ASCE has honored Hongchun Liu, P.E., M.ASCE, with the 2024 Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. Energy Award for outstanding contributions to energy engineering, engineering education, and service to the profession.
Liu is an engineering specialist and principal engineer of Bechtel. He has been working there for more than 20 years as group supervisor and subject matter expert (SME) on dynamic foundations, nuclear structures, underground buried structures, seismic analyses and designs, load drop and tornado missile impact evaluations, and advanced finite element analyses. He has much experience and knowledge in design, evaluation, and construction of industrial structures in fossil, nuclear, and renewable power projects wor1dwide. He is also an honored Bechtel Distinguished technical Specialist (BOTS).
Among the many projects he has worked on, he is very proud of his contributions to the successful design of the lvanpah Solar Power Facility, the world's largest concentrated solar power facility. Liu was also one of the key members of Bechtel's engineering team working on the DavisBesse Nuclear Power Plant Reactor Vessel Head Replacement due to Degradation, and in the following engineering effort to restore the plant's design and licensing basis after hairline laminar cracks were founded in the concrete Shield Building. During his many years of professional engineering practice, he has also led or been involved with many fossils, nuclear, renewable, as well as government projects as SME to provided technical supports, especially in SoilStructural-Interaction (SSI) for Risk Category V structure design. He has performed a lot of excellent design work for underground structures for seismic loads as lead engineer.
Liu's specialties include foundation designs for heavy rotating machinery, nuclear containment analysis, and seismic designs. He has extensive knowledge in the finite element method, advance dynamic analysis, and structural designs. He has actively served in the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and ASCE technical committees for many years.
The Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. Energy Award was established to recognize outstanding achievements in the energy field by a civil engineer.
