Alexander Newman, P.E., is principal structural engineer with Maguire Group, Inc., a national architectural, engineering and planning firm, in Foxborough, Massachusetts. With two decades of engineering and management experience, he has worked as project engineer with a consulting engineering firm, design engineer with a light-gage framing panel manufacturer, and manager of fabrication for a steel fabricator. He has planned and supervised structural renovation of numerous buildings throughout the country, including a Boston Edison switching and conversion station that won the 1990 American Consulting Engineering Council of New England Award for Engineering Excellence. Mr. Newman holds an advanced degree in structural engineering from the Moscow Civil Engineering Institute in Russia, and a masters degree in business administration with high honors from Boston University. He is the author of the Bestselling Metal Building Systems, also from McGraw-Hill, and a number of award-winning articles that have appeared in leading engineering publications. Additionally, he conducts continuing-education seminars on metal building systems for design professionals sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers and other organizations, and teaches at Northeastern University.