David B. Swanson, P.E., S.E., Reid Middleton, Inc.

2018 Award Recipient

Nominated by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Structural Engineers Association of Washington

David Swanson

David B. Swanson, P.E., S.E.
Reid Middleton, Inc.

David B. Swanson, P.E., S.E., Reid Middleton, Inc., has been selected as the recipient of the 2018 Professional Engineer of the Year Award for his commitment to promoting professional engineering excellence and innovation, mentorship of younger engineers, promotion of public safety, and ongoing work to advance the engineering profession.  He designs and manages projects for clients in the aviation, civil, commercial, educational, healthcare and military sectors.  His expertise lies in improving our infrastructure’s seismic resilience and promoting earthquake preparedness and response to seismic risk.   He excels at communicating the need for ongoing seismic resilience to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.  His energy, drive, and enthusiasm for addressing seismic risk have led to his personal and professional success.

He represents engineers nationally as a member of the Disaster Response and Recovery Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers and serves on FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Washington Task Force as a structural engineer evaluating collapsed buildings for urban search and rescue operations.  He has organized and led earthquake response and reconnaissance teams to research lessons learned from devastating earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan (1995), Taiwan (1999), China (2008), Chile (2010), Haiti (2010), New Zealand (2011), Japan (2011) and Mexico (2017).  This experience has enabled him to design innovative seismic protection systems for both historic and modern structures.

Throughout his career, he has been actively involved as a consulting structural engineer.  He is a sought-after peer reviewer, code consultant, analysis reviewer, and technical speaker on structural and earthquake engineering.  He has authored over 25 technical papers on seismic and structural design, earthquake risk reduction, emergency preparedness, and the seismic rehabilitation of historic and essential buildings and infrastructure.