Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Though staying within the same overall organisation (USACE), my office has now moved 80 miles south.  Instead of an hour car ride, it is now a 45-minute train trip direct to the front door of the 10-storey downtown office block, experiencing all the ”sights and sounds” of Baltimore en-route!!

I was initially placed in ”Civil Works” – involved with levee design, stream and coast rejuvenation, waterways, Hurricane Sandy relief ops etc.  Some really interesting stuff, but projects were very long-term and I would see little opportunity for tangible design.  There were several reasons for that being my initial placement, largely I think as a hangover from Matt Fry’s good works he did whilst he was there, but project opportunities have now changed.  So with a few chats and explanation of my DOs I managed to take a swift turn to the right and move to the Military Design Branch.

The Design Branch is 70-strong, with several sections: architecture, structural, geotech, site development, elec and mech engineers with many sub-specialities within each section. The number of projects that the Branch oversees (design, specification write-up and/or review) is immense.  At the height of the US Army Base Realignment and Closure programme from 2005, the Branch was only designing 3% of its projects…but the total amount of projects being managed was over US$2billion!  Now, on average, the Branch designs about 13% of its projects – the remainder are contracted out and then reviewed by the Branch.  $50 Million is about the present capacity for an in-house design.

Now targeting my weaknesses – E&M, and Soils…I have already waded into a pump/lift station design, as well as preliminary shallow foundation footing sizing for a US Government testing facility in order to feed into the structural section for further detailed design in due course.  The design experience gained in Phase 1 is starting to come to the fore – it took a little while to shake off the cobwebs, but it soon came flooding back (alongside much JM-note referral!).  Being able to hold your own with certain specialists, gains credibility and responsibility quickly (that’s what I naively think so far!).  To date, the shallow foundation design has been most challenging, particularly due to unit conversion (structural loading in ‘kips’ to name but one!…so I quickly turn everything back into the bosom of ‘kN/m2’), and then running through text books and new ACI codes.  ULS design reverts to Terzagi for bearing capacity checks, taking q(ult) and dividing it by a FOS of 3 to get ‘net’ ultimate bearing capacity.  For SLS checks, I have been directed to use the Schmertman Method – for those interested, it calculates settlement from layer stiffness data, bearing resistance as well as a time factor for creep (although the latter has had little influence).  The method proposes a simplified triangular strain distribution and calculates settlement accordingly; once mastered with an excel spreadsheet, it has been quite a user friendly method to quickly manoeuvre parameters within.

Having attended several design meetings on other projects two things have already become quite apparent:

BIM. Or, the lack of it!  There are essentially three different design systems worked on by a design team – Civil 3D by site development (outside the 5-ft line), Revit by mechanical engrs and MicroStation by electrical engineers.  Though great for their various disciplines, USACE is admittedly way behind private industry when it comes to BIM.  A huge amount of time is wasted with different disciplines coming together to overlay their programmes in order to deconflict and then redesign accordingly.  Federal systems move slowly in every way – recruitment, IT uptake, project funding etc etc (I will be going on design charette next month for an armoury project, designated for congressional funding in 2022!!!).

Generalist vs Specialist.  In-house design dramatically stretches the Branch –  designs are chosen for this exact reason…to maintain design credibility.  The Branch would quickly become generalists if all they did was design reviews.  Conversely, as a ‘military’ generalist I have been able to save a lot of time for the 100% ‘civilian’ design Branch answering questions on Force Protection and general physical security that have heavily influenced military site design.  They could do with a FPE ‘specialist’!

In short, I foresee this being a great experience with some interesting opportunities to hopefully continue getting stuck into and to keep topping up the DO’s!