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Sea to Sky Highway
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Geotechnical Engineering Challenges of British Columbia’s Sea-to-Sky Highway, gateway to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games

February 19, 2010 rockman Comments Off on Geotechnical Engineering Challenges of British Columbia’s Sea-to-Sky Highway, gateway to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games

Sea to Sky Highway I don’t know about you, but I’ve been enjoying watching the 2010 Olympic Winter games over the past few days. If you have, you know that Whistler is the venue for many of the sports including alpine skiing, luge, skeleton, bobsled, ski jumping, biathlon and cross-country skiing among others. The Whistler area is located about 50-miles or so North of Vancouver. In order to get to Whistler, you need to drive along Highway 99, better known as the Sea-to-Sky Highway.  This highway has a long history of geotechnical problems, including some significant structurally controlled rockslides and landslides.  In the years leading up to these Olympic Games a fair amount of work was done on the highway with some significant geotechnical innovations.

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Utah State Capital Seismic Base Isolation
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ASCE 2010 OCEA Award Finalist Projects Full of Geotechnical Engineering Challenges

February 3, 2010 rockman Comments Off on ASCE 2010 OCEA Award Finalist Projects Full of Geotechnical Engineering Challenges

Utah State Capital Seismic Base Isolation I was reading the ASCE News, January edition which announced the 5 finalists for the 2010 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (OCEA) Award and I was struck by the significant geotechnical engineering and geoengineering components of these projects. Read on as I highlight some of things hidden beneath the ground of these remarkable projects. […]

Foundations for the Burj Dubai - The raft slab on top of 192 pile foundations
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Foundations and Geotechnical Engineering for the Burj Dubai – World’s Tallest Building

January 5, 2010 rockman 15

Foundations for the Burj Dubai - The raft slab on top of 192 pile foundations The Burj Dubai Tower has recently reached it’s final height of 818m (2,684-ft or almost exactly 1/2 a mile!). The foundation system for the Burj Dubai is comprised of 192 bored piles (drilled shafts in my practice) 1.5-m (approximately 5-ft) in diameter and approximately 50-m deep (164-ft). A 3.7-m (12-ft) thick raft foundation sits on top of the piles under the full footprint of the structure. (Image from BurjDubaiSkyscraper.com)

The geotechnical investigation for the Burj Dubai (now to be known as Burj Khalifa after the UAE President) is described in detail in a paper by the geotechnical engineer of record, Grahame Bunce of Hyder Consulting (UK) and the independent technical reviewer for the geotechnical design, Harry G. Poulos of Coffey Geotechnics. Click through for the link to the paper and more details. […]

Anacostia River in Washington D.C.
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12 Miles of Tunnels for D.C. Sewer

September 11, 2009 rockman Comments Off on 12 Miles of Tunnels for D.C. Sewer

Anacostia River in Washington D.C.In Washington D.C., the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (D.C. WASA) finalized a lont-term plan in 2002 aimed at reducing combined sewer outfalls into the Potomac River and its tributary, the Anacostia River. A major portion of this plan is a $2.2 Billion (US) deep tunnel program to handle excess stormwater flows and prevent the combined sewage from being discharged into the environment. Read on for a map and more info. (Photo of Anacostia River, by D.C. WASA)

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