The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) covers various aspects of providing reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in the workplace, like ensuring accessibility in public spaces, transportation and communication services.

The ability to use any facility begins in the parking areas used by occupants, and consists of the parking spaces, curb cuts, walkways, stairs, ramps and other pathways, by which building users exit their vehicles and make their way to the building.

Inside, accessibility paths include entry doors, hallways, elevators and so forth, the interior streets and paths used to move through the facility. Accessibility concerns include far more than just physical mobility issues, but for the purpose of this 2 hour course, that is where we will focus.

What do we need to do, to let physically challenged occupants get in and get out?

Voting is one of our nation's most fundamental rights and a hallmark of our democracy. Voting in-person on Election Day is the way most Americans cast their ballot and vote, but for far too long, many voters with disabilities who use wheelchairs or other mobility devices have had difficulties getting inside polling places to vote, because of architectural barriers.

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires public entities to ensure that people with disabilities can access and use their voting facilities. This course provides a brief discussion of physical barriers to access in five commonly found areas at polling places: parking, sidewalks and walkways, building entrances, interior hallways, and the voting area itself

The Americans with Disabilities Act was designed to ensure that an estimated 42 million Americans, who currently live with a disability, will be able to live fuller lives. The ADA mandates that businesses make their services accessible to all. Its regulations encompass a wide range of establishments, both public and private.

Besides their moral obligations, businesses also face financial and legal consequences for not complying with accessibility standards detailed in this course.

Should business considerations carry more weight than legal compliance or morality, consider this. More than 50 million Americans, roughly18% of our population, have disabilities and are all potential customers who patronize businesses that welcome disabled customers. 71.5 million rapidly aging baby boomers will soon be demanding products, services and environments that meet their physical needs. When they find businesses where they can shop, or get services in an accessible manner, they will become repeat customers.

Society wins when ADA provisions are implemented. So do the businesses which do so.

This 6 hour course provides a comprehensive review of basic petroleum production chemistry, emphasizing its critical role in oil and gas manufacturing and delivery. Students will explore how chemical management strategies optimize hydrocarbon recovery, maintain asset integrity, and improve operational efficiency. The course covers fluid properties, production system behavior, and key chemistry-related challenges that can impact productivity and safety.

Through case study and real-world applications, participants will gain insight into the mechanisms of corrosion, scaling, emulsion stabilization and hydrate formation. Practical approaches to diagnosing and mitigating production problems using chemical solutions will also be discussed.

This 1 hour course for construction professionals, architects, and engineers discusses the ethical and professional dimensions surrounding the fascinating building 601 Lexington Avenue, New York City (formerly Citicorp or Citigroup Center) completed in 1977, designed by Hugh Stubbins and William LeMessurier. This intriguing case involves the skyscraper built above a church on “stilts” while using miscalculated measurements. You will learn the details of what happened, examine core ethical issues the case raises, and see what it can teach us about professional ethics and practice.

Almost every construction project starts off with a contract, but very few projects evolve exactly as planned. Materials arrive late, drawings show conflicts, subcontractors overlap in their schedules, owners change their minds about what they want, weather interferes and costs fluctuate. These situations often lead to disputes involving money, time, quality or responsibility.  The outcome of these disputes is almost always determined not by what seems fair, but by what the contract says.

This course explains how various types of contract structures operate in practice. Rather than relying on abstract legal theory, the course focuses on how contract types affect real-world decision-making on the jobsite and in the office. The goal is not to turn contractors into lawyers. Instead, the course enables contractors to recognize risk, ask the right questions and make informed choices before signing an agreement.

This 5 hour course provides an overview of offshore oil and gas field decommissioning. This includes descriptions of applicable regulations, recommended planning and implementation strategies, and the sequence of steps associated with offshore decommissioning and onshore disposal.

Participants will learn about each phase of the decommissioning process from financial and commercial considerations at the planning stage, well plugging and abandonment, and offshore de-activation of platforms, pipelines and subsea structures.

1. The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, for which a new possible cause was identified 95 years later (2014);
2. A building collapse in Bangladesh in which over 1,000 people died—one of the worst structural engineering disasters in history;
3. A meteorite strike of a private residence;
4. The crash of the British-French Concorde supersonic airliner, caused by an unlikely tire blow-out; and
5. Radiation overdoses received by patients treated by the Thorac-25 medical linear accelerator, caused by errors in the software controlling the machine.

Sustainability is defined by one source as "the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level." It is described elsewhere as "meeting current needs, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs, in the environment we will leave them." To every extent possible, design choices made on projects should result in the least harm possible being done to our environment, to be inherited by our descendants. Whether architects really have a "duty" to design "sustainably" as a matter of ethics, is a question needing a bit more discussion. Trying to do so is unquestionably, a good idea.

Setting buzzwords, special interest groups and political agendas aside, we will examine a few key principles of what can instead be called, "environmentally responsible" design. Many steps that can be taken during design and after structures are complete, to reduce energy use and resources consumed. These include passive steps like building envelopes with thermally superior components. In the design phase, buildings can be positioned on site to strategically allow or preclude solar gain, admit or deny natural ventilation, and maximize or minimize shade needed in different seasons. After everything has been done to passively minimize energy use, active technologies can recapture energy or generate power for internal use or addition to the grid.

Concepts examined here should provide a few more tools to design sustainably.