ASCE honors Hunt’s work

ASCE has honored Beatrice E. Hunt, P.E., M.ASCE, with the 2023 ASCE Presidents-Emeriti Council Award for her dedicated service to ASCE and public safety as a hydraulic engineer working on bridges and bridge scour nationwide.

Bridge scour is the number one cause of bridge collapse in our country, accounting for 60% of all failures. Hunt has worked tirelessly to improve public safety and make our bridges more resilient for scour and sustainable at river crossings. She has been a leader on over 100 bridge projects both at Hardesty Hanover and now at AECOM. She works both on the consulting side and on the research side, including her connections with ASCE, FHWA, and TRB. She is very well-known nationally and internationally for her bridge scour work and wrote the synthesis of practice on monitoring of bridges to mitigate scour disasters. She has contributed to the development of bridge scour plans, including for FHWA, NHI, TRB guidance, NBIS inspection and coding, and underwater inspections.

Hunt’s service to ASCE is equally impressive at the section, national, and international level.

Here are some examples: 

1. President of the ASCE Met Section (2000), which with 5,000 members is one of the largest and most active ASCE sections in the country. She serves on many of the ASCE Met Section committees.
2. President of the ASCE Met Section (2000), which with 5,000 members is one of the largest and most active ASCE sections in the country. She serves on many of the ASCE Met Section committees.
3. She is a member of the ASCE Geo-Institute and of the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institutes and serves on many committees within those two institutes. 
4. She co-chaired the International Conference on Scour and Erosion in San Francisco in 2010 for ASCE and ISSMGE (International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering) 

She also serves on the Columbia University Industry Advisory Group and is an alumnus of Columbia, where she received her master’s degree in engineering mechanics in 1985 after a bachelor of arts in psychology.

The ASCE Presidents-Emeriti Council Award recognizes distinguished service advancing civil engineering, and protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public at large.