MEMBER PROFILE Gerry Houlahan: Expertise, Enthusiasm, Integrity Gerry Houlahan “lives” engineering. He enjoys problem solving and creating new design solutions, says Bo Jensen of Moffatt & Nichol, who has worked with Houlahan for over 30 years. His approach to challenging problems begins with developing a thorough understanding of the fundamental issues, and then carefully considering engineering design and construction issues, says Jensen. Tom McNeilan, of Fugro Atlantic, also describes Houlahan’s approach to engineering, citing their work together on the design for the San Francisco Bay Bridge foundation. He says, “Gerry is good at breaking the work into fundamental physical behaviors instead of using a lot of formulas.” McNeilan and Houlahan combined their respective geotechnical and structural perspectives for the bridge foundation. As McNeilan puts it, they were “scaling down” from their years of working on large open ocean offshore structures to this design. The foundation for the Bay Bridge was on time and on budget, adds McNeilan. Adapting to Change Houlahan grew up in a “tiny” town in Australia, and his career has taken him all over the world, from New Zealand to the Netherlands, from London to San Francisco, with some work in Borneo, Colombia, and elsewhere. As a young boy, the second of six children, his teacher- father taught him initially, but when he was six, the family moved to a vastly different place, the outskirts of Melbourne. It was “bursting” with post-WWII immigrants and was his introduction to the larger heterogeneous world, says Houlahan. The schools were overcrowded with over 100 students per class and the new milieu was dramatically different. When he was 14 years old, Houlahan’s parents sent the “shy” boy to a private boarding school for four years. He learned about “pecking order” and competition, but survived. He decided that engineering would be interesting when he was in the last third of his last year of secondary school, with a curriculum of French, mathematics, physics and geography. Next, he was educated at Monash University, where he earned his degree in civil and structural engineering. Houlahan was always making things— “that’s what boys did,” he says. They worked at home, and that usually involved building something. He recalls that he liked to find new ways to do things, to solve problems and then to analyze the solutions. That aptitude continued throughout his career. His first job after university (in 1971) was for Global Engineering, a firm that was designing and building offshore drilling platforms and multi-story refineries. Houlahan says because there were no senior engineers in his discipline, the title fell to him. He had to check “everything and confirm every solution.” The young engineer was sent to New Zealand for what was supposed to be six weeks, but which became four years. After the completion of the offshore gas platform, Houlahan was then asked to be lead civil engineer for Global’s onshore gas plant design at Oaoanui, in New Zealand. He and his wife returned to Australia with two children. After a brief tour of duty in Borneo for Global Engineering, (until he obtained his green card, sponsored by Earl and Wright in San Francisco), he came to live in the United States in 1979. He was introduced to offshore platform design and later went to Australia to work on platform construction. After four years in San Francisco, he then was sent to London, where he was promoted and worked on the North Alwyn offshore platform design and construction as project manager. Oil had been discovered in the British sector of the North Sea by the French, and Houlahan worked with engineers of both nationalities. His college French came in handy on that job, he notes. Earl and Wright was “first in the world” in those days, in fixed and floating offshore structures, says Houlahan. The next stop was a Dutch firm, Volker Stevin Offshore, for whom he worked in Rotterdam for a year, and then returned to California. He joined Digital Structures in Berkeley, where he worked for five years on high-tech computer analysis and design for large offshore structures. Onsite Admiration Mike Hancock, now retired from Earl and Wright, worked with Houlahan for many years and offers a telling story about an assignment from London to a job in Australia. The job was for Woodside, an Australian contractor that was building the world’s largest (at the time) offshore gas platform. For a supplementary flare tower they brought Earl and Wright in, and the Woodside people liked Houlahan so much that they asked his boss, Hancock, to “lend” him to the construction contractor. They wanted the younger engineer on site for the duration of the work, and so he was. Hancock says Houlahan is “Mr. Integrity,” a man who always tells the truth and “does not shrink” from telling bad news. Eventually, after going their own ways for a few years, Hancock asked Houlahan to join him at Moffatt & Nichol, which he did, and he has been with the firm since 1998. Houlahan notes some similarity between Moffatt & Nichol and Earl and Wright. Both firms were begun by two young dynamic engineers who saw business opportunities and started successful firms. (Earl and Wright was sold, and resold and no long exists.) Moffatt & Nichol has continued to grow and during his last 14 years it has increased from 300 DEEP FOUNDATIONS • MAR/APR 2013 • 41
