Dan: 0:00

Eileen Vélez-Vega is a civil engineer who specializes in airport runways. She said that for her, runway projects are like Disneyland for aviation engineers.

Eileen: 0:11

As a design engineer and and most of the time as project manager, I just love seeing that what we actually put on paper is being built. When you have areas at the runway that are being reconstructed completely and you get to see excavation and all the way from the subgrade, the subgrade is the bottom part of the soil, all the way up, all the different layers you see, the sand or the silt and then the concrete and everything on top. I geek out about that because I'm a pavements engineer. So I love it when you actually see a cut on the side.

Dan: 0:42

Yeah. It's like some geological discovery or something.

Eileen: 0:46

It's like a layer of a cake.

Dan: 0:48

Right.

Eileen: 0:48

And sometimes, I remember one of my coworkers once said, yeah, you're so weird. And I was like, no, it's not. It's so amazing. Look at what we're doing. This is for people's safety. People will use the runway or the airport. Never think about us, the engineers. We're like the silent heroes. But we're here making sure that all this works so that they can have a safe trip and go visit family and connect with the world. They're not thinking about us, but we are really important because this has to be done in order for that to happen.

Dan: 1:27

I'm Dan Heath, and this is What It's Like To Be. In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession, an aerospace engineer, a long-haul trucker, a baseball player. We wanna know what they do all day at work. Today, we'll ask Eileen Vélez-Vega what it's like to be a civil aviation engineer. We'll talk about what determines how long a runway needs to be, how a small and irritable species of animal changed one of her projects, and we'll teach you so much about runway cracks that you'll never look out the plane window the same way again. Stay with us. So what makes a good airport site? What makes a particular piece of land, like, suitable to build an airport on? What are you thinking about?

Eileen: 2:18

Wow. Well, you know, it's interesting because an airport is like a city, and it will require acres of land. You look at elevation, temperature, wind, weather, all these things are important for you to have an airport that'll be good to serve people that, you know, that people can come in and travel.

Dan: 2:36

One interesting aspect of airport design is this. How do you know how long your runways need to be? The answer hinges on several factors including weather.

Eileen: 2:47

So for example, in Puerto Rico, we have hotter climates. So usually, they require longer runways. The warm air is less dense, which is going to reduce both lift and engine thrust.

Dan: 2:58

Air speed is what generates lift and allows planes to fly. Think of it as the number of molecules hitting the wing per unit time, and in warm air you have fewer molecules so the plane has to go faster to scoop up enough molecules to lift. And to go faster, you need more runway length. That's it. Same logic for runways in higher elevations. The thinner air means you need more runway length to accelerate. Now here's what's fascinating. If your airport is in a windy area, you'll know based on past data which way the wind will typically blow. And you'll want to point your runway into the wind. Headwinds are good for lift off because they're blowing more molecules over the wing, which is the secret to lift. Pretty cool. Right? The other critical factor is what kind of planes are flying at your airport?

Eileen: 3:55

Obviously, bigger aircraft will require a longer length of runway than than the lighter aircraft, like the general aviation aircraft, which are smaller. Could be the Cessnas. But, know, you don't design a runway for the small operations. You design it for a fleet mix, for the fleet mix is the combination of all the aircraft together.

Dan: 4:14

As you might imagine, runways require regular maintenance. It's called pavement management.

Eileen: 4:20

So that means that we go out there and we inspect the pavements. So just like it sounds, inspect the pavements, we make sure that we sample the airport infrastructure or the airport pavements and we give them a rating. So zero is bad, a 100 is good. Usually, the new pavements have a a pavement condition index of a 100. And so that's important because they'll go back to the FAA and they will ask for funding to rehabilitate certain areas of the airfield, and they need those condition index to show them how the pavement is performing. Anything between 70 and a 100, it's a pavement that is in fair, good, or excellent condition. So the better the pavement, it means that you've done enough maintenance. So as design engineers, we're there with the airport making sure that the maintenance is done, that rehabilitation is done at the right time because if you wait too long to do a rehabilitation to a certain pavement, it will be too late and you'll have to do reconstruction and then the construction is even more expensive. Look out the window next time you're in the airport. The other thing that you're gonna see is that if there's any cracking or anything, that's what I do. Since I'm an aviation pavements engineer, I look out the window and I'm like, oh, there's a crack there, there's a spall over there, there's

Dan: 5:31

What's a spall?

Eileen: 5:32

A spall is almost like a chip, right, or or a defect on the.

Dan: 5:37

Okay.

Eileen: 5:38

So when we are out there doing, pavement management, we have a long list of of pavement defects that we will record, and we give them a rating. So we collect on, like, a spreadsheet or a computer, now it's very digital. We use, tablets, and then we're there. There's a code for a longitudinal crack is a certain code. A corner break for a concrete pavement or a slab is another code. And And that's how we record them. We give them severities if it's low, medium, or high.

Dan: 6:07

And so should we picture you like walking down the taxiway like with an iPad or something and you're like Yes. Okay, spall, boom, medium Exactly. Longitudinal crack, severe Yes. Whatever.

Eileen: 6:18

And we walk around with a wheel because a measuring wheel. And in one time, in an airport many many years ago, I remember I was a young engineer and it was two of us, two two engineers, and we were walking with our wheels measuring different defect pavement defects, and someone over the radio said that there were some girls walking dogs out in the apron. We heard it, and we couldn't believe what we were hearing. We're like, you know, we're walking our dogs.

Dan: 6:43

You were walking.

Eileen: 6:44

Yeah. We heard we this is our these are our wheels, our measuring wheels, wheels. And we were measuring. Yeah. We were measuring samples. And, you know, you divide the pavement in samples because you don't inspect a 100% of the pavement, you go into, what is called a 95% confidence rate. And that's what you do. Right? And then you pick samples for random samples from the pavement so that you can show the condition of the pavement.

Dan: 7:07

When you say samples, are you actually taking material out?

Eileen: 7:11

No. No. We're actually we take a map. We map out the area. Like, for example, we're going to inspect the runway. We will take samples that are 2,000 square feet in area, and then we divide it, and then they look like blocks, like one to a 100, and we will inspect sample one, three, five, ten until we have yeah. And that is that's all in the FAA guidelines, and we won't inspect all of them.

Dan: 7:35

Because it would take you a lifetime to, like, micro inspect every inch, so you just take samples to get an indicative, representative sense of how things are.

Eileen: 7:45

Yeah. Exactly. A confidence level. Yes. That's what you get. It's a 95% confidence level, and what we do is we record by samples. You know, a sample will be divided so that you can or a feature will be divided so that you can have representation of that area. So that's why now when I sit on a plane and I look out the window, I'm like, yep, I can see cracking, I can see depressions, and and you start going through this list of things that you've learned in the language that you've learned them. And I tell my my husband or my mom or my daughter, and they just look at me like, okay. That's fine. I don't need to know that.

Dan: 8:19

I don't need to know the taxonomy of cracks, mom. Yeah.

Eileen: 8:22

No. No. My mom this is always my mom's a teacher and a retired English teacher. And she'll say, are you in the airport counting cracks? I'm like, that's not all I do, mom.

Dan: 8:34

Do you have a favorite runway?

Eileen: 8:39

That I've built?

Dan: 8:40

A wallet-sized photo of your your favorite one?

Eileen: 8:43

You know, I don't know if I have a favorite. I mean, I love our island. Puerto Rico, obviously, this is where I live. And there is a runway in Vieques. Vieques is an outer municipal island out of the, East Coast Of Puerto Rico.

Dan: 8:56

Yeah. Yeah.

Eileen: 8:57

We worked on that airport before the pandemic and around the pandemic too, and it's on a bluff. Like, you you're right there. You see the runway is on the cliff, and you look past the runway and there's just a cliff and water. Beautiful views, complicated to work on it if you wanted to expand. There's really not a lot of way for you to to go beyond the the cutoff of the cliff, but it's beautiful.

Dan: 9:21

Airport construction is full of surprises and sometimes those surprises are animals, like the burrowing owl.

Eileen: 9:30

The burrowing owls are the cutest little owls. They're very cute to look at, but they're vicious. I mean, you have to be very careful around them, especially when they're taking care of their babies.

Dan: 9:40

And so the burrowing owls will do their nest around our airport, and when you had to do a project, you had to be very careful on the season and make sure that you protected their nest.

Eileen: 9:50

And you don't really think about these things until you start working in these airports.

Dan: 9:55

Well, I I don't know how deep we wanna go on the owls, but but I know, like, birds and planes don't really mix. Like, was that a safety concern or no?

Eileen: 10:03

Well, it is a safety concern, but also they're protected. But you're right though. I mean, in the airports as well, there have been bird strikes and issues with birds impacting engines and that's very dangerous.

Dan: 10:16

Dangerous is right. We probably all remember the famous emergency landing in the Hudson River by captain Sully Sullenberger. That was caused by Canada geese flying into the engines. And Eileen said engineers have to plan for these risks.

Eileen: 10:31

That's why we want to keep wildlife away from the airport. But sometimes it's hard because you have a lot of these areas where there is a lot of wildlife around it. Here in San Juan, there's wildlife around there. There's iguanas that we will see. Iguanas? Well, there's iguanas everywhere in Puerto Rico. So you wanna make sure that you keep them away from the active runways. It is a safety issue.

Dan: 10:54

How do you keep an iguana away from somewhere it wants to go?

Eileen: 10:57

Well, they have personnel at the airport that are they're a part of the environmental department, and they make sure that the

Dan: 11:04

The iguana hunters.

Eileen: 11:05

Wildlife stays away. Yes. There's no iguanas that are hurt in the process. They just make sure that they're not, invading or or crossing into the runway. But it requires monitoring. You know, it requires patrolling the area to make sure that they don't go into the active runway. It would be dangerous for an aircraft, especially with high speeds.

Dan: 11:24

And so you have to carefully engineer around the bird problem, don't you?

Eileen: 11:29

Well, what we wanna make sure is that you're not making it easy for the birds or the wildlife to come into the runway. For example

Dan: 11:35

Mhmm.

Eileen: 11:35

When we are designing for the grass or the turf on the airports, you wanna make sure that you're not designing or you're not specifying, material that'll bring wildlife or that there are seeds or things that will cause debris, but also that'll cause birds to come in and eat them. So you have to think about these things.

Dan: 11:56

I think we've all had the experience of landing in an airplane at some airport and, you know, on the way down, you see the lights and on the runways, you see the letters and the numbers, but but I'm not sure many of us have thought about what exactly do those things mean and and what is their role. Can you coach us through that?

Eileen: 12:16

Yes. And this is funny. If my mom listens to this, she's going to be like, "Dan, what did you do?" Because when I younger engineer back back probably about ten years ago or maybe more, I lived in in South Florida, and the airport was on my way home every day. And so when my mom used to visit from Puerto Rico, at night, we would drive by the airport and I would tell her, mom, those are the runway lights. Those are the taxiway lights. And that means this and that mean that, and she would be she'd be like, okay. Yes. Every night I have to hear what the color lights mean. So, yes, the lights have meaning, the signage is important. So there's different types of runway lights or I guess lights around the airport. So just a quick, lesson on that is

Dan: 13:01

Yeah.

Eileen: 13:01

If it's white, it's usually the runway that is safe to use. If it's green, there's a threshold or or where the runway starts. When red is when the runway is ending or stopping. If you see a blue light, it's not a runway light, it's a taxiway light or a taxiway edge light. If it's a yellow or an amber, it means caution or the runway is ending. So there are different lights and they're positioned in different places. Right? That's part of the design.

Dan: 13:28

So on a given runway, like if you're landing, would it go from white to yellow to red?

Eileen: 13:35

Yes. You would have a white or or green when you have the threshold lights, but yes, you would have the caution of yellow and then the red that the runway is ending. And then that's it. The red, the runway has ended. So yes. So you do have different lights. And that's also for the pilots. I mean, we are designing for the pilots to use the airport efficiently. Right? I mean, that's who we design for.

Dan: 13:57

Coming up, why the hardest part of engineering has nothing to do with engineering. Stay with us. What is the absolute worst part about your job?

Eileen: 14:40

So let's see. The worst thing for us as engineers is the funding and the uncertainty sometimes of funding. And so that makes it difficult for when you design a project or when you design a runway and the funding maybe doesn't go through or the project delays and start. I feel that that's the worst part because you invest so much time and so much of your talent into designing or working on these projects. And you can't really control that sometimes because it's not like you designed it wrong or that you built it wrong. It's just that sometimes the uncertainty of funding or the availability or priorities change, and sometimes you just can't control that.

Dan: 15:18

It reminds me, we talked, recently to an aerospace engineer who worked on, the Mars Rover, and she was saying people have this perception of aerospace engineering that, you know, if you're smart enough, if you had done enough training, like, you're gonna know what quote unquote the answer is. And she said, there's never one right answer. I mean, this is complex stuff, and it's it's all about trade offs. And she said, even with something as as well funded and and invested in as, you know, a Mars project, they're constantly making compromises. And and she said to the point of there were even some things that she knew were wrong or bugs in the system that they just didn't have time to fix and had to let go. And and it sounds like you have to make similar compromises in your work. Like, maybe there's something that would have been longer lasting or more sustainable, but you just don't have the timing or the funds to do it.

Eileen: 16:15

Agree. And, you know, every every airport project, no matter how well funded or well planned it is, it will require some compromises. It's an ecosystem, so it doesn't depend only on what the engineer or the client wants. There are strict safety rules. Sometimes there are political pressures.

Dan: 16:33

You might have environmental constraints, and some operational realities.

Eileen: 16:37

I mean, there is a lot of demand for certain routes or certain things that you'll have to incorporate. So the leaders of the airport are gonna talk to us or the client are gonna talk to us and explain to us what those constraints are, and we have to build around it.

Dan: 16:52

And if the client is frustrated with you and your colleagues about something, what what is the usual something?

Eileen: 16:58

Well, it could be, delays on the project. Mhmm. If something takes longer than expected, you have to have that very good communication so that you can let them know ahead of time that it might take longer than what you expected. Quality issues will also cause a lot of uncomfortable moments. You want to avoid making design mistakes at all costs. I mean, obviously, none of us wanna make design mistakes on purpose. But if there is a mistake, then you have to fix it and be upfront about it. But, yeah, that could cause some discomfort.

Dan: 17:30

I mean, have you ever had to own up to a mistake earlier in your career?

Eileen: 17:33

Of course. Yes.

Dan: 17:35

Yeah.

Eileen: 17:35

You do, and then you have to learn from them. That's how you become a better engineer.

Dan: 17:39

If you were talking to a group of young engineers, like, what story would you tell them? Is there, like, one mistake that comes to mind as an example that would be useful for their learning?

Eileen: 17:49

I think that communication is important, and I one time, I was very young, very young at at a project, a construction project, and I was new to construction. And my my supervisor sent me to an inspection and I told the airport director that this was my first time and I'm going to learn. That was not a good person to tell that to. So I was honest, but I think I was too honest and and probably a little bit naive at that time because my my supervisor told me, did you tell the airport director that this is your first time you're doing this so you're just gonna learn? That was not a good decision. I'm like, yeah, that probably was not my finest moment. So I didn't do that ever again. And I also learned really fast, so I wouldn't make mistakes.

Dan: 18:33

In 2021, Eileen became Puerto Rico's Secretary of Transportation. She was the first woman appointed to that role. With her background in civil engineering, she sometimes surprised people with how granular she could get in meetings.

Eileen: 18:47

And I loved being at design meetings and pull out my computer and just ask questions particularly about, did you consider this repair technique or did you cons how many cores did did geotech do? And the consultants and my staff just looked at me like, the secretary is asking us these questions. And I said, well, I'm a pavement's engineer. I didn't stop being an engineer because I became the secretary. And I I think it was better for me to have that very, very technical background before being the secretary because I was able to understand what they were doing but also ask them questions that show them, like, you can't lie to me. I kinda know what what you're talking about. I mean, don't don't don't talk to me like I don't understand.

Dan: 19:29

Yeah. Right.

Eileen: 19:30

But I did respect their work and knew that it wasn't easy, so it also gave me that empathy for what my employees were doing and and care more what they were doing and understand what the process was actually like or how long a project took or why sometimes things did not move as fast as we wanted them to move. It just gave me an another perspective on on what we do as engineers And and then the power that we have into making change and and policy changes for so that things actually work better.

Dan: 19:58

It it seems like that tangible payoff would would be a really compelling thing about the job. Like, I was rereading Studs Terkel's book, Working, where he talks to a variety of people in different roles. This was back in the seventies. And one recurring theme among especially people who do something very tangible, like, you know, construction workers or masons of various kinds, is they'll talk about, it feels good to walk by, you know, the the church or the building or the street that you played a part in. You can kinda, you know, poke your kids and say, you know, I helped do that.

Eileen: 20:35

Well, my daughter is 15, but when she was younger, she would tell people that's my mom's airport. And my friends used to tell me, your yeah. Anna said that that was your airport. That's mommy's airport. I'm like, aw. Because I would take her sometimes to work, and there I do a lot of work with Women in Aviation International, and there's an event every year that's called Girls in Aviation Day. And I've been taking my daughter since she was a little girl. And so she knew that I worked on the airport and I would show her what I was working on. And if they were if we had construction equipment out there doing projects that we designed, I would tell her, hey, this is my project, this is what they're doing. And so she started telling people that that was mommy's airport. So there is that wonderful feeling also that your kids will know what you did as well. And now she's 15, now she doesn't call it my airport anymore. But but she understood that I was working on pretty cool engineering projects.

Dan: 21:28

Well, and you must be a powerful example to young women that are interested in engineering. Because I I imagine when you entered the field, there couldn't have been a an abundance of women doing the kind of work you do.

Eileen: 21:40

So there's more now. There's definitely more now. And I mean, there's pioneer women that have been doing this work for decades and decades, and they were the ones that started opening the roads for all of us or opening the path. But, yes, we are and especially with Latinas, I believe we're about two to 3% of the STEM workforce. So we're still considered that silver unicorn sometimes in projects. Aviation is also still a low percentage of women in the aviation industry. I do a lot of seminars for children, especially for young girls, just so that they can see what I've done in my career and what opportunities they have out there.

Dan: 22:19

So Eileen, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. Here we go. What is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know? And what does it mean?

Eileen: 22:33

I wanted to say substantial completion.

Dan: 22:36

Substantial completion.

Eileen: 22:38

Substantial completion is that magical moment when a project is functional enough to be used or to open, and when we have substantial completion at an airport project, it means that we're done. You know, it might not be a 100% done, but it is done to the satisfaction that we built it according to plans and we can open it.

Dan: 22:57

You can pop the champagne.

Eileen: 22:59

Yes. Or notice to proceed, that means your contract is signed, go.

Dan: 23:06

Notice to proceed. I like that one too.

Eileen: 23:08

Yes. Those are keywords that we love to hear.

Dan: 23:12

What's the most insulting thing you could say about an aviation engineer's work?

Eileen: 23:17

Why is it so expensive? Or if it doesn't take that long, why are you charging me so much? Or

Dan: 23:24

Mhmm.

Eileen: 23:24

Can't you just build it faster? And you're just like, well, I am not going to ignore permitting, safety, or funding, or the community, or just the design criteria. And it doesn't mean that it because it took a little bit of time, it shouldn't be expensive because you're paying for knowledge, you're not paying for how fast or how slow this is. So, yeah, sometimes that that can be insulting. Like, why so much? This is so easy. You're like

Dan: 23:50

This is so easy.

Eileen: 23:51

It really is not.

Dan: 23:53

Why don't you do it then, bub?

Eileen: 23:54

Exactly. Exactly. So, yes. I think that I've heard of a couple of times, why is it so expensive? And it's like, oh, okay.

Dan: 24:02

What phrase or sentence strikes fear in the heart of an aviation engineer?

Eileen: 24:08

We found something unexpected underground. There's your issue or or a void or a cavity or or historical site. No. You don't wanna have any underground surprises.

Dan: 24:20

I remember reading about I think it was in Istanbul, where I think they were building some lines of of a railway or some kind of transportation mode. And it it was like, what would happen is, every mile they would try to extend it, they would start digging, and then they would discover some historical artifact and have to pause it for six months while while the site was explored by archaeologists.

Eileen: 24:45

Yeah. That can happen. It's happened in Puerto Rico a lot. You have a lot of historical, native areas or native land, and a project can stop if you find one of those artifacts from hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

Dan: 24:58

So that's happened to you, that thing?

Eileen: 25:00

Oh, yes. Of course.

Dan: 25:01

Wow.

Eileen: 25:01

For roadway projects, especially when we work on embankments and areas where we're doing bridge work, we have found things and and that project has to stop. Yes. It's a huge deal. There's a Institute of Puerto Rico Culture that will be involved in it, and there's also SHPO, the historic preservation office, and they protect those areas.

Dan: 25:23

What's a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear?

Eileen: 25:28

The engine roar of an airplane when we are out there working on the runway, walking, or doing pavement inspections or just walking the, different areas of the airport. I personally love just hearing the planes when they depart because this is what we do. Right? We build infrastructure so that they can safely depart or land. And so when you hear those engines roar and they go, it's really cool to be standing there and looking at them. It can get really loud, but it's I love that part of my job. And I don't do it as much anymore because of the work that I do, but for, I guess, fifteen, eighteen years, I was out there a lot when the engines were going and the aircraft was either landing or departing. And it's it's so it's awesome, really great to see it.

Dan: 26:11

What's an aspect of your work that you consistently savor?

Eileen: 26:15

Oh, visiting a project after it's done. Watching just people using it without thinking about it, that's when we become the silent heroes of society. You do want to build your project so that when the work is done, we disappear and people just have an everyday life and not even think about us. That's the whole point of it. Right? That's why we do our job. Sometimes people don't think about the airport as part of the transportation system because we think more about the roads and the bridges and the buses and how all those connect. But airports are essential for transportation. This is how we connect families, how we connect businesses. And especially coming from the island mentality of of living in an island, airports are extremely important for us to connect with the rest of the world. It's also very important for when we have emergency or disasters because that's how we get all our aids and our emergency response and that's how we connect again with the world. So to me, it's not just a place where you take to go have fun and go to, I don't know, a touristy destination. It's part of the connection of how we actually connect with the rest of the world. So to me, working at airports has a deeper meaning of just building runways and building pavements. It's pretty much building connection.

Dan: 27:37

Eileen Vélez-Vega is a civil aviation engineer. She was formerly the secretary of transportation of Puerto Rico. I wanna come back to that theme I mentioned of the meaning that comes from building tangible things. So here's a passage from the book Working by Studs Terkel, who's kind of the patron saint of this show. Terkel is interviewing Mike LeFevre, who works in a steel mill. LeFevre says, you're mass producing things and you never see the end result of it. Somebody built the pyramids. Pyramids, Empire State Building, these things don't just happen. There's hard work behind it. I would like to see a building, say the Empire State. I would like to see on one side of it, a foot wide strip from top to bottom with the name of every bricklayer, the name of every electrician with all the names. So when a guy walked by, he could take his son and say, see, that's me over there on the 45th Floor. I put the steel beam in. Picasso can point to a painting. What can I point to? Everyone should have something to point to, end quote. I feel that desire myself for something to point to. I've got my books and this podcast, but I wonder how this feels if you work inside a huge organization. If you do important work that just doesn't happen to leave behind any physical residue, so to speak. Does that bug you? Or do you learn to change your lens and appreciate something else? A process you improved or a team you made better? I'm curious. For now, let's just admire the tangibility of what Eileen does. The runways built, the spalls repaired, the lights placed. She has something to point to. Designing for hot air and heavy planes, walking taxiways with tablets and measuring wheels, translating funding constraints into viable choices, and building the quiet infrastructure of human connection. Folks, that's what it's like to be a civil aviation engineer. This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath. I'll see you next time for the fifth and final episode of our air travel series. We will hear from an airport CEO. And yes, airports have CEOs. Don't miss it.