Gayle Johnson
Gayle Johnson has over 30 years’ structural engineering experience as an engineer and project manager. He has been responsible for the analysis and design of structures for extreme loads, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and explosions.
He has significant experience in major seismic evaluation and design projects for refineries, liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, offshore platforms and marine oil terminals, routinely performing structural evaluations and risk assessments and developing seismic design criteria. He also interacts with owners, regulators and the public, making presentations and serving on technical advisory committees.
Notable projects include:
- serving on the ExxonMobil Project Management Team from 2001 to 2006 for its US$12 billion Sakhalin Island, Russia development, coordinating the seismic design of the offshore platform, onshore facilities, pipelines and marine terminal
- lead structural engineer for a major hurricane risk assessment of all space shuttle and international space station facilities at Kennedy Space Center, performed for NASA after the evacuation of central Florida on approach of Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
In addition to extensive project work, he has performed earthquake reconnaissance investigations of more than a dozen earthquakes worldwide, documenting damage and the successful performance of structures. He was the lead investigator for industrial facilities for the FEMA-sponsored US team immediately following the magnitude 7.4 Turkey earthquake in August 1999.
Gayle has published over 35 papers, was Chairman of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Task Committee on Seismic Design and Evaluation of Petrochemical Facilities and a recipient of the ASCE 2000 Stephen D Bechtel Energy Award. He is currently Chairman of the ASCE Standards Committee for Seismic Design of Piers and Wharves.