Technical Session Details

Structural Engineering Group

Design and Construction of Pavaho Storm Water Pump Station

The City of Dallas is on track to finish construction of a new Storm Water Pump Station, next to the existing Pavaho Storm Water Pump Station on the Trinity River Levee System. Jacobs Engineering Group (Jacobs) is prime designer and construction manager for the pump station.

The Pavaho Pump Station project is a unique project that uses the Concrete Volute Pump (CVP) technology, one of the first to be used for a municipal water application in Texas and the United States; however this technology is used extensively in Europe, Middle East and Asia for a variety of water infrastructure applications.

The new Pavaho Storm Water Pump station is rated for 375,000 gpm with three 125,000 gpm Concrete Volute Pumps. These pumps will supplement the existing pumping capacity of 82,000 gpm at existing Pavaho Pump Station.

The presentation will discuss the design and construction of the Pavaho Storm Water Pump Station.

Presenters:

Barry Hampson, P.E. and James Brown, P.E of Jacobs Engineering Group Inc, and Granger Smith, P.E. Smith Pump Company, Inc.

For additional information on the Committee or the seminar, contact Mir Ali, P.E. Structural Technical Group Chair at: [email protected]

Environmental & Water Resources Group

Rainwater Harvesting and Re-Use as a Stormwater Runoff Reduction Practice

Low Impact Development regulations that require significant run-off reduction are going into effect. In many cases bio-retention and infiltration are not feasible or may not be practical. In these cases harvesting and re-use may be the best option to reduce or eliminate stormwater runoff. This presentation will provide an overview of water usage and applicability of harvesting as a runoff reduction technique.

Harvesting and re-use create additional challenges for site design and special consideration of building codes, health codes and water law must be taken into account. Documenting the run-off reduction of a system will provide a gap in existing rules and regulations. This presentation will also review a continuous daily run-off reduction model that allows engineers to optimize their system design by incorporating several water sources (stormwater, condensation, gray water) and various re-use applications (irrigation, toilet flushing ,wash water, cooling make-up). By using this model engineers will be able to size their storage system, calculate the runoff reduction from target catchments, estimate the reduction of municipal drinking water required, and estimate ongoing savings from reduced utilities over time.

Presenter:

Adam Sapp, PE, is the Regional Regulatory Director for CONTECH Engineered Solutions, South Central and Atlantic Regions. Prior to this position, he served as Area Vice President of the South Central Region, Region Manager for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware and was a Stormwater Consultant for Contech’s Stormwater Solutions products. Adam earned his B.S. degree in Civil Engineering Technology from the University of Pittsburgh.

For additional information on the Committee or the seminar, contact Mark Roberts, P.E. Environmental & Water Resources Group Chair at: [email protected]

Sustainability Technical Group

Riverfront Boulevard Vegetated Median Bioswale, Dallas County

Hayden Consultants, Inc. designed the reconstruction of 1.5 miles of Riverfront Boulevard, which at first glance was a typical urban arterial reconstruction project.   New zoning from industrial thoroughfare to a mixed-use walkable community provided an opportunity for Hayden to showcase sustainable design with vegetated median bioswales within the median of Riverfront Boulevard. By utilizing the median as a filtration system for storm water runoff, contaminants typically found in street runoff will be greatly reduced by filtering the runoff through native vegetation and engineered soil.  

Presenter:

Colin Blankenship, P.E., CFM, RAS is a professional engineer who specializes in roadway and drainage design for various public entities around the DFW metroplex. He is an Associate Engineer at Hayden Consultants, Inc. and has been a member of the staff since 2003. 

Colin is a Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM) and a member of the Texas Floodplain Management Association. Colin is also a member of the City of Dallas Integrated Stormwater Management (iSWM) Taskforce. 

He is active in the American Society of Civil Engineers where he serves as Centennial Committee Chair and as a member of the Scholarship Financial Committee. Last year he served as Sustainability Chair for the Dallas Branch of ASCE. He is also a member of the North Texas Chapter of Engineers without Borders and serves as the Engineers without Borders liaison for the Dallas Branch of ASCE. 

Colin received a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2003. While attending college he worked as a summer intern with the Texas Department of Transportation, Bryan District.

For additional information on the Committee or the seminar, contact James Davis, Jr., P.E., Sustainability Technical Group Chair at: [email protected]

Geotechnical Engineering Group Presentation

Lessons from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake

An earthquake and tsunami hit eastern Japan on March 11, 2011 killing several thousand people and caused over $200 billion in damages. Jorge Meneses will present an overview of the current status of reconstruction and recovery in the affected areas in Japan. Included will be current and updated information on seismological setting, strong ground motions, geotechnical effects including ground failure (liquefaction and lateral spread), and effects on built environment. Special emphasis will be given to geotechnical lessons and how they will affect our current engineering practice. In addition, he will present his experience when he led a GEER reconnaissance mission one month after the event.

This experience is published in an article entitled “Turning Disaster into Knowledge” in CE News, August 2011 http://www.cenews.com/magazine-article----turning_disaster_into_knowledge_-8437.html

Presenter:

Jorge F. Meneses, PhD, PE, D.GE, F.ASCE has more than 25 years of experience in consultancy, research, and teaching in the field of geotechnical engineering with emphasis on geotechnical earthquake engineering, foundation engineering, numerical modeling, and advanced geotechnical testing. He is member of the Academy of Geo-Professionals becoming a Diplomate, Geotechnical Engineer, and recently was elevated to the grade of ASCE Fellow. Besides consultancy at Kleinfelder he is a part-time faculty in the graduate school of San Diego State University teaching Advanced Foundation Engineering, and Seepage, Drainage and Design of Earth Dams. He also is an instructor at the University of California San Diego Extension teaching Geotechnical Engineering and Structural Analysis in the PE Review Course and Statics, Dynamics, and Mechanics of Materials in the EIT Review Course.

Jorge has published more than 50 technical publications in technical journals and conferences, is a frequent peer reviewer of journal and conferences papers, and is guest speaker in national and international conferences. Jorge received his master's and Ph.D. degrees from the prestigious University of Tokyo under the supervision of Prof. Kenji Ishihara. He is the current President of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute San Diego Chapter, member of the Strong Ground Motion Committee of the Structural Engineers Association of California (SEAOC), Honorary Chairman of the ASCE Geo-Institute San Diego Chapter and Leader of the Local Organizing Committee of the GeoCongress 2013. He enjoys playing golf and dancing salsa!

For additional information on the Committee or the seminar, contact Chula Ellepola, P.E., Geotechnical Technical Group Chair at: [email protected]

Ethics Seminar

Update of the current licensing requirements for the State of Texas.

Presenter:

George P. Hartmann, P.E. is a Licensing Project Manager at the Texas Board of Professional Engineers in Austin. He has been with the Board for eight years. Previously he worked with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and predecessor agencies; Huntsman Corporation; and two environmental engineering consulting firms. He is a 1981 graduate of Manhattan College with a Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering.

For additional information on the Committee or the seminar, contact Edward Penton, P.E., Technical Director at: [email protected]

Transportation & Development Seminar

Dallas Fort Worth Freeways – A Historical and Pictorial Research of Freeways and Their Impact on North Texas

The seminar will highlight the results of the presenter’s research on some of the major freeways that have shaped the Metroplex. A book and website is expected as the results of the author’s undertaking. He will share his findings for the first time with us at this seminar. The presentation will include a lot of photos depicting major Metroplex freeways before, during construction and post construction era. Do not miss this informative and graphically rich presentation and welcome the author back to present his work on the DFW freeways.

Presenter:

The presentation will be made by Oscar Slotboom, author of the 2003 book Houston Freeways, a Historical and Visual Journey and webmaster of the DFWFreeways.info and HoustonFreeways.com web sites. A native of Houston, Oscar first moved to North Texas in 1987 as an engineering coop student working for Texas Instruments on Central Expressway. Oscar completed two other work assignments in North Texas in 1988 and 1990. Oscar received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M and a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UT-Austin. In 2004 Oscar moved to North Texas and began the current research project on Dallas-Fort Worth freeways which will result in the upcoming 500-page book tentatively titled Dallas-Fort Worth Freeways, Texas-Sized Ambition. He currently works as a web and software developer.

Construction Technical Group Presentation

DFW Connector Project

The DFW Connector is being designed and constructed by NorthGate Constructors, a joint venture between Fort Worth based Kiewit Texas Corporation, l.P., and San Antonio based Zachry Construction Corporation. The $1.02 billion DFW Connector project is publicly funded. The DFW Connector project includes state highways 114 and 121 and adjacent roadways north of DFW Airport. Using a design-build process, construction of the 8.4-mile initial phase of the project is proposed to be completed by 2014. The eight-mile project will rebuild portions of four highways, two interchanges and five bridges. These improvements will enhance mobility and air quality through expanded roadway capacity, toll managed lanes and continuous frontage roads. New direct-connect ramps will be built from northbound SH121 to westbound SH114, and from eastbound SH114 to southbound SH121, replacing the current connection at William D. Tate.

The presentation will discuss the current status of the construction of the DFW Connector Project. The presenter will also discuss the innovations and new technologies that were implemented and the technical challenges they encountered.

Presenters:

Justin Mannina of Kiewit Texas Corporation is a project engineer on the DFW Connector Project.

For additional information on the Committee or the seminar, contact Anu Kancherla, P.E. Construction Technical Group Chair at: [email protected]