Designing Tomorrow’s Engineering Design Team
March 2025
Author: Brian Alcott PE
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton.
To succeed in engineering, one needs knowledge, skill, and determination. However, the real key to advancing in the engineering community is mentorship—building knowledge from one generation to the next, providing opportunities, and lifting the next generation to new heights. One such giant in the Houston bridge design community was Doug Spruill PE. Many current bridge design leads in Houston, and across Texas, are proud “students” of the School of Doug Spruill. Countless others owe a significant portion of their success to his mentorship.
Doug had an extraordinary ability to recognize hidden strengths within others and bring those strengths to light. A person’s background, walk of life, or demographics were irrelevant. If you had the ability within you, Doug would capitalize on it. He would raise the bar, clear the path, and it was up to you to rise to the occasion.
Doug worked at the same design firm for over twenty years. The construction of the Sam Houston Ship Channel Bridge lured him to Houston in 1978. Although Doug had already left by the time I joined the firm in 2005, his presence was still deeply felt.
In 2009, our design team was tasked with converting a shelved project from metric to English units. The project involved designing and constructing an interchange at I-35 and 71 in Austin, Texas. The first phase of construction ended around 2004-2005. By 2009, the State decided to move forward with the other half.
I was responsible for grinding out many calculations. The first step was to investigate all the old metric calculations, which were often marked with the initials DWS and MTT. Those initials, together, were a powerful combination.
Interchange roadway geometry can get tricky, especially where an off-ramp for a proposed direct connector increases in elevation to provide enough clearance to safely cross the mainlanes and splits to provide a direct connection for each direction of the intersecting roadway. Modeling this surface and determining the elevations for the supporting beams based on that geometry can be more of a mathematical art form rather than a linear equation. The beams supporting the bridge slab were proposed steel trapezoidal girders. The span at this gore section started with three beams but ended with four. The center beam split into two beams mid-span. It was a bifurcated beam, a design I had never seen before.
MTT, AKA Mylinh Thi Truong, was born in Southern Vietnam in 1950. During high school, she majored in math and found joy in its intellectual challenges. In college, she majored in English to become a teacher. By the late ’70s, life in Vietnam had become unbearable for Mylinh, her husband, and their one-year-old son. With the help of a relative living in Chicago, they managed to flee the country. Determined to support her family, she pursued drafting as a new way to challenge herself and help provide for her family. However, a year of Chicago’s harsh weather was enough for the young family, and they soon relocated to Houston, Texas.
In 1984, pregnant with their second child, Mylinh was looking for a new opportunity. She applied for a drafting position posted by Doug Wayne Spruill—a pivotal moment that would shape her future.
Doug was remarkable at seeing someone’s true potential—often before they saw it themselves. When a
young, pregnant Vietnamese emigrant walked through the doors for an interview, Doug saw what many others could not. He recognized an exceptionally mathematically savvy young woman with a wonderful approach to life who was simply looking for an opportunity to be intellectually challenged.
Mylinh and Doug worked together for over twenty years, from 1984 to 2012. When they started to work together, computers had not yet entered the workplace. Despite initially exclaiming, “This will never work!” Doug soon realized that the change was inevitable. Computer programs started to replace hand calculations, and Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD) began to replace T-squares. Mylinh was always eager and ready to learn, a trait that did not go unnoticed by Doug.
Later, when the State began relying heavily on their Roadway Design System (RDS) program for roadway and bridge geometry, Doug’s approach for their young design team was simple. Mylinh recalls Doug coming to her desk, dropping the hefty four-inch binder of the user’s guide, and saying, “You do it,” before walking away. Mylinh was dumbfounded, but Doug knew exactly what he was doing. Mylinh was assigned her first “Doug special,” a term coined for the unique challenges Doug would assign.
After over three years as a design consultant at the first firm, an opportunity arose to join a design team with Doug and Mylinh. Most of my career path has been driven by my interests and the chance to work with deeply knowledgeable people, and this was no exception. As the team’s Senior Bridge Designer, I had a cubicle right outside Doug’s office, opposite Mylinh. I felt like I was living the dream.
In the close quarters of a design office with cubicles, you often overhear conversations. One day I overheard Doug and Mylinh discussing Vietnam, particularly the city of Cam Ranh. They spoke at length about its beauty, and I began to understand the depth of their relationship. Doug had served in the Vietnam War as a 1st Lieutenant in the 574th Ordinance Corps, stationed in Cam Ranh in Mylinh, born and raised in Nha Trang, just north of Cam Ranh, shared her experiences. Their collaboration, admiration, and trust were deeply rooted in their mutual understanding.
Late last year, I had the opportunity to speak about Doug at an annual meeting that included bridge design experts from around the country. My good friend, Muna Mitchell, P.E., an accomplished bridge engineer, and I spoke about being students of the “School of Doug.” Hearing others echo, “I too am a student of the School of Doug,” and discussing shared journeys from industry leaders was heartfelt and profound. It became clear that Doug was a giant in our field, allowing many of us to stand on his shoulders and reach our full potential. Doug Spruill’s legacy lives on in more design teams than we can count.
