He received the award for establishing the Nondestructive Evaluation Validation Center (NDEVC), the first national center for the development and testing of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technologies for inspecting bridges. The center is housed at FHWA’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center in McLean, VA.
Examples of NDE technologies include instruments that “see” through paint and the development of a special vehicle that can travel at highway speeds while gathering internal images of bridge conditions using instruments similar to sonograms.
Washer joined the FHWA in 1990. He is a registered professional engineer in Virginia and recently earned a doctorate in materials science and engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He is the second FHWA researcher to receive the Flemming award in the last four years.
