2021 HCES Award Honorees
Lifetime Achievement: David G. Waller
(1948-2020)
Engineer of the Year: Steve Baldridge
Young Engineer of the Year: Kapiolani Street
Student Engineer of the Year: Willy Chang
The Hawaii Council of Engineering Societies (HCES) is pleased to announce that David Waller PE is posthumously 2021’s HCES Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Dave was selected for this prestigious honor for an engineering career of 46 years nationally and in Hawaii that was always directed to developing a resource essential for our modern society, energy. First in the petroleum industry as a chemical engineer testing oil wells in Montana and Canada and then as a refinery engineer at PRI in Hawaii. His work at Hawaiian Electric was redirected toward developing the best and most efficient ways to generate and use electricity. Dave was acutely aware of the need for Hawaii to develop renewable energy sources, especially in geothermal energy. After his retirement from Hawaiian Electric, he re-tooled his skills by adding geoscience to his resume by joining the Master of Geoscience for Professionals Degree Program at the University of Hawaii, where he co-authored seven papers on Play Fairway Analysis of Geothermal Resources Across the State of Hawaii.
In 1970, Dave earned his Chemical Engineering degree from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Terre Haute, Indiana. Dave worked in the oil industry for many years on the mainland before working at the PRI refinery in Hawaii. From PRI, Dave joined the Fuels Department at Hawaiian Electric where he negotiated and managed their fuel contracts. Dave became Director of the Technology Service Department where he worked with past Lifetime Achievement Awardee Alan Lloyd. Dave moved up to Manager and then Vice President of Customer Service.
While at Hawaiian Electric Dave was a director with the team that lead the program promoting the installation of hot water heat pumps at hotels and condominiums in Hawaii which provides significant energy savings. For this Hawaiian Electric was awarded the utility industry’s top honor, “The Edison Award,” which was “Presented in 1995 in recognition of its distinguished leadership, innovation and contribution to the advancement of the Electric Industry for the benefit of All.”
At Hawaiian Electric, Dave as a director helped developed and managed the Demand Side Management (DSM) program in the 1990’s, which was part of the beginnings of energy conservation programs in the electrical utility industry. He was also central to the developing the Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) for energy conservation projects with all branches of the US Government, which resulted in renovation projects for lighting retrofits, hot water solar, electrical solar panels, and air conditioning projects. Projects included a nine-million-dollar central chilled water plant at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, air conditioning chiller replacement at Schofield Barracks and solar projects for the US Coast Guard. While at Vice President of Hawaiian Electric he managed energy demand projects such as Direct Load Control programs and worked to transition Hawaiian Electric’s generation to meet Hawaii’s Clean Energy Initiative’s goal for Hawaii to be 100% renewable energy by 2045.
Dave was a sailor and sailed his sailboat out of the Ala Wai Boat Harbor for many years and enjoyed riding his Harley-Davidson around the Island. Dave Waller was an inspirational leader that always led by example. He always had a cool, level head and thoughtful approach to problem solving and was a welcome member at any meeting. Dave was always striving to improve himself as shown in his educational accomplishments. He studied Chemical Engineering earning his Bachelor of Science degree. To fulfill his required military service during the Vietnam era, he enlisted in the US Air Force where he learned Russian and use it during reconnaissance flights. After working over a decade as a chemical engineer, he returned to college and earned his MBA at Manoa. In 2014, he returned again to Manoa and earned his Masters in Geoscience specializing in geothermal energy.
He actively supported professional and community organizations monetarily and in officer positions such as ASHRAE and the Armed Service YMCA Hawai'i. As ASHRAE President in 2001-2002, ASHRAE's National convention was held in Honolulu, when about 3,000 ASHRAE members attended. This involved coordination of the convention facilities, schedule programs, hotel accommodations, field trips and all other activities for the 4-day event.
Dave's lifetime accomplishments first in discovery of new oil and natural gas energy sources, his work in electric utility energy conservation and renewable energy; and lastly in finding firm renewable geothermal energy sources in Hawaii will continue to benefit future generations and has made Hawaii a better place for all to live. Dave’s accomplishments will be appropriately recognized and remembered through the HCES Lifetime Achievement Award.
Though Dave passed in late November of last year, Dave’s wife Beth and their son Zander can look proudly on Dave’s Lifetime Achievements. HCES’s member societies thanks them for all their support of Dave’s work and know Dave will always be respectfully remembered by his family, friends, and colleagues
The Hawaii Society of Professional Engineers is honored to announce that Mr. Steve Baldridge has been selected as the HSPE 2021 Engineer of the Year. Steve Baldridge is the founder and president of BASE and leads BASE’s pursuit of innovation and practical approaches to making buildings stronger, safer, and more cost-efficient. Steve received his BSCE from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and MSCE from the University of Texas – Austin, and started his engineering career working in Chicago, Houston, and Dallas. Two downturns in the construction market led him to success in Hawaii: the first in 1990 that brought him to Honolulu to work with JAI and later Martin & Bravo, and the second in 1995 that led him to embark on a venture to start his own structural engineering firm.
In the late 1990s, to assist its clients working on government projects, Steve began providing antiterrorism/force protection (AT/FP), a relatively new specialty engineering service for the A-E industry. Since then, his firm has emerged as a leading structural engineering consulting firm addressing protective design. In 2006 Steve co-authored a publication entitled Prevention of Progressive Collapse in Multistory Concrete Buildings and he served as Director of the Applied Technology Council (ATC), a national technical non-profit professional organization dedicated to the advancement of engineering technology to mitigate natural hazards. During his tenure on the board, Steve helped steer the ATC to expand its focus to include the mitigation of manmade (terrorist) disasters. In addition to protective design, Steve and his firm are one of the nation’s foremost experts in engineering for high-risk environments with special expertise in designing structures that are resilient against high seismic activity, hurricane/tornado winds, or tsunamis. He served as ATC’s project technical director for ATC-64, Development of Design and Construction Guidance for Special Facilities for Vertical Evacuation from Tsunamis, the seminal document that led to the ASCE Tsunami Design chapter. This work has a direct impact on reducing the risks associated with tsunamis in Hawaii.
For nearly three decades Steve has shared his expertise in natural disaster mitigation through volunteering in areas hit by earthquakes and tsunamis including:
1992 – Hurricane Iniki
1993 – Guam Earthquake
2006 – Big Island Earthquake
2009 – American Samoa Tsunami
2010 – Haiti Earthquake
2015 – Nepal Earthquake
2017 – Hurricane Irma: US Virgin Islands, Virgin Gorda and St Maarten
The majority of these trips were pro-bono efforts for technical non-profits that often required staying in tents or hotel rooms with no power. His trip to American Samoa was recognized by the US Small Business Administration and Steve was a finalist for their Phoenix Award in 2011.
Steve also volunteers to work with Honolulu’s youth with an emphasis on encouraging STEM. In 2001 he formed the Hawaii chapter of the ACE Mentor Program providing opportunities for high school students to learn about architecture, construction and engineering. In 2007 he travelled with a team from Moanalua High School to Washington, D.C., where they won the inaugural CIRT/ACE national design competition.
Steve is also a champion of efficient and sustainable structural design through optimizing structural systems to reduce material requirements on a project. Projects designed by BASE have changed the Honolulu skyline, such as Koula, Aeo, Aalii, Pacifica, The Ritz-Carlton Waikiki, Keauhou Place, and 801 South Street, along with other not-so-tall but equally important projects. Under his leadership BASE has expanded to Guam, Chicago, Florida, and India with signature projects across all offices.
The Hawaii Society of Professional Engineers is honored to announce that Ms. Kapiolani Street has been selected as the 2021 Young Engineer of the Year. Kapiolani M. Street, P.E. was born and raised on the island of Maui and is a proud alumna of the Kamehameha Schools, Kapalama Campus. In 2013, she earned a BS in Civil Engineering and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, College of Engineering and the University of Hawaii at Manoa, College of Social Sciences, respectively. In 2020, she obtained her MBA from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Shidler College of Business. She has over 7 years of experience on civil and sanitary engineering projects. She currently works as a Project Engineer at the Limtiaco Consulting Group in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her projects include stormwater erosion control design, wastewater system design, site development and utility design.
Ms. Street became a licensed professional engineer in the State of Hawaii in 2017. She currently serves as the Past President and Website Co-Chair for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Younger Member Forum (YMF). Ms. Street is also active in the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and the annual Pacific Water Conference (PWC) Committee. She previously served as the AWWA– Hawaii Section Secretary, the 2019 ASCE Western Regional Younger Member Council (WRYMC) Conference Committee, the Chi Epsilon (XE) Alumni Association – Hawaii Section Secretary, and the ASCE YMF Wiliki Chair.
This year’s HCES SEOY is Mr. Willy Chang! With a cumulative GPA of 3.99 and a major GPA of 4.00, Willy is expected to graduate with a BS in Computer Engineering and a minor in Business Administration this Spring 2021. He will be continuing into the UH College of Engineering Electrical Engineering Master’s program as a BAM (Bachelors and Masters) student. He is currently the Treasurer for the University of Hawai’i Mānoa chapter of IEEE-HKN and also a member of the Hawai’i Kai Jaycees and the PMA (Pre-Medical Association).
Entering the UHM as a Regent’s Scholar, Willy wished to continue his academic career not only as an individual seeking awards and a Bachelor’s degree, but one who satisfies his thirst for knowledge and practical applications. Even though enrolled in the College of Engineering as a Computer Engineer, he desired to be involved in the medical arena; thus, he got involved in a few related organizations such as the Pre-Medical Association and the Pre-Health Career Corps, and volunteered in JABSOM’s Bioinformatics team under Drs. You Ping Deng and Masaki Nasu. In the summer of 2019, he interned at the UH Cancer Center under Dr. Muller Fabbri to analyze the interaction of certain miRNAs in the tumor microenvironment. He and his team then published the “Automated computer analysis of human blastocyst expansion from embryoscope time-lapse image files,” in the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 2019.
During this period where he dedicated himself to absorbing information within the medical field, Willy pursued opportunities to enhance himself as an engineer under the VIP Micro-Robotics Embryo Image Analysis sub-team. Here, he contributed in training a neural network and developing a standalone desktop application using MATLAB to segment and analyze embryo videos.
Following the summer of his sophomore year, Willy participated in the Hawaii Annual Coding Challenge with a few of his fellow engineering students. In the competition, they built a mobile application, “Data for the Future,” to visualize the local community’s involvement and their contribution to Hawaii’s sustainable goals. Falling short of placing, he would compete in the same competition in his senior year. This time, they created a web application, “GameTheSystem,”which proposed a procedure that would enhance the security of the IT building on campus, a project secured a second-place finish!
Willy started off as a volunteer at the Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory, where he helped develop and design dashboards to visualize incoming telemetry data from satellites, a position where he would work through the summer of 2020 and into his senior year. As a senior, he started off interning at University Health Partners working on a project to refactor a machine learning classification algorithm and started to work with the Cybersecurity team under Dr. Yao Zheng on a harmonic radar using GNURadio.
Understanding the importance of passing on knowledge to the next generation, Willy has been a math and science tutor at the Online Learning Academy since he started his tenure at UHM. He has worked as a teaching assistant in one core Computer Engineering course and a grader. He is currently a teaching assistant in EE 367, Data Structures & Algorithms.
This humble, dedicated, and disciplined student, and soon to be a computer engineer, is the type of graduate necessary to promote and inspire engineering to the youth of Hawaii!!!