Good afternoon.
Welcome to the 20th Schnabel lecture.
And this is special because it's
the 20th lecture. It's also special
for me because I have a fellow cougar
that will be giving the lecture.
My only job here is to introduce our host,
Alan Caden. And I do this every year. And
I do it every year with the same amount of
pleasure, because Alan is a very good
friend. and with more than 35 years of experience
in geotechnical geostructural and
instrumentation engineering alan kaden was
instrumental in the development of schnabel
geostructural design practice and instrumentation
monitoring services he currently guides
teams of engineers solving ground improvement
and soil structure interaction challenges
as well as monitoring and risk management
for schnabel's clients alan is licensed
in 11 states as a professional engineer
As a designer, project manager, and senior
reviewer, Alan has worked on projects
involving shallow and deep foundations,
earth retaining systems,
geosynthetic applications,
pavements, and ground improvements.
See, that's the list of all the
classes that you are taking here.
Alan should come and help
us teach the classes.
in addition he has provided analysis
and designs for new and existing dams
waterfront structures excavation bracing
underpinning micro piles and
instrumentation and data acquisition he also
has particular depth of experience in
grouting technologies and applications
so despite all this technical work alan
has found that giving back to the profession
is a rewarding component of his career.
As an active member of the ATSC
International Association of Foundations Reading,
American Society of Civil Engineers,
and the Deep Foundation Institute, he
maintains awareness of the state of practice
in these specialty areas and is a regularly
invited speaker to these societies.
Alan is a trustee for the
Deep Foundation Institute,
a past president of the GEO Institute,
a past chairman of the International Society
for Micropiles, and is a member of the
Board of Directors of the International
Conference Organization for Grouting and past
member of the Board of Directors of ADSC.
With all of these accolades, it's an honor
for us to have Alan come and be the
host for the Schraube Lecture. So please
welcome me and help me in welcoming Alan.
So two things I realized there. One is I have
to shorten that resume next year. It's
going to be a lot briefer. And the second thing
is, is you didn't need to tell all that
outside activity stuff in front of my bosses
here. Now they realize I don't do any work.
All right.
So thank you for arranging this, Dr.
Rodriguez and Marianne. Yeah, Marianne.
Marilyn. Sorry.
I always enjoy being back on Virginia
Tech's campus, even when it is cold
and rainy and dreary. It was a whole
lot nicer last year. It wasn't sunny
and warm. So I'll come back and
hopefully you'll have the sun next year.
But as Dr. Rodriguez indicated,
it's an exciting milestone.
This is the 20th Schnabel Lecture here
at Virginia Tech. And I have been with
Schnabel for about 40 years since I
started as a co-op student from Virginia
Tech working with Schnabel in 1984.
That's five decades of work with Schnabel,
which has given me some incredible experiences
in geotechnical and geostructural
engineering fields on projects ranging from
port facilities commercial and industrial
buildings and even rocket launch facilities
as well as dams and tunnels across the country
and occasionally some international work
my career started in the field as an
inspector then a design engineer project
manager office leadership and even several
roles in corporate leadership and a
couple stints on our board of directors.
So having a career that allows you to
change and continually grow brings you
great fulfillment. So keep that in mind.
I was also provided the support, as you
heard a second ago, to be engaged with
numerous professional societies at the
local, national, and international levels
throughout my career. It's allowing me
to grow a network of colleagues and
friends across the profession. It's these
relationships that contribute to your
success as mentors and create
opportunities for your companies to succeed.
This is a great profession and working with
great companies such as Schnabel Engineering
will create opportunities for you to excel
and enjoy your 40 plus year career. Time
flies when you're having fun. So it sounds
like a long time now, you'll be surprised.
So with that, I would like to introduce
our speaker, Ray Eldridge. Ray has a long
and exciting career as well. I had the
pleasure of meeting Ray about five years ago
when Deere and Ault, a consulting
firm in the western U.S.,
joined Schnabel Engineering.
After he received his bachelor's and
master's degree in civil engineering,
Ray spent his career honing his
skills in mechanical and structural
structural analysis for the design
for large hydraulic structures
at dams, water supply, and fish facilities.
Today, Ray is a recognized expert in
the design of large gates and valves,
intakes and pumping stations, and fish
hatcheries and passages over high dams.
Sounds like some pretty cool stuff you
wouldn't expect in a civil engineer, but
So when I first visited Ray, he was also
proud to show me his machine shop,
which happened to be in his garage, no
room for the cars anymore, where he and
his colleagues spent many hours designing,
prototyping, and testing devices
and equipment of all shapes and forms.
You know, the kind of stuff you
can't get from Amazon and Timu.
Ray is a man with many stories, and he
loves sharing his experiences and has
supported those around him throughout his
career to be the best that he can be.
The Machine Shop is an example of
his mentoring and creative sharing
with his professional colleagues.
He also enjoys sharing some of my experience
with elementary and younger students
as well. and he was today at a local
elementary school talking about fish
hatcheries or fish passages through dams.
Last night he was talking about taking
a jar of yellow liquid to a third grade
class and showing them about filtration.
I will let you ask him about the
rest of that story after the lecture.
Ray has begun his retirement, not
fully yet, but before he heads off to
Patagonia for some great fishing
experiences, we asked him to come and
share a few words about his career,
observations and visions of what you
may experience as you begin your career.
The title of his profession is the
engineer as a lifelong learner.
Ray is a true believer that we all
have something to give and something to
learn at every stage of our career.
I look forward to the lecture and along
with my colleagues from Schnabel would
like to welcome Ray to Virginia new tech.
I made all that up. Don't
worry about it. Good, good.
Sorry.
I
figured out how to make this work.
Okay.
You
are not going to have to listen to me,
look at slides and watch slides for the
next hour. There'll be a few slides at
the end, but we're just going to talk.
Can everybody hear me okay?
Okay, we're going to start with
something a little bit strange.
Can somebody define post hoc ergo?
I'll bet you can.
Yes, sir.
After that, we'll talk
about that. That is perfect.
And many of you know that. And that's
it. And it's, it's really defines
what's commonly a fallacy. Okay. A mistake.
It's like your logic breaks down.
And the reason I'm giving you this example
is so that I can kind of loosen up, talk
louder, right. And not be nervous. Okay.
So when I was a kid, okay, just, you know,
seven, eight years old, I had red hair.
it's turned gray and it's fallen out but
I had red hair very red hair and I would
get teased by adults and you know
children about having red hair and I'm
thinking to myself what is wrong with red
hair you know I have a sister with red hair
you know I had an uncle with red hair
so I go to I go to I think it's a third
grade and there's a kid in my class
his name was Junior Kressel. Now, Junior
was kind of a normal kid. Wasn't real
bright, right? But he had red hair.
And so there's a sample of one, okay?
There's another kid, Pat Leach.
Pat Leach was slow,
really slow. Great kid. And both of
these guys turned out great because
everybody learns at different rates at
different times and to be, you know,
important members of society.
But these kids were slow. So
I got two kids with red hair.
They're the same age as me. And I'm
thinking, that's why they make fun of me.
Redheads are dumb.
Literally,
literally, I thought with my sample of two
and then myself, I thought I better work
pretty hard, right? Just so that, you know,
to try to prove that I'm not
quite as slow as my brethren.
And I don't think it was until
1984 i met a man named lynn fanning from
canada from british columbia who had red hair
he was brilliant and i said to myself maybe
not all redheads are slow a recent trip to
ireland proved that out there's a lot of
redheads there and they function in society
really well so anyway that is um an example
of what you think you know you're learning
and some of the fallacies that we can make.
Let's talk for a little bit
here about what we should learn,
okay?
I think most of you, with a few exceptions,
are faculty,
excuse me, are students, and then we have
faculty and then a few visitors like myself.
I think you should learn what's in front of
you, okay so your job as a student are you
a grad student or undergrad okay your job
is to learn what's in front of you and be
the best student that you can be right now
those of us who are engineers have these areas
of engineering be a geotechnical be a
fluid mechanics transportation engineering
mechanical engineering electrical engineering
software engineering that we're passionate
about but we have to take another 30 40
percent of undergraduate classes for example
that are not in our specialty or of deep
interest to us and so we take those classes to
get good grades right we may want to go to
grad school um we don't want our parents
to be banging us up the side of the head not
performing as well as we can whatever the
reasons are but we endeavor to get grades,
not necessarily the amount of time
that it takes you to get a good
grade in a course, whether you're a
graduate student, an undergraduate,
the amount of time that it takes you to get
that grade and to get through it versus
understand is no different. It's no different
maybe a little bit it's the the great to
exceptional or the good to great it's just
a little bit more effort right and so i
encourage you in all of the classes and all
the things you do to learn all of it as much
as you can okay because it won't take any
more time right it won't take it you won't
notice the time but you'll you'll learn that
for later and if you're a geotechnical
engineer and you're you have to take an
undergrad uh electrical engineering class you're
thinking what in the name of goodness am
i going to do with electrical engineering
i'm into rocks dirt piling right those are
the things that are important to me not
electrical but the day that the instrumentation
on the pile driving rig breaks down, the
day that you have to bring the standby
generator and hook it up to that equipment, you
will wish that you paid attention to your
electrical engineering class. Absolutely.
If you're sitting at a traffic light
and you're further back from that traffic
light every week, the queuing theory that
you learned in transportation engineering
as an undergrad will come in really
handy to help you figure out why you're
frustrated and at least pass the time if
nothing else sitting there at that red light
learn everything you can as much as
you can and what's in front of you
you get old you need these as
grad students and a few any
undergrads let me see undergrads
we will not speak about undergrads
anymore as graduate students
You're developing an expertise, so most
of you are probably either civil engineers
or geologists with a focus maybe on
geotechnical engineering, but now certainly
focused on geotechnical engineering.
Within geotechnical engineering, it's a
very broad field, right? I mean, there's
many different parts of it. I encourage you
all to develop an expertise in your chosen
field, an expertise where you spend enough
time, where you dig deep enough, where
you nurture that learning so they become
a subject matter expert in a piece of it.
You don't have to know everything
about geotechnical engineering.
You should have a good grasp across
it. In fact, you should also have a
good grasp across civil engineering.
This will be very difficult
to ever pass your PE exam.
So you need a broad base of knowledge,
but you need a good, solid expertise.
If you pick an expertise as something
that you get good at, maybe it's what you
did your master's on. Maybe it's something
completely different. Maybe you're
hired to do something that's far away
from what you studied, but you like it,
embrace it, work at it, get good at it.
There's a kind of a sort of person
that's very sharp, well-spoken,
thinks fast,
maybe stands in a dresser
like him, you know?
Yeah, you're looking good. You are.
But that person doesn't have a
great depth of knowledge, right?
they're a little thin
don't be that person
don't be that person keep
learning dig a little bit deeper
now you don't all have to be geotechnical
engineers even though you're going
to graduate school you don't have to do
it you can go into politics you can go
into government you can go into management
there's a lot of things you can do
and engineers have made great leaders years
across the world and for um literally
hundreds of years and so you don't have to
do that and so if you choose to leave the
profession you can be a paper tiger george
plimpton well remembers that story you
don't have to be real but if you're going to
be in this profession if you're going to
stay in this profession get really good at
it and learn take it really seriously
because it is so rewarding so is there anybody
here who is not a civil engineer undergrad
civil engineer one that's not very many
is everybody remember what the
first charge is for a civil engineer
is to protect public health and safety right
that's our first charge we can't violate
that So always keep that in mind when you're
doing your work, right? Is that you are
protecting health and safety. It may be in
the foundation of a tall building. It may be
in the retaining walls of a water plant that
purifies water for a large population. It
may be most anything, a dam, the foundation
for a dam or the embankment of a dam,
right, that has, you know, tens of thousands
or more people living immediately below it.
But health and safety and protection
of that is your number one charge.
So that's why you want to get good at
it and be really good. And if you're
not, if it's not where your heart is,
there's a lot of other things you can
do with a good engineering education.
It will not be, however,
as rewarding probably.
as
you look at your expertise that you get
really good at that which you that which you
become a subject matter expert there's a
cautionary note they talk about the academic
who learns more and more and more about
less and less and less right that's a dangerous
spot stay out of that spot okay it will
not make you a good dinner companion it
will make your marriage very difficult, okay,
because I promise you, no one wants to
listen to a dissertation on the Navier-Stokes
equations over breakfast. It's just that
it's not going to happen, right, and it'll
be tough to stay married, so keep yourself
broad. Get good, but don't get too good.
My wife would argue that I'm not very
good, but I also don't talk about very
interesting things a lot of times, so
i think one last thing on
our skills and what we learn
you have to have a set of
skills that are in demand
so that you can practice your trip
so keep that in mind when you look at
what you focus on in geotechnical engineering
and civil engineering engineering at large
that you've got to have a set of skills of
intimate you need that so that you can live
not many of us have um massive trust
funds if anybody does here god bless them
um i didn't have one um but we need
to be marketable so keep yourself
marketable keep yourself fresh and that's
part of being a life learner and change
and if you get into a situation where
your expertise is no longer relevant it's
okay change right we can all learn new
things we can learn well into our 70s and
80s and learn quite well with a lot fewer
distractions than we had as young people.
I don't include myself in the young
people part of this statement, but we can
continue to learn. So keep it fresh. And
if you find you're in the wrong spot,
change it.
One final thing on learning.
This is critically important.
Learn what you don't know, what you're not
good at, what you're not qualified to do.
Do not practice in any area that
you're not qualified to practice.
You can kill people.
You can lose your license.
You can get drunk out of
business. You can sue.
All kinds of bad things can happen.
Learn what you don't know. And the
thing is, is that even just your
colleagues here and your professors,
Alan Catton,
Walt, guys back here, we got a lot
of people on here that will help
you when you're in a situation,
guide you to who or help. Get help.
Get help for me.
Before I move on,
does anybody,
does that spawn any questions? You guys
can interrupt me at any time. Not just
answering silly Latin questions, okay?
That wasn't silly. That's a good answer.
Okay. How
should we learn?
Right now, you're at the
peak of learning.
You have great minds that are sponges.
You have fantastic faculty around you to
learn from. You have each other to learn from.
This is the best time to learn the most.
It's not the only time to
learn by any means. I hope not.
But right now is a precious time.
Because you'll never have the opportunity
to have so many talented people
around you to ask so many questions
and have them expect so little of you,
right, in terms of what your knowledge
is, because you're learning, right?
You thought that was
funny, didn't you? Yeah.
That's good.
But when you think about – and
Aiden explained to me the faculty,
that you have the resources, you
have the number of graduate students
that you have in this program.
I have some appreciation for your
laboratories and other facilities and
then just this campus that this is
a special place for Virginia Tech.
I was proud of where I went to school.
It's not tech.
books
this is
really important to me
the working man will tell you that the guy
who dies with most toys wins again the guy
dies
with the most worn out books
is the one that won the Indian
wear those things out literally wear
your books out how many of you have
all or virtually all of your undergrad
textbooks that you started okay
that's not very good guys
that's not very good at all in fact i
encourage you to change your ways how
many of you have all of your textbooks
from grad school so far and kept those.
It's better.
Don't let any more of your
books fall out of your hands.
How many of you have more electronic
copies of your books than hard copies?
Okay. I encourage you
to change that behavior.
I do.
And I know that this is an
old man talking here, right?
But listen to this old
man on this topic, okay?
When that thing breaks down,
we just had a, you know,
technology issue, right?
When that thing breaks down,
all of those resources are gone.
If you're out in the field, you cannot,
maybe you can download something, but you
don't know what to download. But if
you're on a job in a remote place, you can
grab literally a suitcase full of books.
But when your computer's down, it's down.
When somebody steals it, it's really down.
And you won't necessarily have that
computer. You probably won't 20 or 30 or 40
years from, right? You will lose those
resources. But your books, the hard copy
books, they'll be your friends forever.
so for those of you now this is what i
learned for those of you that sold your
books rented your books have only e-copies
of your books there are places to get
cheap books okay one of the best one that's
called Abe Books, A -B-E, abebooks.com.
If you had a Steelsman that instead of
paying $300 for it, you know, you
leased it for what it rented it, right?
You can buy three versions back and
it's still got everything, right? Three
versions back for five bucks. Buy it.
If you take from today and you
go forward for two years, you
can recover all of those books
that you didn't maintain in our coffee.
Okay?
And it won't cost you. What do you notice?
It's like a beer here and there, kind of,
real costume. So I encourage you to do that.
And when you're my age,
there should be a bunch of books on your
shelf that have the spines absolutely
worn out and are taped over, and my God,
they're a mess, but they're your friends.
You wouldn't throw them out
any more than you would your dog or your
child. I mean, they're very important.
I never saw anyone find adjacencies
on the computer. They search
for a thing, a piece of the code,
a way to work a problem, and never
read around it or pass it or
just get excited about it, right?
It doesn't happen, but it does with books.
Get it. Buy it. Please. I beg you.
Another great way to learn.
So I'm a huge fan of the Internet.
my favorite part of the internet
is my ability as an individual
based on a very big company we had our
own library you could call her she would
research journal articles for that and
bring them and mail them and they would
come from different places and you'd get
the whole book not a reprint of it you'd
just get the whole book you know like
maybe it was an ASCE journal from 1964
on Clearwater Scour you'd get that
book and you'd check it out from
you know like caltech or something like that
and you read it get your stuff out of it
send it back to the library once you get it
back to caltech now today right at my
fingertips if i'm sitting at home still at my
fingertips as long as i have an internet
connection but journal articles are a great way
to learn it gets you generally the latest
okay it's not necessarily and seldom is in
fact the way to solve a problem but it's a
set of data to take the way that you learned
from your classes to solve a problem
and you can get those things quickly as
students they're free most virtually
everything from a from a professional
journal is free is that still correct
that's a wonderful thing that time
will end right when you leave this
institution now they won't know that you're
not a student for a few years so
it'll kind of carry on for a little bit
so you know enjoy it while you can but
then you'll be like me you wind up paying
35 bucks 25 bucks your clients your
employer never complain when you buy your own
the journal article is not a flash in
the pan i did i saw this it's sitting over
here it's in the trash whatever it's
like your books make a physical copy of it
put it in a notebook in in that topic you
had to dig in deep enough right deep enough
that you were willing to scour the
journals right scour the literature get your
hands on it read it study it put it together
and keep it keep it together put them
on your shelf label if if nothing else
label them by year because you'll remember
maybe not exactly what day by any means but
certainly what year you learned about
fixity and in deep foundations right that
that you'll know that and the way you had to
dig into that in a particular kind of
geology you'll get that close enough and you
can find that stuff and that'll be and
that will make you extremely valuable they
had a structural engineer
that I've worked with for a long time
and this person
walked by
buildings under construction
in downtown Boise for years
walked right by and did not look out
and we're talking about
a particular connection
beam against the column,
seismic connection it's cut out
bolted connection on a job and it's like
well didn't you see all those connections that
are going on right now between the parking
lot where you park and our building what
do you mean come on let's go look at it on
campus they're building around here constantly
peek over the fence see what they're
doing look look at how the ground improvement
is done look at how the rebar reinforcing
steel is tied get your hands on it a hard
hat and talk to the superintendent and get
permission from him or her to walk you around
the site and explain it to you it's going
on all around you pavement performance in
different pavement sections around this
giant university perform different ways right
you will many of you work in people right
transportation is second largest industry.
Maybe it's their computers, excuse me.
But it's a huge industry,
worldwide.
And so you can learn about pavement
just by looking at it, by watching it.
It's critical.
So learn from the things
that are around you.
This is a
story that I'm not proud of.
But it wasn't me.
Okay.
So
engineers have a little bit of a problem
so when they go home they talk to their
children and their wife they're engineers
right they're just engineers because
it's like well actually it works like this
you know i just it aggravates people
to know it right it's just and my wife
just he's like i said it was about 40 you're
telling me it's 37 .3 i said about 40
When you
leave the classroom, when you leave
your office as a practicing engineer,
don't leave your expertise behind.
All too often, engineers do that.
i worked with a young engineer some years
ago he went on a raft trip on the snake
river in idaho standing by the computer
went on a raft trip on the snake river
in idaho and it was raining hard for four
days he comes to a ranger station and
he asks the person at the ranger station
what's the river like downstream
and the guy said the only thing
i know is that it's at 12 feet
when people tell you that the stage of
river is at 12 feet unless you know what it
is it's useless information they say this
all the time it's useless information
flow will help you a little more but 12 feet
means nothing anyway so that was the
last place that he could take his gear out
by vehicle he went downstream
to the next ranger station and
this is big system big river
and they flew his gear out he was scared
the river was huge and he comes back to the
office and he tells me this the forest service
should pay to have flown my gear out of
the canyon because if they would have told
me earlier right that how bad the river was
i could have had it driven out would cost
me two thousand less dollars it's like dude
you should go to jail for being stupid
okay because you're the engineer what does a
forest service employee at some boat dock
know about hydrology you call yourself a
hydraulic engineer a hydrologist and you told
me earlier that it rained for four days well
of course the river's hot of course it's
going to be nasty don't turn your engineer
brain off when you walk out of the office
or walk out of the classroom keep using it
don't reuse it at home but keep using it i
have two wonderful quotes here from
people that were fundamental in my life one
was a professor of uh was a combustion
combustion engineer he was the combustion
engineer in poland he taught at washington state
university his name was Stanislav Wojcicki.
He's been dead now for 14 or 15 years.
He was the classic,
bald-headed,
tough professor, good
Eastern European accent,
perfect English.
And he's teaching us compressible flow,
which is for a civil engineer in the
mechanical engineering department is
not an easy class, but he was so good
at it. It was just wonderful and good.
He's explaining some topic to us and he
stops and he looks at us and he says,
do you understand what I'm saying?
And we're all nodding, right?
And he looks at us and he goes,
many people know many things.
Very few people understand anything.
Absolutely profound.
Dig in.
Take the time to learn. Learn it well.
Now, a slightly more crass friend
of mine His name is Jim Harrison
He's an old line Cleveland guy He's
a short guy He had this mop of hair
Glasses Like cigarettes in his pocket Stuff
coming out of his pocket We're the same
blue blazer every day The guy had money too
That's the way it was This was Jim
We're sitting in a meeting somebody
starts talking about a particular
aspect of wastewater engineering.
And GM's got this gruff, you know,
Cleveland cigarette voice. He says,
so
if you heard about, is that something
you've heard about or something you've
read about? In other words, what do
you really know? I hear you talking,
but what do you really know? That's what
Stanislaw just keeps trying to say.
Know it. Understand it. It's
something you can kind of talk about.
Something you understand.
Something you studied.
Keep that in mind.
Before we get into some stuff, it's
probably a lot more interesting.
What you would trust is fact.
How do we test it?
I wish I knew the answer.
I could tell you what I do know.
Trust your books.
Okay.
Trust your books.
Generally. Now, Now, when I say trust,
they're not always correct. I have
found grievous errors in some of my
books, okay? I mark it up, fix it.
They can send you on a bit of a wild
goose chase when you find it, right?
And, right, God,
unit conversions, terrible stuff like that.
You can make mistakes like that, right?
In books, and people, and good, well
-meaning authors make some mistakes.
But trust your books.
Trust your professors,
okay?
Trust journal articles, but verify
them more than anything else, because
they are frequently, they frequently
draw conclusions, especially in the
summaries that are not well-founded.
So check them out, okay?
the internet be highly suspicious of the
internet if you take a field where you are
a technical expert and you google it and
you look at the responses you will see that
it is rife with errors absolutely rife
with errors if you're finding something on
the internet and you choose to solve a
problem that way be very careful find three
a minimum of three other sources independent
sources to verify that that information
that that method of solution is correct
You must do that.
People's lives depend upon it.
Your career depends upon it.
The trust, the public has a high
trust between engineers. We don't want
to break that, breach that trust.
So when you're looking at that,
it is not a primary source.
And AI right now in our field,
from my perspective, is a scourge.
it'll improve but it's a scourge today
it's too bloody easy to use it okay
it's a scourge learn to do your own work
use your own resources use those books
that you've begun collecting after
today make a run on eight books right so
one last thing on learning
so we talked about the
the altruistic side of it health and
safety public benefit doing the right
thing there's another aspect of learning
that and being a life learner that
i hope you benefit from and that is
really really selfish there is nothing
more gratifying i take that back raising
a child successfully. It's pretty
gratifying, especially how difficult it is.
But when you learn and you are able
to successfully apply that knowledge
to solve problems, it feels so
damn good. Okay? It's a lot of fun.
Get after it. Go out and learn.
Solve all kinds great problems.
Any questions?
All right.
I'm doing really good here, Alan.
Yeah, no, I mean, I'm doing really
good standing in front of the
computer, if it was over there.
Okay, so let's talk about, does
anybody know where this quote came
from, the hubris before the fall?
It's not an exact exactly and it was and
it was slightly different so i used i
used my version of this i think it was
something cometh before the fall and it
wasn't pardon there you go very good very good
so i'm going to talk about some
projects here and and these projects have
got some great success stories,
and they've got some problems, right?
Now, if you've never made a mistake
in the engineering business,
right, the consulting business, or in life,
then you haven't done anything, okay?
You're not doing enough. If you're not breaking
some stuff, right, you're not doing
enough. Don't try to break it. Don't try to
make a mistake, but it's going to happen,
right? And when you do, fix it. You move on.
This is
Chelan Dam in Washington State.
Really cool project.
Downstreet from this dam for
about 80 years, the river was dry
11 and a half months out of the year. Dry.
The fish couldn't get up. Nothing.
It was just dry. Dry as a bum. All the
water went to hydropower through,
I don't know, several miles of tunnel,
five, six, seven miles of tunnel,
no water in the river. It's a devastating
thing. We put the water back into
Chelan River. We put in 300 cubic feet
per second, day in, day out, and part
of the year, 80 for the rest of it,
no, 150, and then peak flows for whitewater,
because it's a wonderful whitewater
stretch of water and we did that all kinds of
things on that job went well except this
my old partner cycle we uh built
an engineering firm together
worked together for many years
worked together for about 30 years these
rocks they're too bloody small okay it's
riprap riprap them those are a d50 50
passing um of maybe they're 24 inches they
were supposed to be um in the 36 42 range
the client who was the uh construction
manager got a good deal from the contractor
on these rocks when we cranked open the 60
inch diameter uh slide gates behind him.
Those rocks shot up in the air like 15
feet. I was there. I watched it happen. It
was just like this. I've got another picture
of this thing running the first time.
This is after it ran for a while, okay?
But there were rocks shooting up out of
this filter fabric ripped up and thrown into
the sky, right? This was crazy. And so I
turned it on. The client's with me. They
told the rock was too small. They said,
don't worry about it. It's going to be fine.
There's about 40 feet per second coming out
from the beneath those slide gates and it
just ripped a giant hole and once it started
it's like let's let it go because what
happened it had we had to cut off what we
call it so the front of the structure it's
got deep um concrete wall and that keeps
it from undermining right i would not have
let the structure undermine but i would let
it dig a hole because it dug a hole deep
enough wide enough and long enough that it's
still the energy coming out this and so
we knew how deep the basin needed to be to
use their crummy rock and so we dug it all
out their crummy rock four feet down put
the rock back in and grouted it and the whole
thing worked it was just fine but the
client's hubris they know better than I do
the engineer right and And there's a sort of
another something you should think about.
When somebody, another engineer, designs
something, you come after them, right?
And whether it's a year, a decade,
50 years,
get a hold of them and talk to them before
you change their work. If they're dead
or if they're incompetent, then study
what they did. don't just change their
work you will not treat yourself well okay
you've got to understand what was in
their market and it's easiest to ask what
they were thinking why they did something
a certain way but don't change it until
you really understand what you're doing
arkansas river diversion this is uh 8
300 foot elevation in colorado um this is
half of the water supply
to the Denver metro area and south. So,
Aurora, Colorado through Colorado Springs.
This is a cool project. This box
right here is about 40 feet wide.
That was round.
It takes about 181 CFS
withdrawal out of the river.
This is actually a spillway in the middle.
fish ladder here, and a
whitewater boat pass on this side.
This was a great project. It
was done over 18 months. We saw
24 below zero, still placed
concrete in that kind of weather,
blanketed, heated, you know, just terrible
conditions, but you work when you have to
work. You just spend some more money. this
is uh when they tested um the white
water boat pass and these expert kayakers
and rafters and they came in we had a
guy that actually swam this thing to
figure out if there were hazards that if
somebody fell out of their boat did
we create something that didn't work um
now the humors now the humors this is 66
inch pipe okay it's a pretty good sized bike
respectable bike that valve right there is
uh italian made i'm trying to think how many
ferraris but it's 750 000 for that valve
sitting in italy not here and not installed
we wanted flexibility in these
joints of pipe that came together
my job my fault my mistake my neighbors
particular connections that we use in a
situation like that that allow some deflection
in the pipe joints okay so this thing
settle and move right the pipe sticks
together they're good for one and a half degrees
of deflection i didn't look at this
right and we were maybe three i mean i was
literally double so we had the other stuff
up the client was kind to me and spent some
money on this stuff and that that kind
of thing happens but i was too cocksure and
didn't spend the time didn't dig in deep
enough to stop that mistake i'll never do
it again but that kind of thing happens.
We're right there. Right.
So I'll answer any questions I can.
If they're of a technical nature,
we've got some smart people here.
We'll hand with them.
Any questions?
Any Latin lessons?
yes sir
John Roberson
and Clayton Crows
elementary football camps
that's my number one book second
one is Vinti Chow's Open Channel 4
80 sir
you have more many gallons
in the other summer
My hearing, sir, is terrible,
so I'm going to walk.
I've worked with many young engineers over
the years, so my question is, have you
seen differences in the way the young
engineers interact with us and older folks
over the years? Have you seen differences
in the way they learn on the job? I'm so
very impressed with their generation.
What do we call it?
z's i don't know you you are an impressive
group of people and i was impressed with
the gen xers and i was impressed with
the millennials and whatever right i i don't
see i don't see the disrespect i don't
see um you're all as smart as engineers
have ever been and we're picking it from a
good group here. You guys have what it
takes. Your generations are extremely well.
Learning is a little bit different,
though, okay? There is, I think,
Aiden, that there's a tendency to go to
the web instead of the bookshelf today.
There's an easy answer there.
And as we talked about before,
it's not of great quality
necessarily. It can be great a bunch.
There is a little less tendency also
in learning with younger engineers
today to want to learn on the company's
time, okay, during the workday, the
eight-hour workday, and that's fine.
But recognize that that will not
set you apart from your peers.
It makes you an also man. It's the person
that grabs that stuff and takes it home
and spends a little more time on it,
on their own time. Because remember, even
though you're working on a project,
maybe it's a bridge foundation in Africa,
even though you're living in Manhattan,
that expertise that you gain is poor it's
yours you own it get some skin in the game
learn on your own too absolutely let your
have your employer send you to conferences
learn while you're doing things but put in
the extra effort i see less of that today
and in past generations
and I don't know why it doesn't
it doesn't frighten me but I see less of it
and again that's one person's observation
Joe you had a question? Yeah I
had a question so you talked about
going broader with your knowledge versus
narrowing in how do you think about this
trade-off How do you know when you need
to go deeper on a topic versus move on?
So I work for a pretty good-sized
company, right? We've got 700, 800 people.
I have to look at what the client needs,
balance the time that's available to solve
the problem against what I know. okay so if
in our organization we don't have an expert
in that something that is dug already dug
deep then i know i'm going to have to dig deep
then i'll do it okay i'll do whatever it
takes to get it done right or i'll reach out
to the company too if it's something that i
flat and not qualified to do okay so i would
say that if you have the time dig in even
if you get other help so that you can understand
that help and make sure that that quality
and then spot on with what you should do.
There?
Oh, yeah.
Please, Alan.
How do you make decisions when you have
all the uncertainties in order to science?
I've worked for many, many years.
A couple of decades of construction
engineering. It's wonderful.
I ultimately fired you, okay?
Because he became a goofball. He's
still a friend, but he's a goofball.
He taught me an important lesson.
You'd say that understand
what you're doing.
Use sound principles.
Run the numbers.
And then trust.
We have to do that.
Get other people to look at your work.
Very important.
Get help. You can get help from
a lot of different directions.
You're never really unknown.
But understand what you're doing.
Sound principles.
Simplify it.
You're one.
You go forward.
And then put your stamp on it and move on.
The other thing is, is
that you could also...
There's ways to test those, right?
figure out a way to test your
assumptions get into a building
yes
I'm just curious your license
you have when you fail at
something and you don't understand
how do you get back up
again and pursue your
all your efforts not to
say that Alan has failed more than me
but Alan take that one please
oh geez i thought wait a minute
you had the failure right there
you know i've had i've had a couple i won't
say how many um and i think you just have
to face it you you admit that okay there's a
problem and stick with it and try to solve
it help the client through the problem you
know might come back and cost you time maybe
it costs you some money or something but
it's a whole lot better more satisfying if you
can stick with it and help resolve the
problem and move forward and you'll probably
have a client for life for doing that as well
stick with it people respect the person,
the engineer that sticks with them
through fixing it okay very seldom is
blame tossed around, it's just okay we
got a problem, let's move through it
there was another question back there
okay anybody else yes
sir how do you know when
you're too far about whatever your uh
water deeper uh water above your head how
do you recognize you're not too far off
you wake up in the middle
of the night cold sweat
But that's where you also want
outside review, preferably senior review,
right? Because you can convince yourself you'd
solve something the right way. You may be
completely on base. So you get someone senior
that's been there before to look at it.
Yes?
What's one piece of advice
respect them
as much as you respect yourself
and you wish to be respected
take your time it's known
they'll get to know you too in that process
genuinely
care it comes through
one last one What are some of the
most important perspectives or habits
that you contribute to success?
Get up early.
Right?
Good night's sleep. Get up early.
Get to the job before it's time to start.
Stay until the work's done.
Until the learning's done. And
remember, at 5 o 'clock or whatever,
you can shut your computer down, you can
grab your books, and you can put your feet
up on the desk and sit there and work,
right?
Dig in deeper.
That half an hour,
you don't jump in traffic.
You'll never miss it.
Put the time.
Great.
Ray, I want to thank you for a great
lecture. Enjoyed that. i want to ray
has a great month planned ahead of him
and part of it is fishing in patagonia
and some great traveling down there and
i think he absolutely needs to take a
hokey hat with him and then he's going to
need something to keep that coffee warm
or maybe the beer cold so just to
remember your time here at virginia tech
thank you for for coming to visit with us
it's been a great one and a pleasure
and if anyone wants to ask
him about the yellow jar
all right thank you