Bart was principally raised in Livermore, CA, in the technical community surrounding the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where his father was an instrumentation engineer and his uncle was a nuclear physicist.   He attended Livermore High School, earning a diploma in January of 1974.

He began is college career as a civil engineering major at Brigham Young University (BYU) in the Fall of 1974.  He studied there until December 1975 when he left for two and a half years to fulfill a religious obligation.  Prior to returning to college he came to Alaska in February 1978 where met his future bride, Sandy.  He returned to BYU the fall of 1978.  He received his BSCE in April 1981, and MSCE in August of 1982.  His MSCE research was in automated engineering, where he developed software for the automated design of structural steel fameworks.

During the summers as a college student, Bart worked one summer as a corrosion technician for Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, two summers for the U.S. Public Health Service Environmental Health Branch where he worked as an engineering intern on water and sewer projects in Alaska Native villages all over the state, and one summer as a materials laboratory technician for Alaska Testlab.

Following graduation from college, he returned to Anchorage to work for Arthur H Whitmer Associates.  He later took a temporary teaching position with the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) while they searched for a structures person with a Ph.D. to serve on the faculty.  At the same time he went to work with Westbrook & Associates.  Once the temporary position at UAA was concluded (it was a two year temporary job!) he started Quimby & Associates as a means for doing independent consulting.  While visiting with Architects GDM & Associates in Anchorage, he was made an offer that he couldn’t refuse so he began work for them.

Less than a year after starting work with GDM, the Alaska economy experienced a major downturn.  After being laid off there he decided to return to school to earn a Ph.D. while he waited for the economy to turn around.  While waiting for school to start, he found a temporary position with Porath/Berry Architects + Engineers.

After investigating a number of programs, Bart decided to return to BYU where he spent two years (1986-1988) pursuing research in structural optimization and doing course work in structural engineering.  He completed work on his degree in August 1988.

Following the completion of his degree, he was hired back at UAA as an assistant professor of civil engineering.  He has remained at UAA since that time and has since advanced to the rank of professor of civil engineering and has served seven years as the head of the civil engineering program, three years in the provost's office, two years as Associate Dean of Engineering, and his final year a Interim Dean of Engineering before retiring in 2015.

Also at UAA, he served as the ASCE Student Chapter faculty advisor for many years, guiding his students through the hosting of two regional conferences and the hosting of the ASCE/AISC National Student Steel Bridge Competition in 1999. He has been involved in the bridge competition since 1992 with his students and served on the NSSBC national rules committee and/or as the national scorekeeper for seventeen years.

He as also served on several national ASCE education related committees and chaired two of them. He served a five year term as an ASCE representative on the ABET Engineering Technology Commission and has done over 20 accreditation visits both domestically and internationally.