Brent J. Morrison, PE

Synthesized publicly available engineering reports to explain to a general audience the tradeoffs of electrifying the Guemes Island Ferry relative to a diesel-powered baseline.

Errata (2026-08-10): Endnote 9: The values in Exhibit 2 (not renumbered after Exhibit 1 was deleted) are correct, but the equations should be expressed as (quantity)-1 rather than 1-(quantity). Endnote 26: The reciprocal of the conversion to short tons was used, so Stock and Stuart’s CO2 abatement cost range should be $9–31/ton rather than $11–37/ton.

Forecasted the ferry’s vehicle and passenger demand (and consequent vessel capacity) to 2060 with multivariable regressions (population, fares, and (for vehicle regression only) parking).

Condensed undergraduate thesis (113-page body + 234-page appendixes) into a peer-reviewed technical paper. Presented at annual conference; published in annual bound selection of significant papers.

Contributed to design basis, concept design, and stability and propulsion analyses. Edited draft.

Developed vehicle demand function and operational schedule based on survey of operations. Edited draft.

Developed a process for calculating fin stabilizer lifecycle fuel consumption from basic seakeeping statistics and foil theory. Coauthor Zangre modeled and quantified fin-pocket interaction effects with computational fluid dynamics. Wilcox oversaw and advised analyses and edited report.

Interviewed and wrote a biographical sketch of Philip Thiel, a then-92-year-old alumnus of Webb Institute. Brent’s favorite piece of his own writing.

Experimented with Claude’s ability to apply engineering judgment and to automate tedious engineering modeling and analysis tasks. Collaborated with Claude to build a Python loop that explores a constrained design space for a deck barge with a specified payload. The loop builds and analyzes models in General HydroStatics (a naval architecture program), passes the results to Claude’s API, logs Claude’s design reasoning and outputs, and repeats until Claude and the loop concur that the design space has been explored, at which point Claude justifies its selected design. Concurred with Claude’s design and found opportunities to improve the design prompt.