- Possibly and possibly not. Many of the people doing research and pioneering tools for measuring and understanding embodied carbon are operating out of academia, so you should expect to continue interacting with academia for your entire career. But then, anyone should expect to continue interacting with academia for their entire career, with or without this focus.
- Yes. Much of this discussion is being led and organized by firms, firm leaders and actively practicing engineers. It is definitely a minority of the practice at this point, so insisting on this kind of focus in an employer will narrow your options.
- Program matters and the most efficient building is one that already exists. Part of your job will be guiding clients to understand what they actually need out of a project, and that may be more efficient than what they initially think they need. This is a challenge for architects in general. As a structural engineer you will have architects as clients more often than not, so that will be an extra step of complication for you.
- As a practicing structural engineer, over time you will find yourself gaining expertise with specific materials to the exclusion of gaining experience with others, so you’ll be specializing anyway. This is another avenue of knowledge about whatever you specialize in. CLT is an emerging material, so if you insist on working with it that too will narrow your options in terms of employers.
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