Jerry Isenberg Jeremy Isenberg is president and CEO of Weidlinger Associates, Inc. a civil and structural engineering and software development firm employing 300 staff members in 8 offices in the US and one in Scotland. He is currently President of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of ASCE, and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He received a B.S. degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University.

San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

Prompted by the failure of a 50-foot section of the eastern span of San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Caltrans undertook a project to strengthen the western suspended span and to replace the eastern span with a viaduct over the east Bay shallows and a signature span over the shipping channel. Under the auspices of the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and with participation of more than 30 local, state and federal agencies having jurisdiction over the Bay and of grass roots activists, a design competition for the signature span resulted in selecting a self-anchored suspension bridge with steel box girder and orthotropic deck.

The main reason for selecting a suspension bridge over competing concepts, such as cable-stayed, is that it is deemed to fit better in the context of the Bay where the other major bridges—the Golden Gate and west span of San Francisco-Oakland Bay—are also suspension bridges.