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September Section Meeting
Wednesday, September 13 | 5:30pm - 8:00pm
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The Puget Sound Region: Growth & Opportunity
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Presented by Ben Bakkenta of the Puget Sound Regional Council
The Puget Sound region is experiencing rapid population and job growth - literally changing the face of the region. What does this growth look like, what are its implications, and what do the people of the region think about what's happening? This talk will explore the current data, plans the region has to address growth, and information related the thoughts and values of the public.
About the Speaker
Ben Bakkenta, AICP
is Senior Program Manager for Regional Planning at the Puget Sound Regional Council, where he specializes in long-range planning and policy, and managing initiatives designed to implement the central Puget Sound region's adopted growth and transportation plans through public engagement, research, and collaborative decision making. Ben holds a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Master of Urban Planning degree from the University of Washington.
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5:30pm Social Hour
6:00pm Dinner
6:30pm Program
$45 ($40 early bird) for
General Admission
$20 ($15 early bird) for
students and free agents
Early bird rates end
after Wednesday, September 6.
Registration closes
Sunday, September 10.
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OCTOBER 2017 NEWSLETTER CONTENT DEADLINE:
SEPTEMBER 20, 2017
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September President's Column
By Kelli Dean, PE, M. ASCE, Seattle Section President
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Thank You Departing Board Members
I’d like to thank Evan Sheesley for his commitment to ASCE and the Seattle Section members. He has been a consistent and supportive leader. He is one of those people who you can call and ask for help if you need it. I am grateful for the excellent job he has done all around. In particular, I want to thank him for such a great job with life member and LOCEA awards this year. He is a great resource and has personally aided my growth as a project manager. His passion for the profession will be missed at our regular Board meetings.
Todd Crandell has resigned after many years of exceptional service for the Seattle Section membership. He did a lot of work culminating details from various volunteers to ensure that our newsletter was completed in a timely and comprehensive way every month.
Tony Nguyen will be transitioning from Secretary to Director of Branches. Tony has consistently supported the Board with monthly meeting minutes and a thoughtful communication style keeping the Board in line with respect to Robert’s Rules of Order! Cal Bearman has handed over the reins to Jared Nakamoto. Welcome Jared. Don Nguyen has done tons of work to help us with House and Hospitality stuff. He did an excellent job transitioning duties to Katie-Sultan Wright.
Welcome to New Board Members
Eset Alemu, President-Elect, hasn’t officially been inducted, yet she is already working hard to support the Board and learn the ropes of how our organization operates. She is travelling to Washington D.C. to participate in Leader orientation mid-September.
Diana Hasegan, President, continues her work streamlining the Seattle Section website and
calendar
to connect members with events and continuing education. Diana has facilitated early budget meetings to ensure we go into the 2017-2018 budget year with a great expenditures plan. She has set up a contract for a new Communications Chair, which is really exciting. We warmly welcome Madison Dreiger to the role.
Paul Fiske will be our incoming Secretary and has a great person to help mentor him in Tony. Welcome Paul!
Local Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (LOCEA) Awards Winners
The ASCE Seattle Section chose three projects to receive the 2017 LOCEA Awards:
- Outstanding Structures Project - SR520 Floating Bridge
- Outstanding Water Resources Project - King County Barton CSO Control
- Outstanding Small Project - Golden Gardens Drainage and Stairway Renovation
The LOCEA Awards recognize projects that have improved the quality of life and contributed to the economic development of the local community, area, or region. These projects represent the successful combination of multiple engineering objectives, including design innovation and excellence, environmental sustainability, cost effectiveness, the effective use of materials, and aesthetics.
The Seattle Section of ASCE is also recognizing the Morse Lake Pump Plant for an Honor Award in the water resources category as part of this year's LOCEA Award competition.
Ballard Locks Centennial Event
A huge thank you goes out to Cindy Hirsch and the History and Heritage Committee for outstanding service to the membership for cultivating the applications and getting the plaque constructed and paid for and delivered to the Locks event. Several members took part in the Centennial plaque dedication held at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks on July 4
th, 2017. President-Elect Kristina Swallow came out from Las Vegas to deliver an extremely professional, polished, and comprehensive speech to the elected officials, Army Corps of Engineers staff (active and retired), ASCE members, and the public. It was an honor to attend the event and follow up with a thank you letter to Colonel John G. Buck, Captain Joseph Gambino,
Marian Valentine, Nate McGowan and Dana Dysart who really executed a tremendous event that went smoothly and left us feeling like welcomed friends at a great party.
Below are some fun photos of the event. (Attendees: Eset, Homero, Don, Kelli, Katie, Amy, Chun Lau, Cindy, Kristina, Dave, Darrell Staaleson)
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Washington State Report Card
We are gaining momentum in updating the report card.
Volunteers are developing a project management plan for the card. Please email questions or comments to Erik Ellingsen at
[email protected]
. Previous work by ASCE members to develop the first report card and two recent example cards (storm water and the electrical grid) have been uploaded to
Collaborate
and Google Drive.
Proposed New Law
The process of gaining feedback from our various stakeholders is underway. So far we have learned that both ACEC and AIA Washington Sections support the concept, with added details and feedback from the following stakeholder/partners: PSE, City Light, Army Corps of Engineers, and PUD’s.
What we have so far is noted below:
The goal is to create a law that allows for the use of public land and infrastructure, by the public agency managing it, to provide electricity if the grid were to go down. During times when the grid operates the sale of power could be used to fund inspections and training for specific infrastructure systems (Bridges, sewer treatment, water treatment, tunnels, schools).
The law does not propose to direct agencies on how to to do this, rather sets the goal for various agencies to determine the contracting methods that work best for them to tie into a strategic community wide emergency response plan. The key here is we are trying to build a law that bridges emergency preparedness across agencies with system specific emergency preparedness through localized power production to charge batteries for lights, radios, phones, pumps. These systems support the grid and growing power consumption in the region while offering improved functionality allowing for longer repair times and inspections so that our systems operate well while deployment of emergency responders and personnel happen more efficiently. Emergency preparedness means we need to have power for several days even weeks or months if a significant event occurs.
This is non-partisan good government bill.
Below is the label on it so far. We do not have an official bill number yet.
Proposed New Law RCW #### – Title: “
Renewable Power Systems On Public Lands and Infrastructure to provide localized power for emergency preparedness.
” Annual revenue from the sale of power funds routine and emergency infrastructure inspections, personnel training, and education. Systems provide charging stations for radios, lights, batteries, pumps, and electric vehicles. The owner of the infrastructure gets to sell the power through the existing supplier of energy to the infrastructure.
Intent
Install a variety of renewable energy systems; solar arrays, wind turbines, tidal systems on public land and infrastructure to provide localized, on-site power when existing electrical grid systems are downed from natural or man-made disasters like severe storms, earthquakes, solar flares, and terrorism. These emergency response systems would provide energy at satellite locations maintaining critical equipment operations and communications.
Proceeds from power sales, above and beyond emergency preparedness, are used to fund public facility structural and operational inspections on bridges and tunnels, sea and air ports, public schools (a common mustering area for municipalities), dams and levees, water and waste water treatment facilities. This is a non-partisan politically neutral law would provide the framework for public agencies and power suppliers to collaborate and improve emergency response activities for public infrastructure systems and the people they serve.
Please email any comments or questions to Kelli Dean at
[email protected]
. The Board would appreciate feedback on this new law concept. Our goal is to develop this concept further.
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Engineers Without Borders Presents
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2017 Infrastructure
Report Card
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Every four years, ASCE's Report Card for America’s Infrastructure depicts the condition and performance of American infrastructure in the familiar form of a school report card—assigning letter grades based on the physical condition and needed investments for improvement.
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URM Policy Recommendations
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On August 3, the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) released the
URM (Unreinforced Masonry) Policy Committee recommendations
. First convened by SDCI in 2011, the policy committee brought together URM property owners, geological and seismology experts, structural engineers, architects, housing and real estate development representatives, and historic preservation professionals to develop recommendations on a city-wide URM seismic retrofit policy. After a hiatus to allow SDCI to gather more information, the policy committee reconvened in late 2016 to finalize their recommendations.
Unreinforced masonry buildings are brick buildings where floors and roofs are not structurally connected to the walls. There are over 1,100 identified URM buildings in Seattle - excluding single-family residences and duplexes - representing 26 million square feet of space and as many as 25,000 regular occupants per day. In the event of a major earthquake, these buildings represent a life safety risk. Scientists believe that Seattle is at 84 percent risk of a major earthquake in the next 50 years. Additional background information can be found on the
Unreinforced Masonry Buildings website
.
Highlights of the recommendation include:
- Requiring mandatory retrofits to all buildings, except single-family residences and duplexes, that have URM bearing walls
- Requiring a timeline for completion based on vulnerability of the building: 7 years for critically vulnerable buildings to 13 years for moderately vulnerable buildings
- Outlining specific benchmarks that need to be met during the retrofitting process to ensure sufficient progress
- Identifying a framework to enforce URM rules for buildings not in compliance
The report identifies over two dozen administrative, legislative, and/or budgetary tools that could be used to help in the implementation of the URM policy. Finally, the report provides a list of potential financing and funding options for assisting building owners in the retrofitting of their buildings.
Next Steps
With the results of the work of the URM Policy Committee, SDCI, in cooperation with other city departments, will:
- Brief the City Council on the URM Policy Committee recommendations in September 2017.
- Convene a working group of City staff from departments with expertise in finance and real estate along with external financial experts to develop a funding and financing proposal for URM retrofits. This group will assess potential retrofit financing strategies identified by the policy committee, including City tools, state and federal grants, tax credits, and partnerships with key players in the private sector.
- Develop staff recommendations based on the URM Policy Committee recommendations, including possible early action items.
- Develop a Director’s Rule establishing a URM retrofit standard to facilitate early adoption through voluntary retrofits.
- Publish draft legislation for public comment.
SDCI will post updates on the progress of the URM policy development in Building Connections and on the URM Policy Committee website.
Portland
The Portland Office of Emergency Management is taking their unreinforced masonry building policy recommendations to their City Council on October 19
th
at 2:00PM. Please consider voicing your opinion on this important safety issue.
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EQUILIBRIUM
By Dr. Thomas Burns, PE
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An ASCE member and college professor has a
novel
approach to promote the civil engineering profession. Dr. Thomas Burns, PE, recently released his debut novel,
EQUILIBRIUM
, a story about a civil engineer with a promising future in front of him until disaster strikes both his professional and personal worlds. “Basically it is a story about an engineer who suffers major setbacks and then struggles to find redemption”.
Why a novel? “I thought it would be an interesting way to promote the profession. The ASCE talks about the need to inspire current and future engineers and I thought this novel would be a fun way to approach this goal”. Burns notes that experts say popular fiction provides insight into the world in which the characters live, work, and play. “One of my goals with EQUILIBRIUM is to give the non-engineer, maybe even the high school senior, some glimpse into our profession and the enormous responsibility that civil engineers shoulder”.
A licensed engineer, Burns has undergraduate and graduate degrees in civil engineering from the University of Cincinnati as well as a doctorate in construction management from Indiana State University.
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Date: Thursday, September 28th
Time: 12pm - 1pm
Location: Bertha Knight Landes Room, Seattle City Hall
Join us for our next
Transit Talk
for a discussion on innovations in access that are changing the way riders get to and from transit!
With more people and more transit coming to the region, our ability to access transit will become even more crucial.Join our panel of experts for a conversation about how advances in shared mobility and other transportation policy can improve last-mile connections across the region.
We'll be tackling questions like:
- How can these solutions support other important goals around compact land use, social equity, and reduced dependence on cars?
- What are the potential benefits and impacts of new mobility options, regulatory hurdles, and the emerging relationship between the public and private sector in delivering access solutions.
- How do we ensure that everyone benefits?
The panel discussion will include representatives from Seattle Department of Transportation, King County Metro, and ReachNow, along with time for audience questions.
This event is free and open to the public. Whether you’re deep in the policy weeds, or just curious about new ways to get to the bus, come join the conversation on this incredibly timely topic.
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- Senior Geotechnical Engineer - Adapt
- Junior Bridge Engineer (SEA) - COWI
- Traffic Engineer - Lochner
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