America’s Greatest Projects and Their Engineers I

During the past 150 years, Americans have achieved phenomenal success on our way to becoming the greatest nation in the history of the world. Notwithstanding the many inventions that we have created, such as the electric light bulb and the telephone and the airplane and the internet, Americans have been responsible for some of the greatest and most beneficial projects in the modern era. This course features a synopsis of two of those great projects: The Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam. The fact that both of these projects have stood the test of time – one over one hundred years and the other more than eighty years – is a strong testament to the engineers who designed those facilities and the project managers who made the timely and sometimes very difficult decisions.

The Panama Canal was fraught with physical as well as health problems that the French had tried for years to overcome, and yet their great success with the Suez Canal had no correlations to their adventures in Panama. The Boulder (later named Hoover) Dam was unique in its size and scope of work, and was finally approved and designed and constructed during the heart of the worldwide depression.

Each of these projects may be considered by most Americans to be a construction project, but an engineer or an architect or a designer would see them with a different perspective. Without the support of individual engineers and without the vision and wisdom of quality project managers, these projects could not have achieved the success that they did. This statement is not intended to demean the many manufacturers and construction companies who were involved in these projects, because their foresight and experience was paramount to the success of each of these projects.

Once you complete your course review, you need to take a multiple-choice quiz consisting of twenty-four (24) questions to earn 4 PDH credits

Learning Objectives

This course is intended to provide you with the following specific knowledge and skills:

Learn from these projects how they will benefit modern engineers in particular.
Understand the obstacles that confronted early engineers, managers, and contractors.
Understand the role that government engineers had with construction companies.
Discover how safety and health issues of the workforce as well as the engineers a secondary concern to some.
Follow the techniques and strategies of those engineers who achieved outstanding and long-term success.
Learn how early engineers coped with limited technology and very few resources.
Discover how leadership played such a major factor in each of these significant projects.

Download the Course to review and begin earning your PDH credits.

We provide technical courses for PDH credits that meet Board requirements for Professional Engineers, Geologists and Land Surveyors. This courses is guaranteed to be accepted in AK, AL, AR, GA, IA, IL, ID, IN, KS, KY, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WI, WV, and WY. Before purchasing this course, please confirm that your state Board is listed above.