Fernando Ortiz Quintana

Fernando Ortiz is a structural engineer with a broad professional experience in the design of structures. He studied in Spain, USA and Italy and since completion of his Master degree at the Polythechnic University of Madrid he has been working for engineering offices in Germany, China and Switzerland.

His career began in 2002 in Stuttgart, Germany, at Schlaich Bergermann und Partner, where he was involved in the design of light structures. His tasks as young engineer included the static and dynamic analysis of steel, concrete, glass and membrane structures. He remained there until 2006.

In 2007 he moved to China and started working for international engineering firm Arup at their office in Beijing. He collaborated in the design of several high-rise buildings that were planned in the context of the Olympic games of 2008. His duties included the dynamic analysis of the buildings under seismic action using numerical simulations with FEM software. On May 12th 2008 a major earthquake hit the Chinese province of Sichuan, whose shake waves were also felt in Beijing, 1500 kilometers away from the epicenter!, and that forced Fernando and all his coworkers to rashly evacuate their swinging, fifty storey high, building. The seismic design and analysis of structures is since then a topic of special interest for him.

In 2009 Fernando Ortiz moved permanently to Switzerland due to family reasons. Between 2009 and 2011 he worked for Zurich-based engineering office WaltGalmarini, where he collaborated in the design of several industrial and residential buildings. From 2012 and until 2016 he was employed by design office SMT at their office in Solothurn where he was responsible for the design, tender and execution of large industrial and hospital facilities, as well as for the acquisition of new projects.

Fernando Ortiz is involved in teaching activities at the Institute of Structural Engineering of the ETH Zurich since 2016. He is also full Professor for computer-aided structural analysis, digitalization and BIM at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. He also collaborates with engineering office Equi Bridges als specialist. He visits  regularly other universities, mainly in China but also in Spain, Nepal and India on academic appointments. He lives in the very beautiful swiss city of Solothurn with his wife and their daughters.