Information provided by the American Institute of Steel Construction (www.aisc.org).