Chih-Hung Cheng, LEED AP

Culture:

It’s like an extended family. The environment here is creative, pleasant and respected. Everyone is friendly and collaborative. We not only share our engineering experiences but also the fun in our lives outside of the office.

The reason I chose Degenkolb, after working practically the past 13 years at another structural engineering firm, is the open environment (transparency)—especially the company’s operations policies and financial information.

Career:

You know here you own part of the company. So your contribution means more than if you are just an employee. You would naturally care more about the welfare of the company.

The idea of an employee-owned company certainly is the most important factor in why I choose to join Degenkolb. And the other reason is that here there is a well-established ownership transition system.

Passion:

Here at Degenkolb we stay at the cutting edge of the new technologies, you come in everyday knowing you will have new challenges and new knowledge to pick up. Examples for “new” knowledge: Building Information Modeling (BIM), Lean Construction, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, etc.

Outside of work, I spend the other half of my time with my family, wife and two kids aged 12 and 10.5 (engineers like decimal points). We like bike riding, visiting Yosemite National Park and other outdoor activities.

On the job:

An engineer and I had to rush out of the office and drove to the job site after receiving a distressed phone call from the contractor, working on a TI project in which several mechanical units were to be installed on the roof of a two-story office building. The contractor stated that they had found a glu-lam beam in danger of collapsing due to a cracking/splitting at the bottom of the beam. After climbing in the tight ceiling space and reviewing the problem, which was caused by the poor quality of the glu-lam and little margin for over-loading, we had to implement a shoring scheme immediately for the safety of the tenants and to provide retrofit details for the beam to be leveled and strengthened to carry the existing air-handler unit. All these were done in such a time-critical manner that the client just could not say enough, “Thank you very much”. That was one of my greatest days on the job.