Date & Time: Oct 9,2025 7:15 to 8:15 PM
Location: Westminster Harris Bell Hall (HBH), Windsor Building 2/F
4200 Jackson Ave, Austin TX 78731 AND Virtual via Zoom
Title: The Panama Canal – Insights of a Retired Consulting Engineer
Speaker: William (Bill) M. Isenhower, Ph.D.
Speaker Bio: Bill Isenhower is a retired civil engineer living in Austin, Texas. He worked as a Program Manager for Ensoft, Inc., an engineering software and consulting firm in Austin, Texas. In his time at Ensoft, Bill was the program manager of LPile, a computer program used for the design and analysis of laterally loaded piles and drilled shaft foundations. The LPile program is used by over 6,000 firms worldwide.
Bill received his Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral degrees in civil engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. In addition, Bill was a licensed professional engineer in Texas and Louisiana.
Bill has published numerous publications and reports on the design and testing of deep foundations. He is a co-author of the textbook Analysis and Design of Shallow and Deep Foundations with the late Professor Lymon C. Reese and Dr. Shin-Tower Wang. Bill has served on Geo-Institute of ASCE committees for publications and for computer and numerical methods.
Bill has taught short courses on the use of computer software for the design of deep foundations. He has taught short courses in 40 states in the US and Canada. internationally. He has also taught the National Highway Institute short course on drilled shafts to state DOT engineers is 37 states and he was a co-author for the US Army Corps of Engineers manual on analysis and design of laterally loaded piles.
As a consulting engineer, Bill has worked on many projects in the United States and Puerto Rico, and internationally in the Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Greece, India, Indonesia, the Palau islands, Panama, and Venezuela. In addition, he has twice served as an Expert on Mission for the United Nations Development Programme. In 2009, Bill was elected to the Academy of Distinguished Alumni of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering of the University of Texas at Austin.
He retired from Ensoft in 2016 and currently resides in Austin, Texas with his wife Dr. Anne Isenhower.
Abstract: Bill Isenhower, PhD Civil Engr., will give a talk about the Panama Canal, the engineering marvel that has had a major influence on global maritime trade since its opening in 1912. On December 31, 1999, control of the Panama Canal was handed over by the United States to the nation of Panama and the Panama Canal Company became the Auturidad del Canal de Panama (ACP). After assuming control, the ACP has worked to meet demands of global trade to increase the Canal’s overall shipping capacity and to improve operational practices for the Canal. Since the opening of the Canal in 1912, the shipping channel of the Canal has been gradually widened and deepened. Since 2017, the canal has operated a third set of larger, water-preserving locks in addition to the original Panamax locks that opened in 1912. The addition of the new Neopanamax locks and other improvements in multimodal shipping practices have increased the total amount of shipping across the isthmus and has allowed both more and larger ships to pass through the canal with shorter overall transit times, while also maintaining the sources of drinking water for the cities in central Panama.
Reservation: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/502322
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