Walter Podolny, Jr.

A Legacy in Prestressed Concrete

Podolny stops for an

informal photo with
Menachem
When Kenigsberg (right),
Deputy Director
Walter Podolny, Jr., General, Bridges
and Structures,
retired this year after Public Works
Department,
a 30-year career Ministry of National
Infrastructure of the
of distinguished State of Israel. Photo
was taken in August
service with the of 1994 in
Washington, D.C.
Federal Highway
Administration, be
left behind a legacy
that includes some of alter Podolny, Jr., a ca Podolny also proudly boasts of his
the world’s most
significant prestressed
W reer-long professional
member of the Precast!
Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI),
association with Charles C. Zollman,
the engineer who carried through Gus
tave Magnel’s primary design of the
told a reporter for the PCI JOURNAL, Walnut Lane Bridge. Zoilman, also a
concrete structures “I first became acquainted with pre PCI Medal of Honor Award winner,
stressed concrete in 1959 when work was an author of the Volume on the
as well as a direct ing with Ted Gutt, at George Rackle Reflections on the Beginnings of Pre
& Sons Co. Gutt had earlier partici stressed Concrete in America. In addi
link to the first pated in the design of the Walnut Lane tion, the PCI JOURNAL State-of-the-
prestressed concrete Memorial Bridge in Philadelphia, Art Award is named the Charles C.
Pennsylvania. Built in 1950, this Zollman Award in his honor.
bridge in the bridge is today regarded as the first Said Podolny, “I worked with Char
major prestressed concrete structure in lie Zoilman, who was a disciple of
United States. the United States. Note that Gutt Gustave Magnel of Belgium. Charlie
would then become chairman of the could design a prestressed concrete
PCI in 1987 and later was awarded a bridge with a 6-in. sliderule and a pile
PCI Medal of Honor. of cocktail napkins. In fact, he once re
132 PCI JOURNAL

In June 1990, Podolny presented a
paper at the FIP’s Xl Congress in
Hamburg, Germany.
While in Shanghai in 1994, Podolny and his associates were interviewed by the
Chinese media concerning that city’s Yangpu Bridge. Here with Podolny are, from
left: Dr. Man-Chung Tang of T.Y. Lin International; Lin Yuan Pei, chief engineer of
the Shanghai Municipal Engineering Design Institute and designer of the bridge, and
Holger S. Svensson of Leonhardt, Andra und Partner.

Keys bridges, which included the first

streets of Washington, D.C., in 1993.
marked that if you couldn’t design a
bridge on the back of an envelope, you
couldn’t call yourself an engineer!”
Armed with the knowledge that he
gleaned from his association with Gutt
and Zoilman, Podolny became some
what of a legend himself in pre
stressed concrete circles. Working
within the Federal Highway Adminis
tration over the past 30 years, Podolny
has been involved in the design of a
number of unique prestressed concrete
bridges, both in the United States and
other countries around world.
One of his most significant achieve
ments was his involvement with the
Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa,
Florida. The bridge, built after a ship
rammed and seriously damaged the
previous Sunshine Skyway structure,
is well known as the first cable-stayed
bridge in the United States with a sin
gle plane, parallel seven-wire pre
stressing stays.
Another major bridge attesting to
Podolny’s involvement with state-of-
the-art bridges is the Pasco Kennewick
Bridge, which spans the Columbia
River between those two Washington
state communities. He also worked on
the design of the Pine Valley Bridge
near San Diego, the first concrete seg
mental cast-in-place bridge in the
United States. Podolny also worked
with Jean Muller, the famous French
engineer who designed the Florida
box girder with external post-tension
ing strands.
Not all of Podolny’s efforts made it
past the design stage. For example, he
worked on the design of the Three Sis
ters Bridge in Washington, D.C., a
major long-span prestressed concrete
segmental bridge. Even though a one-
tenth scale model of the bridge went
through testing at the laboratories of
the Portland Cement Association in
Skokie, Illinois, plans to build the
bridge were scrapped. The bridge
would have included a 750-ft (229 m)
span, which is still considered a monu
mental span today.
Podolny’s influence has also been
felt outside of the United States. He
advised the Kuwait Ministry of Public
Works on several major segmental
bridges. One of the most imaginative
designs was for the Bubiyan Bridge, a
three-dimensional precast prestressed
space frame. At the request of the U.S.
Ambassador to Guatemala, he pro
vided technical assistance to the Mayor
of Guatemala City in the inspection
and evaluation of the distress being ob
served on the Incienso Bridge.
He also served as chairman of an in
ternational three-man design review
panel convened by the Asian Develop
ment Bank for the 1975-ft (602 m)
span cable-stayed Yangpu Bridge in
Shanghai, China. In 1995, Podolny
served as co-chairman of the FHWAI
AASHTO European Bridge Structures
Technology Scanning Review Panel.

November-December 2000 133

 His accomplishments extend even
beyond bridges. For example, he
served on Cornell University and the
National Science Foundation’s panel
of experts in evaluating the cable sys
tem of the 1000-ft (305 m) radio-radar
telescope at the Arecibo Observatory
in Puerto Rico and as a member of the
Governor’s Board of Inquiry on the
1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.
Podolny, a registered professional
engineer, received his Bachelor of
Structural Engineering in 1952 from
Cleveland State University and his
Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree
a year later from the same institution.
In 1960, Case-Western Reserve Uni
versity in Cleveland awarded him a
Master of Science in civil engineering.
His thesis was on the “Lateral Stabil
ity of a Prestressed Concrete Girder.”
His Ph.D. in civil engineering came in
1971 from the University of Pitts
burgh, with a major in structural engi
neering and minors in city planning
and business administration. His thesis
explored the “Static Analysis of
Cable-Stayed Bridges.”
For the past 30 years, since finishing
his Doctorate, Podolny worked in a
variety of positions within the Federal
Highway Administration, beginning in
June of 1971. At his retirement, he
was Senior Structural Engineer in the
Office of Bridge Technology, HIBT,
Not all of Walter Podolny’s
time was spent in designing
bridges and other structures. He
took time to coach his sons’
little league soccer team. Here
he is in 1976. Son Mike is at
the far right in the top row and
son Rick holds center position
in the middle row.
134
Infrastructure, in Washington, D.C.
Among his many accomplishments,
Podolny counts more than 85 technical
papers, reports and articles (including
several published in the PCI JOUR
NAL). He also authored two books
published by John Wiley & Sons. The
two, titled Construction and Design of
Cable-Stayed Bridges, and Construc
tion and Design of Prestressed Con
crete Segmental Bridges, have been
translated into Japanese and the latter
into Chinese.
His PCI JOURNAL article on “The
Cause of Cracking in Post-Tensioned
Concrete Box Girder Bridges and
Retrofit Procedures” garnered for him
both the Charles C. Zoliman Award
and the American Society of Civil En
gineers T.Y. Lin Award. The former
award is given to the best state-of-the-
art paper published in the PCI JOUR
NAL. The latter honors the best paper
in publications from ACI, ASCE, and
PCI. In 1993, he received his second
Charles C. Zoliman Award for a paper
on “Corrosion of Prestressing Steels
and its Mitigation.”
His many other awards include the
Secretary of Transportation’s Award
for Cost Avoidance, Reduction and Ef
ficiency; Cleveland State University’s
Outstanding Engineering Alumnus
Award; the NSPE Award as FHWA
Engineer of the Year, the PCI State-of-
the-Art Award, the Secretary of Trans
portation’ s Silver Medal for Meritori
ous Achievement and the American
Segmental Bridge Institute’s Leader
ship Award. Also, this year, he re
ceived the fib (Fddération Interna
tionale du Béton) Medal of Merit.
His PCI industry involvement in
cluded chairing the Joint PCI-PTI (Post-
Tensioning Institute) committee on seg
mental bridges that promulgated the
first design guidelines for such struc
tures. He also served on various com
mittees within the ASCE, ACT, the Re
inforced Concrete Research Council,
the Transportation Research Board, the
Roads and Transportation Association
of Canada, the International Association
for Bridge and Structural Engineering,
HP, PTI, fib, AASHTO and ASBI.
When asked what he will remember
most about his many years and contri
butions within the industry, Podolny
cited his many years as a professional
member of PCI and his involvement in
a variety of PCI committees. “I worked
with the best and got to call friends
many of the pioneers in the prestressed
concrete industry,” he says. “That has
to be counted as the greatest single ex
perience of my life. They are the best
people on earth — always willing to
share their knowledge. Every moment
spent working on a PCI committee
meant a great deal to me!”
PCI JOURNAL