Glenn Bell delivers an address at the IStructE award ceremony.
Credit:
Institution of Structural Engineers
In a ceremony on Nov. 7, 2025, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) structural engineer Glenn Bell received the Institution of Structural Engineers Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to the advancement of structural engineering. Bell is the associate lead of NIST’s National Construction Safety Team investigation into the 2021 partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium, in Surfside, Florida.
The Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) is the world’s largest membership organization dedicated to structural engineering. It is focused on upholding standards, sharing knowledge, promoting structural engineering and providing a voice for the profession.
In a presentation during the award ceremony, Bell explained how his career was greatly influenced by the 1981 collapse of two walkways at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, which killed 114 people and injured hundreds.
Through his work investigating the tragedy, he saw firsthand the technical and procedural causes of the structural failure.
“I resolved to commit to activities to learn from this disaster and others, and help bring about changes to avert future disasters,” said Bell.
Glenn went on to cofound the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Technical Council on Forensic Engineering in 1985, and helped to establish the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, which publishes case studies and topic discussions on failures.
After meeting the U.K.-based founders of Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures (CROSS), a group that makes it easier for construction professionals to confidentially report safety concerns, Glenn helped found CROSS-U.S. in 2019.
In 2021, one year after he retired from the engineering firm Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, where he had spent 45 years, Glenn was recruited to serve as associate lead on NIST’s Champlain Towers South investigation. In his presentation, Glenn shared how it is, by some measures, the most complex and difficult investigation he’s been involved with, due to the age of the building, limited documentation about it, and many potential failure scenarios.
Glenn continues to work with the NIST team to determine the cause of the collapse. Preliminary findings and presentations on the team’s work can be found on the NIST Champlain Towers South investigation webpages.