Puget Sound Engineering Council

Susan Chang, Ph. D., P. E.

Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections

Susan Chang, Ph. D., P. E., Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, has been selected as the recipient of the 2022 Government Engineer of the Year Award in recognition of her exceptional career as a geotechnical earthquake engineer, her innovative work in developing design guidelines for considering earthquake ground motions in high-rise buildings, and her leadership in revising the state building code. She possesses a unique combination of technical expertise, team leadership abilities, and communication skills as well as experience in the public sector, private sector, and academia.

Currently serving as the Geotechnical Engineering Group Supervisor for the Department of Construction and Inspections, she oversees geotechnical peer reviews of high-rise building designs. As part of the review process, she noticed that amplification of earthquake ground motions by the Seattle sedimentary basin was not being considered in high-rise building designs. To address the issue, she convened a workshop of engineers and seismologists to develop recommendations for the city. The result was a methodology for incorporating basin response in ground motion estimation. This methodology has been adopted by Seattle and Bellevue, the Washington State Building Code, and the International Building Code. She worked with the Seattle Office of Emergency Management to develop an updated landslide map with digital records of landslides that have occurred within the city since the late 1800s. Access to this historic landslide information benefits engineers, property owners, and the general public.

In addition to her engineering contributions, she recently completed a four-year term as a councilmember for the City of Shoreline. In this role, she has brought her engineering mindset, policy-making expertise, and compassion to city government, enhancing the public’s perception of the role of engineers and women in government

Susan L. Everett, P.E.

Washington State Department of Transportation

Susan L. Everett, P.E., Washington State Department of Transportation, has been selected as the recipient of the 2020 Government Engineer of the Year Award in recognition of her exceptional career managing complex construction projects for the department.  Throughout her career, she has led efforts to improve the accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness of the engineering within the department and served as mentor for many of the department’s project engineers.

Currently, she is the project manager for the SR 509 Completion Project that links SR 509 to Interstate 5, provides additional access to Sea-Tac airport, and improves transportation in South King County.  Immediately prior to that position, she served as the Engineering Manager for the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement project, supervising a team focused on design, construction, and safety of the SR 99 tunnel. This tunnel project pushed all known limits of engineering to become the largest soft-ground machine-bored road tunnel in the world.  She joined the project during its development phase and was instrumental in redesigning the alignment of the tunnel to improve sight distances for drivers.  A part of the project was the construction of the SR 99 off-ramp to South Dearborn Street.  This flexible steel and bendable concrete bridge was designed to move with a major earthquake and return to its original position and remain functional.

She piloted the department’s Cost Estimating Validation Process which considers project risk in developing cost estimates.  She identified project risks and then developed cost estimates considering alternative risk impacts and risk probabilities. To improve the department’s value engineering (VE) process, she introduced the split VE process in which the VE team develops initial recommendations and then submits them to the design team for development of 3D modeling, cross sections, and quantities.