The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Washington chapter recognized four GeoEngineers projects at their annual Engineering Excellence Awards on Friday, January 22.
The Kentch Reach River Restoration project in Northeastern Oregon won a Gold Best in State award, and the Dam Safety Monitoring project for Portland General Electric won Bronze Best in State. GeoEngineers also shared Best in State awards with project partner Coughlin Porter Lundeen for work on the Allen Institute for Brain Science (Silver), and partner Reid Middleton for work on Ivar’s Pier 54 seismic upgrades (Bronze). These awards highlight the range and quality of GeoEngineers’ work in 2015.
The Kentch Reach project restored 47 acres of floodplain and fish habitat along the South Fork Walla Walla River in Northeastern Oregon. Working for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, GeoEngineers designed a new river alignment to provide vital habitat for threatened fish populations. Using powerful analytical tools, GeoEngineers successfully designed nearly a mile of new, self-sustaining habitat, while taking every precaution during construction to avoid affecting sensitive fish populations downstream.
ACEC presented a Silver Best in State award to the development team for the recently completed Allen Institute of Brain Science in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle. As a member of the team, GeoEngineers provided geotechnical engineering site investigation, dewatering assessment, ground-improvement design, shoring system design, assessment of off-site dewatering impacts and construction special inspection. The team also developed a sophisticated 3-D numerical groundwater model that helped the larger project team understand the complicated factors that influence groundwater flow and contaminant transport in the area.
GeoEngineers’ technology team also received recognition from ACEC Washington for developing an enterprise software solution for Portland General Electric’s hydropower facilities. The team built a web-based software application that manages and analyzes data for water pressure, volume and flow data in more than 200 instrumentation locations, and then provided alerts and alarms when certain operations and safety thresholds are exceeded. The software reduced errors, increased efficiency and even seamlessly output the data into FERC-mandated annual reports.
ACEC gave a Bronze Best in State award to Reid Middleton’s team, which included GeoEngineers, for Ivar’s Pier 54 seismic upgrades in Seattle. GeoEngineers performed a seismic hazard analysis to develop geotechnical recommendations for the pier. To more accurately account for potential effects of an earthquake and liquefiable soils, the team developed a predictive model to determine seismic standards for the piles. Ultimately this allowed a reduction in the total number of piles and decreased construction cost.
These are just a few examples of GeoEngineers’ industry-leading work. By bringing experts from a variety of technical fields together, GeoEngineers strives to not only find creative solutions to client challenges, but pioneer better ways to balance human and natural priorities.
