Security Symposium Highlights

More than 150 architects, engineers, facility managers and students gathered in New York earlier this month for the Building Security Symposium. This year’s conference was a resounding success, in attendance and quality of presentations. The program included 19 presentations from top experts in the field of building security. Topics covered were blast and progressive collapse, egress design, fire protection, physical security, building envelope which included glazing, film and design examples, threat analysis, assessment, risk and utility and numerous case studies. Mark Cohen, Deputy Director and Chief Council, State of New York Office of Homeland Security gave the kick off address followed by Earle Kennett, Vice President of NIBS, who gave a technical keynote address entitled “The Assessment Methodology Behind FEMA 426 and 452.”

AEI would like to thank our sponsor, The Ornamental Steel and Metal Institutes of New York, as well as our cooperating organization The Infrastructure Security Partnership, for making this event possible. Special thanks also goes to Mohammad Ettouney, conference chair, for doing a tremendous job of organizing this conference and assuring the high quality of the presentations.

Make your plans now to attend the next preeminent architectural engineering event. The 2006 Architectural Engineering National Conference will take place in Omaha, Nebraska on March 30 – April 2, 2006. We are currently accepting abstracts for this conference. Visit the web site at www.asce.org/conferences/aei06/ for more details.