Parsons Family Legacies: A Legacy Continued
If you happen to run into Parsons Fellow-at-Large and recently appointed Infrastructure North America CTO Jim Birdsall either at an office or on a jobsite, watch where he steps. You might not notice anything out of the ordinary, but he happens to be walking in the footsteps of one of the bridge engineering industry’s most storied figures, Blair Birdsall.
Blair Birdsall attended Princeton University for undergrad and graduate school before taking a job with J.A. Roebling’s Sons’ Company as a lead engineer, where the first major bridge he worked on was the Golden Gate Bridge. From there, Blair jumped from bridge to bridge and wire rope structure to wire rope structure, focusing both on fabrication and on-site delivery, which took him all over the world, including Canada, Alaska, El Salvador, Japan, and Europe.
In 1965, Blair joined Steinman, which had been founded in 1920 by David B. Steinman, a prominent civil engineer known for his work on many significant bridge projects. At the time, the company employed 80 to 100 employees, who Blair lovingly referred to as “the Gang.” By 1989, the year it merged with Ralph M. Parsons Group, Steinman had become Steinman, Boynton, Gronquist, and Birdsall.
Firsthand Knowledge Of Blair’s Impact
Tom Spoth, senior vice president of our Infrastructure North America business unit, Fellow Emeritus, and former Steinman employee, has firsthand knowledge of Blair’s contributions both to the engineering field and to Parsons’ current bridge practice. Tom met Blair in 1984 when he traveled to New York from Virginia for an interview. “I recall thinking he was an important guy, maybe because he was sitting behind a large mahogany desk in a very tidy office. Over the years, I came to learn he was an important guy. He was key to saving the Williamsburg Bridge from demolition, and the methods he and his team developed for cable investigation and preservation at the Golden Gate and Mount Hope Bridges have become standard practice today. Aside from being such a pioneer in bridge engineering, he was also very personable and willing to help us youngsters when in need, which was often.”
Tom says Blair was very outgoing, both socially and when it came to sharing technical knowledge. For example, he would come out on the floor where all the engineers sat and pick a handful of them and say, “Join me at Captain’s Ketch for lunch.” Captain’s Ketch was Blair’s favorite local restaurant in Manhattan. In fact, Steinman held its Christmas party there several times, and, according to Tom, Blair’s speeches at those parties were memorable. Tom says, “One year, [Blair] stood on the table, as an 80-something-year-old man, so everyone could see and hear his vibrant and encouraging speech.”
Tom also was witness to Blair’s generous spirit. He shares, “I remember hearing from the TIBA executive director that he and Blair had gone out to lunch. They each wanted to pay the bill, so Blair flipped a coin and won the privilege to pay. The executive director later learned it was Blair’s one-sided coin. That’s just the way Blair was—generous and always prepared.”
Tom says that one day he was in Blair’s office in Hoboken, New Jersey, and noticed that on the wall behind his desk, Blair had hung a portrait of Charles Sunderland—an engineer at Roebling’s for 50 years, known for developing several advancements in the engineering of steel wires and ropes, as well as prestressed concrete. “He told me to find somebody you really respect and try to follow in his footsteps and that the portrait was a reminder to him to do just that.” Years later, Tom continues, “I was at the current Roebling Museum and there was the portrait, and a similar one of Blair, hanging next to each other on display. I looked at those two great men for a while and pondered the contributions they made to the world of bridge engineering.”
And that’s part of Blair’s legacy—a businessman, an exceedingly experienced engineer, and a true gentleman who was always willing to share his experiences with younger engineers and provide guidance.
Through this approach, Blair was instrumental in supporting the Gang in their careers going forward. The work they did had a massive impact through the structures they designed, but also in building the repository of technical knowledge that carried over into Parsons and continues to grow today. And while his coworkers certainly recognized Blair’s importance, they weren’t the only ones—the City of New York named him “Mr. Bridges” and designated May 24, 1984, as “Blair Birdsall Day.”
A Shared Passion
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that, like his grandfather, Jim Birdsall developed a passion for engineering. When Jim was 13, Blair, who was by then walking with a cane, called the deputy director of New York City Bridges to take Jim on-site at the Brooklyn Bridge, where they climbed down into the anchorage. On that visit, Jim was able to get down into parts of the bridge that aren’t public, where the main cable splayed apart into individual strands or individual bundles. This field trip served to fuel Jim’s infatuation with engineering and established the field as one of his true joys in life.
Jim would go on to graduate from Lehigh University, which holds a collection of Blair Birdsall documents (approximately 180 boxes), and earn his PhD from EPFL, in Switzerland. He joined Parsons 24 years ago, working as an associate bridge engineer in what had been the old Steinman office, and his grandfather’s proteges became his mentors. Now as the CTO of Parsons Infrastructure North America and a Parsons Fellow, Jim reinvests in the company and carries on in his grandfather’s spirit by sharing his technical knowledge, perspective, and joy for the practice with colleagues and collaborators.
Bridging Generations Globally
Like it did for Blair, Jim’s love for engineering has led him all over the States and abroad, including to Abu Dhabi, where he lived with his family and worked for five years, and to Saudi Arabia, where he worked with the Public Investment Fund and a number of development companies. Also, like his grandfather, Jim has made an indelible impact on many young engineers, has introduced many best practices to Parsons, and has led with a generous spirit. Jim has and will work on some amazing bridges, but when all is said and done, perhaps the greatest bridge he will ever extend is the one between his grandfather, Blair, and the next generation of engineers at Parsons.
