A Career Spanning 58 Years

George Murray began his remarkable career in engineering at High Steel back in 1967, and he has since been a key driver of technological evolution at the company.  We recently asked him to reflect on his career and share his thoughts about the future of engineering detailing.

Murray’s High Steel journey began when he was recruited at Solanco High School by Dan Barto, who was then High Welding’s Chief Draftsman.  Barto was looking for a new draftsman and had heard about Murray’s impressive math and drafting skills. He quickly contacted the school guidance counselor to learn more, and an interview was set up.  

“I was not sure of what I was going to do after graduation, so when he described the job as being a lot of math and drafting, I was very interested,” said Murray. “ He offered the job to me right then, and I said yes!”

After graduation, Murray started as an apprentice draftsman in the “Drafting Room.”  His responsibilities included producing and documenting all the blueprints of the manually drawn tracings to be sent away for approval.  He also made blueprint copies for distribution to the shop.  Other tasks were more mundane, including the upkeep of the blueprint machines and office maintenance.  

“These tasks belonged to me for about seven months until the new guy came along.  The rest of my available time was spent learning about bridges and making various types of manual drawings,” said Murray.

For his first 12 years on the job, there were no computers in the Engineering Department, and Murray became the primary person to do manual math calculations.  All the plan drawings, girder detail drawings, and cross frame drawings were made by the other draftsmen using Murray’s calculations.  It was during this time that the company name was updated to High Steel Structures.

When the dawn of the computer age came to High Steel, new technology heralded big changes which would require Murray and his coworkers to embrace software programming.  It was quite a process!

“When computers became available to us in 1979, we connected over the internet to a computer in Chicago.  I had to learn a computer programming language to allow for the entry of lots of numbers into the computer, to do calculations on these numbers, and to generate reports providing the many answers we needed to make manual detail drawings,” he said.  Two years later, the company installed its own computers housed in an air-conditioned computer room on the premises, and Murray had to port the previously developed software over to this new computer.

In 1984, electronic graphics became available with the purchase of a new computer and operating system with Intergraph software installed, enabling Engineering to produce drawings electronically.  This required Murray to once again learn new programming languages to automatically generate drawings from the collected bridge data.

The introduction of database software followed, and with that came a new set of learning curves.  By 2008, more sophisticated databases were used to store this data, requiring additional training and data porting.

In the 2010s, Murray was focused on developing custom software to enable electronic information to be supplied to our shops’ CNC machines.  Soon, High Steel debuted a huge initiative to electronically connect data from the company’s various departments.  This “Single Data Model” objective continues today.  “This is a very good start, but there is still much more to do!” exclaimed Murray.

Switching topics, we asked Murray about his three most memorable bridge projects.

His first choice is the Route 30 Bridge (Wright’s Ferry Bridge) over the Susquehanna River at Columbia/Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, which was completed in 1972.  The project was local to Lancaster County.

“It was by far the largest bridge we had fabricated and erected up to that point in time.  It took months to fabricate the entire bridge; however, it was detailed quickly in our Drawing Room, because the girders, floor beams, and cross frames were identical repeats going from the Lancaster to York County sides,” explained Murray.

Murray’s second choice? The replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

“This was such a major project, and High Steel really wanted to be a part of it,” Murray said, noting that our in-house programmers spent 830 hours on software development to dramatically enhance our Coordinate Geography (COGO) System before the first engineering work could begin.  

“Another memorable thing about this bridge, which I was never exposed to before, was the length adjustments required for each bridge span,” said Murray, explaining that the number of spans with long lengths and the bridge’s high elevation required calculations to accommodate the earth’s curvature, which produced slight increases in span lengths.

Murray’s third most memorable project is the very first cable-stay bridge that High Steel fabricated, back in the 1980s. This project was located in Steubenville, Ohio,  spanning the Ohio River. 

“I spent many hours working on the calculations dealing with the camber of the girders.  Erection had to proceed from one side of the tower to the other side for balancing purposes (balanced cantilever method).  Because of this, the camber ordinates would change.  We had to fabricate the girders with the best camber values for the time of erection.  Also, this was my first exposure to the cable anchorage assemblies that had to be built into the girders to permit the cables to support the girder lines.” 

Advice for Future Engineering Detailers

Looking to the future,  we asked Murray for his advice to the next generation of engineering detailers and programmers at High Steel, and he urged flexibility in evaluating details for new bridge designs.   

“Detailers will have to think outside the box to decide how they are going to draw or model new objects,” advised Murray, urging detailers to look at the entire bridge to see how the different components interact with each other. 

In conclusion, we asked Murray what he is looking forward to most as his retirement begins.  Given his long history at High Steel, the answer may not be surprising to those who know him best.

“I am officially retiring. However, I want my mind to be challenged, and I want to spend time on something I am good at,” he said. “ So, I will be working at High Steel part-time.”

The company celebrated Murray’s retirement with a lunchtime party on July 15^th.  Joined by his family, Murray was presented with gifts including a framed photo of the Lake Champlain Bridge, with the matting signed by his coworkers.