Detecting structural defects
By Gary J. Erwin
Stephen Heinze’s cooperative education experience as a Kettering University student is one that may have not been very, well….transparent to him upon his arrival on campus in 2004.
But before his first academic term ended that year, the St. Louis, Mo., native secured a rather unique cooperative education engineering position at EnTech Engineering Inc. in his hometown.
EnTech was founded and is owned CEO Gary J. Weil, who graduated from GMI in 1973. EnTech is a professional engineering firm specializing in the use of remote sensing, non-destructive technologies to locate hidden subsurface targets and defects in energy, transportation, manufacturing, electronic and environmental infrastructures. EnTech’s Registered Professional Engineers have conducted more than 2,500 projects worldwide and in more than 30 states. Additionally, the company has earned more than 10 non-destructive testing (NDT/NDE) patents and its engineers have published more than 70 international technical papers and standard books.
During his time as a co-op, Heinze worked on some compelling projects and became a remote sensing specialist, mastering testing technologies such as infrared thermography—a technique that can produce an image of the invisible infrared energy emitted by objects due to their thermal conditions—and ground penetrating microwave radar, which is used to characterize subsurface objects in terms of their depth, size, volume and consistency. Remote sensing is the art and science of obtaining information on phenomena without making contact with it. This technique involves the detection and measurement of energy flow patterns using devices and technology that are sensitive to electromagnetic energy such as light, heat and radio waves. Some of these devices include cameras, thermal radiometers and microwave transceivers.
A number of the assignments required Heinze to work onsite during his co-op rotations at heavy and light industrial facilities, petroleum and chemical refineries and at national infrastructures such as roadways and bridges using these techniques. This experience helped him to refine and strengthen his expertise of these resources. During one period of his co-op rotation, he employed them on a highly sensitive project at the U.S./Mexico border in conjunction with the U.S. Federal Government.
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