On Tuesday October 11th, Westlake’s Scott Zelenka, PE gave a ‘lunch and learn’ presentation called “Infrastructure Around The World,” covering his global travels this past year. With his family in tow, Scott traveled for ten months from Portland, to Western Europe, through Turkey and Egypt, eventually ending up in Southeast Asia. The Zelenkas departed on September 5th, 2021 and returned to the US on July 10th, 2022.

In addition to describing the route and sightseeing, Scott went into detail on what he noticed infrastructure and construction-wise in the countries he visited. He brought to attention infrastructure systems such as drainage systems and viaducts that were designed and built hundreds of years ago, but are still in use today. One slide even showed a metric station for a survey control point. He also highlighted different design philosophies in the infrastructure of SE Asia and the Netherlands. For example, street lights mounted on trees in Indonesia, hand mixed concrete pours at construction sites he witnessed in Sri Lanka, and the extremely narrow row houses along the canals of Amsterdam.

Scott also went over the train infrastructure of the Deutsche-Bahn in Austria and Germany, and feats of civil engineering in Rome including the Coliseum and The Pantheon–the longest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. Also featured was the efficient bike infrastructure of Amsterdam, which has led to 50% of daily trips being taken via bike, as opposed to motor vehicles in the city.

After working their way through Western Europe, the family spent significant time in Turkey, Egypt, and SE Asia. Scott noted the massive uptick in development in cities such as Singapore and Bangkok compared to prior visits in the mid-2000s. A complicating factor of the trip was managing various countries’ rules and protocols regarding COVID testing, as well as different regions’ access to testing. Scott talked about the challenge of accessing tests in different areas while juggling the details of different nations’ policies while in transit.

The family is set to depart to Peru this fall for a monthlong stay, then travel through Guatemala and Mexico. Scott is set to continue work with Westlake as a Project Engineer in a remote capacity while the family travels. We wish him safe travels as he embarks on this adventure.