September 1, 2026
Bruce
Bates
founded
RISA
in
September
1987
with
the
practical
goal
of
creating
a
tool
that
would
allow
engineers
to
take
advantage
of
the
growing
capabilities
and
availability
of
personal
computers.
What
started
as
an
internal
tool
for
analyzing
two
dimensional
frames
evolved
into
the
powerful
RISA
Suite
we
have
today
with
10
connected
programs
that
support
structural
engineers
throughout
their
workflow.
In
this
anniversary
interview,
Bruce
shares
firsthand
reflections
on
the
early
days
of
RISA.
To
celebrate
our
anniversary
and
celebrate
this
journey,
RISA
is
offering
a
special
promotion
for
the
month
of
September.
What
originally
inspired
you
to
start
RISA,
and
what
problem
were
you
trying
to
solve
for
engineers?
Back
in
the
mid-1980’s,
I
was
employed
by
Fluor
Corporation
in
their
Structural
Systems
group.
We
developed
and
supported
mainframe-based
structural
engineering
applications.
When
IBM
released
their
first
personal
computer
around
that
time,
Fluor
acquired
a
supply
of
them
and
I
was
assigned
the
task
of
figuring
out
what,
if
any,
use
this
new
device
could
have
for
the
structural
engineering
department.
In
collaboration
with
the
structural
engineering
department,
I
developed
a
PC
based
2-dimensional
frame
analysis
program
using
the
BASIC
programming
language,
ingeniously
named
PC-Frame.
PC-Frame
proved…
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