Engineer's notebook

ASME Fellow Steven C. Roberts, P.E., is a senior standards engineer at Shell Global Solutions. An ASME member since 1990, Roberts has been an active member of many ASME Codes and Standards committees and groups, including the ASME Section VIII Committee on Pressure Vessels, the Subgroup on General Requirements, the Post Construction Subcommittee on Repair and Testing, and the Pressure Technology Post Construction Committee.

What's inside your engineer's notebook?
What I have in mine are items related to my day-to-day activities. Engineers can't talk without drawing, so if you're sitting having a conversation with someone, you have a way to sketch something out fairly easily. So there are my daily activities, which currently relate to the development of technical standards and requirements that lead to the mitigation or prevention of process safety risks. I also keep up to date with some of the incidents that occur throughout the world with regard to pressure integrity.

Whose notebook would you most like to peek into? Wh
That would be some of the pioneers in pressure technology. A few who come to mind are E.C. Rodabaugh, Leonard Zick, D.B. Wesstrom, J. Hall Taylor, and Melvin R. Green. These engineers were so instrumental in what the code says today. For instance, Wesstrom and Taylor both were involved with the Appendix 2 rules that are in the current Section VIII code. They were very instrumental in bolted flanges. Rodabaugh was pretty instrumental in some of the B.31 rules. Just to be able to see how they thought those through and what their notes reflected of those thoughts, I think would just be fascinating.

How and when did you know you wanted to become an engineer?
When I was in high school, I wanted to go into construction. So, I geared my high school education in that fashion by combining high school with trade school. I started to become successful in that. I was partner in a business that did apartment framing, in Tulsa, OK. And then one year when we were working on a new apartment building, there was a blistering heat wave. It felt like it was 120 degrees outside. That's when I realized that there might be a better way to make a living. That afternoon, I'll never forget it, I decided I needed to go to college, earn a bachelor's degree, and I started down the path to become an engineer.

What's the most exciting project you've ever worked on?
I've been so fortunate that I've worked on some really diverse projects so far. One particularly interesting project that comes to mind was a large expansion for a catalyst manufacturing facility I was involved with. Early in my career, there was a very rushed project to build a hazardous landfill that we had to get up and operational in 90 days, and filled and closed. Otherwise, it would have shut down one of our manufacturing facilities. Another interesting project was the Division 2 rewrite for Section VIII. That was a great team effort. We really came together to make sure that everything was as ready for publication as we could possibly get it. Just being part of the publication of these kinds of technical advancements for ASME is exciting.

What do you think you'd be doing if you hadn't become an engineer?
I'd be a carpenter in the home construction industry.

What's your favorite hobby or activity when you're not working?
I think engineers should be involved in two different activities that aren't directly related to their employment. One of them should be related to their profession. For me, that is my code activity. And one of them shouldn't be related to the profession. For me, that's playing the clarinet with a local wind ensemble. I also like doing wood projects, and right now I'm drying some oak from a tree that had come down during Hurricane Ike a couple of years ago. I'm going to build some furniture out of that. And when I really want to relax, I like to go to the baseball park, grab some peanuts, and watch the Houston Astros.

Was there a book or a movie that piqued your interest in science or engineering?
Not a book or movie, but I did take an ASME-sponsored class on pressure vessels in Houston. It was taught by Jim Farr and Will Carter, who were members of the BPV Committee. That course really sparked my interest in getting involved in the society's codes and standards work as well as my current interest in pressure integrity.

Who are your heroes, either within the engineering profession or in the rest of your life?
My father, who was a non-degreed engineer in the aviation electronics field, was a big hero for me. He worked on military applications. He had a pretty positive impact on me. Another hero would be naturalist John Muir. I read about him a lot when I was in college and I read a lot of his works. He helped me look at the details in life. Even though he was applying them from a naturalist's point of view, I knew there were still lessons that engineers could learn from as to living in harmony with nature. Then there are a couple of contemporary colleagues in engineering that I give a lot of respect to: Clyde Neely and Urey Miller. Mr. Neely has been a big part of developing the current Section VIII pressure vessel code and the toughness rules that I think have saved countless lives in avoidance of brittle fracture failures. Urey Miller, the current chairman of the BPV Standards Committee VIII, shows all of us how to approach any problem from the engineer's perspective. Mr. Miller has been described as "the engineer's engineer." In my opinion, both of these gentlemen are engineering heroes.

What's the most meaningful or rewarding aspect of being connected to engineering?
I think there are a lot of rewards to being in this profession. I think it's meaningful to know that any actions we take as engineers or I take today may save someone's life in the future. This may be because of additional process safety requirements that we put into place in my company, or additional pressure integrity requirements that we write into the code. The relationships that I've developed with colleagues I've worked with over the years — those have also been quite rewarding.

What does ASME mean to you?
It means being part of an international organization that gives the utmost credibility to our profession. It means being part of a group of recognized experts in every field of mechanical engineering. It means being included in a unique group of people who have shaped our nation throughout its history, who have brought us to where we are today. It means helping to shape the future of our planet for new engineers who are following in our footsteps to take us to new places that we might not envision today. And it means belonging to an organization that places the safety of the general public at a very high — if not the top — priority, through its codes and standards development. I'm really proud to be a member of ASME and to be associated with it.y?

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