Mhm. Okay. Because you're Duncan is in the
department. Good afternoon. You have to know.
Right. Mhm. I'm Sandy pleasure of serving his
head. Black department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Also had the pleasure of welcoming here today. Right
. Annual snob engineering lecture. I've been down deep
in on all all very well. You a few
minutes. I had pleasure of meeting Carrying your own
bag, Lara two or 3 or four years ago
. We serve on a national handle together. And
I remember coming back from that meeting after my interactions
. And I think telling has read this is someone
that we need to find an opportunity to bring,
getting attacked to talk to our technical students and faculty
. And it's a real pleasure to to be able
to do that. Um As I, as I
mentioned, the snap distinguished lecture and we have a
great relationship with this novel engineering have had in this
department continuous years. And this is a wonderful collaboration
. It's novel sponsors this event and with the arrangements
and soliciting and security, the speakers and it's it's
kind enough to bring this to Virginia Tech for for
all to enjoy. At this point I'd like to
introduce uh Cat Alan is a graduate of our department
, place over a member of our Academy of Distinguished
Alumni and serves as a Director of Strategic Development and
come forward, share some remarks and energies are speaking
. Thank you. Good afternoon. Mhm. They've
got a point, so so happy to have the
opportunity again introduce charlotte lecturer period Virginia Tech. This
is dr easily mentions overnight annual lecture and I first
want to make sure that I thank Doctor Bills and
Mississippi, thank you very much for helping to coordinate
, appreciate it. Uh I'm sure some of you
were not clear about what engineers do when you left
high school. No, I wasn't. As I
said last year, unfortunately we don't have C.
S. I. On tv. Every week for
engineers to explain what this is all about. So
um we hope that bringing these guests who have spent
their careers working on some pretty impressive engineering challenges will
help you understand our industry and your opportunities. I
believe you'll find this year's people will provide a completely
different you're what opportunities may be in store for you
in your future. The one wonderful profession with more
opportunities than you could ever imagine. Thank you for
joining us. Those of you not travel engineering were
an employee of design consulting engineering firms specializing finding solutions
for our clients and they're dealing with your involved geotechnical
engineering, structural dam engineering as well as related sites
. We're also proud to say that we've been recognized
by C magazine Is one of the best places to
work 12 years ago. So from our 19 offices
located throughout the United States work on projects around the
world, providing a full range of services design through
construction from these very locations of very wide variety of
civil engineering challenges making every day some people look forward
to. So now to kick off the 9th installment
of the novel Engineering Lecture Series, the series strikes
to bring you representatives of civil engineering design and construction
community who had a significant impact on the investment practice
your profession, these industry experts have come to share
experiences and insights games throughout their careers. They further
provide a little of their insight as to what might
be sore for you and you begin your unfortunately,
there's no way they can tell you what's going to
be in store for you towards the entity career,
because that's up to you. So tonight's guest complements
our previous speakers, each of whom focused on unique
piece of our professional and the girl part today we
are proud to bring you the 2014 novel engineering lecturer
is Karen during the Director of contingency operations in the
office of Homeland Security for the United States Corps of
Engineers. Mr Michael Air holds a Bs Management Engineering
civil engineering from the University of Louisville. Registered Professional
engineering. He says over 34 years of experience in
the engineering profession. She likes to say that she
gets to do a lot of different things. People
here a little bit about that her career, private
industry and largely with the United States Corps of Engineers
, as stated in numerous areas of the United States
, europe and the Middle East population major. She
has worked as a geotechnical designer In construction, holding
positions from two engineer. Lead program manager, multibillion
dollar construction broken, uh leading construction in Iraq.
And it hurt in the new Orleans, Hurricane Katrina
and as program director for water resource infrastructure stretching across
major river basins, balancing navigation, flood control and
martin stewardship career. For the last four years,
she has served as Emergency Manager, leaving the federal
emergency federal engineering disaster response to major hurricanes, floods
and tornadoes. She has numerous public speaking technical form
and multimedia events. Any controversial Bradley as you see
in a moment, she is proof that engineers can
in fact talk uh they talk about why you're lucky
why you get to be an engineer. So without
further ado welcome. Okay, testing everybody. Hear
me okay? You know, I can't stand podiums
so I'm gonna walk. So that means I can
make eye contact and uh try to keep your interest
. You know, Alan talked about um the end
of your career is up to you. You know
, I would I would tell you that the beginning
of your career, the middle of your career,
all aspects of your career, all of that's up
to you. So one of the things I'm going
to do today is talk about the different opportunities and
the different paths that you can choose to take and
when I did this title, so you get to
be an engineer, you know, engineering is one
of those professions that I think of, you get
to do this, you know, so I I
got to do a lot of different things, you
know, I get to do what I'm doing now
and so most engineers, especially if they stay with
it and I saw that today with a lot of
the professors I was talking to, you have true
passion and passionate last years, even decades, and
so being able to keep that passion, you know
, to stay a contributing member of the profession,
I was pretty exciting. So what I wanted to
relate to you is is uh think about the different
possibilities as you go through school. School teaches you
how to think. School gives you the foundational principles
. But how do you apply it? That's gonna
be a whole new world. You don't want to
get out of your in the profession. Just so
I know how many people here are undergrads. All
right. And graduate students. I got to meet
a lot of the Geo Tech grad students last night
. That's good. I know there's some doctoral students
I met today to. Okay, so anyway,
it's a good combination and uh, I'm glad to
see the RTC guys here. Everybody here is an
engineer. An engineer, huh? All right.
Okay. So there will be enough different topics here
that will appeal to you all as well. So
just please start off, engineers can be considered different
. So, we got a little clip here to
talk about the makeup of an engineer really without having
to deal with not like of it. Well,
yeah. Okay. I mean Campbell we are and
the theory of perfect the state of play. Put
the part that worries me if he used the components
to build a Handley and that back normally at one
. Yeah. Machine isn't working. Mhm. Yeah
. What do you think afraid yourself? Okay.
Yeah. It's a rare condition characterized by an extreme
intuition, land, electrical and other social happy little
life being that you okay. Yeah. Okay.
Okay. Well, you know, you can lead
a normal life. Four years ago I was working
in Germany and I was a project engineer on construction
for family housing. I was working with the army
captain who was doing tube construction. We were there
on a saturday, couldn't find his five year old
son. We found him. He literally had taken
apart the xerox machine and reading in the paper tray
. So I think he had the knack even at
that age, you know I'm gonna spend a couple
minutes talking about the Army Corps of Engineers and then
we'll talk about the different things that engineers can do
. You know there's a lot of history here at
the at the University of Virginia Tech and there's an
incredible amount of history with the U. S.
Army Corps of Engineers and some of the things that
the army has done in the past for the nation
. You can see some of the screen in the
nation's capital, the Washington monument Lincoln memorial, the
U. S. Capitol. Last year we actually
had a tyrannosaurus rex and one of our projects in
Montana. So we moved it and is now in
the Smithsonian on display and its loan to them for
the next many years. Of course building the pentagon
, um, the original Panama Canal after affirm their
messed it up. Army Corps of Engineers came in
and finished it, bonneville Dam, which was located
outside of Portland Oregon. I'm always amazed when I
go there was built in the 30s, but the
, the technology that was in play there and this
dam is still operating hydropower fist passages, navigation.
Just an incredible example of engineering. Even we even
did the Kennedy Space Center. And then of course
, uh, for those of you and the engineer
regiment well separately the way. So you see a
picture of a Sapa there in the middle of the
screen. Just a few more things in history.
I think Virginia Tech was established in the 1870s.
Is that about right, 1872? All right,
so Army Corps of Engineers was actually established a year
after the U. S. Army And in 1802
the first engineering school in the nation was at West
Point. We get questions about why is the army
involved in civil works in the river mission? Well
, because in the 1800s, we were given the
mission to do clearing and sagging, remove obstacles that
are preventing navigation and a lot of major river systems
. Mississippi River Commission, that's still in place today
. In 1879, Panama Canal, great Mississippi River
flood and of course various flood control acts. It
always tell people that the Army Corps of Engineers is
a reflection of society. And so what does society
do across time changes? So some of the things
we did in the past as engineers, we would
not do today. We may not do today.
And part of that was the big dam area.
In the starting in the 30s, we built several
high head dams and uh with associated hydropower plants,
navigation, water supply across the Missouri River and in
other places in the nation. Um We became authorized
to repair flood control works, which was still doing
today 1955. Um National Environmental Policy Act turnip A
that changed this nation as far as environmental considerations,
endangered species and all the restrictions, no matter where
you are in the country, on how you could
build. And then one of the things that I
I spent a lot of time on today. In
1988, we became the federal engineers to respond to
natural disasters, public works and engineering. And then
I tended to find a lot of my life in
terms of hurricanes, both when hurricanes occurred and what
they occurred and all the things we did. Oh
, um, as far as you say is vision
, I'm sure Alan Schnabel engineering has a vision.
Did you set forth for the company where we have
a vision to, we set forth for the nation
and its engineering solutions for our nation's toughest challenges.
And when you're engineering students, that's what you're doing
, You're learning how to be problem solvers, you
are learning to come up to solutions. And some
of the things I'll talk about today is you've got
to be prepared to take that knowledge and make decisions
. You know, you could be someone who is
doing the design, you know what office, you
can do research, but it may not be you
, but someone around you is going to use that
and they're gonna make decisions. and that, that
is one of the hardest things about being an engineer
. Um I spent time today with some of the
professors and uh where's Professor Brandon, Dr Brandon?
Well, I saw you in here. Yeah,
there you are upfront. Toms tom and I have
crossed paths at numerous times in the years and he
and dr Phil's have had numerous research efforts with a
lot of work helping the Army Corps of Engineers as
well as our engineering research and developments that are.
But what's important about that, it's not just the
contribution the university is making, we're using it and
we're applying it, applying it to real world in
real world construction. So we have numerous laboratories and
employee engineers and scientists. About a third of them
are phds, almost half have master's degrees and they're
located in different places around the country. So just
a couple other things, uh, I'm always amazed
when I, when I realized this, uh,
we have presence right now in over 130 countries And
physical presence as an offices in 43 of them.
So we get to do, we get to do
a lot of technical exchanges all over the world.
And that's pretty exciting, you know, to be
part of doing that because it's constant learning is,
you're an engineer. You never stop learning. So
some of the nation's water resources challenges things that we
face, things that you will face once you get
out and you're in the profession and you're practicing um
, from climate change and climate adaptation, increasing demand
for water is an incredible problem all over the world
. And it's growing the environmental values of societies change
that we have to change with it. And of
course there is a persistent conflict that's more than reality
today, I think that than ever. And then
uh one of my biggest focus points today, which
is responding to disasters. All right. We do
a lot of support to national emergencies flood fight.
And you see a lot of the pictures up,
there are different places from building temporary levees, temporary
barrier systems, repairing damage works after they occur.
As well as being famous engineers for responding to things
like Superstorm Sandy. And you can see some of
those pictures, right forms. So this is a
picture of me at my Alumni University of Louisville and
one of my classmates whose name is Susan to Thanh
. And this picture was taken last year when,
when I was in the area. Uh for some
things, um, you can see both of us
are smiling cause we still enjoy being engineers. And
as I look around this audience, I do see
several women engineering students. When we graduated from my
civil engineers Counting Susan and I there were five of
us. So it's really good over the years to
see how things have changed and see women now.
It's it's pretty normal in all different parts of engineering
, you know, as leaders as managers or or
like me a senior executive. Mhm. So let's
talk about some of the things you can do when
I get out of school. I work for to
a farms Geo Tech Firms 1st in a decatur Alabama
and then in new Orleans and other than being a
young engineer that got to do some pretty complex things
. one of the things that did is also pretty
quickly I learned all the different things that I could
do as an engineer and I ended up working over
the years all over the US. These are the
places that I've been based in different times. But
I've been to every state in this nation as well
as working in different parts of the world based at
times in Germany deploying to Iraq. I just got
back a few weeks ago from a big technical exchange
in London, been over to Thailand a few times
and helping them with flood mitigation. We have an
ongoing technical checks change with Japan. I could I
go for hours about this and really how exciting it
is. So you can do a lot of different
things. You know, whether you stay up your
geo tech or you decide to apply that geo tech
background and do things like manage different construction projects,
being a project manager, be a program manager operations
. When I use the word operations, I'm talking
about operating locks and dams along the river systems as
well as the contingency operations. Peace be a field
engineer. I mean there's just no limit to what
you get to do. So I hope, I
hope he as the years go by you all we
realize that and then you'll have to make deliberate choices
about what path your career can take. Um The
picture is from right after Superstorm Sandy, we always
go up in helicopters or other aircraft as soon as
we can so we can get an overall damage assessment
from the air and then decide where we need to
do repair efforts. Uh All right. Uh huh
. I don't know what the batteries out or what
. Yeah, If 19 just advance. There we
go. This is an old damn old river dam
and spillway structure, which is in Louisiana. And
I put this up because I tried to think of
some of the big milestones I've had in my career
before. I I did this, this is an
Army Corps of Engineers project. I was working for
a biotech firm in New Orleans and I had was
able to get a few years of experience in the
foundation design. So I was lucky enough to be
picked up by the Army Corps of Engineers that was
looking for engineers with the foundation design experience. And
I was the lead geo tech engineer on this,
you know designing the pile foundation um as well as
a pilot installation for that and to do that as
a young engineer was pretty incredible. I was not
a PE yet at that time. So that meant
that my work had to be signed off, you
know by pe I think I made him pretty nervous
at the time, but all the work worked out
. And the other reason that this was a big
moment is because after a few years of doing this
, I've been out in the field for a couple
of years, you know, being the outside geo
tech engineer and I was really taken by construction,
was active, got to make decisions, big influence
and so I decided to go on a different path
and move from being a Geo tech to move to
being a construction manager. One of the things we
were talking about last night with some of the geo
tech grad students is and of course your career,
you have to make decisions. Um I passed up
promotions as a Geo tech to get more experience as
a construction manager. And so one of the things
I did was go to Germany for about four years
on some of the army bases that were still operating
on the time and I became the project engineer on
the design build housing project. And the other thing
that happened that I was really surprised me. Do
you all take communication or risk communication now the school
? No, like see blank looks. One of
the things that I found out you had to learn
to do as an engineer was to be able to
explain it, be able to breathe, be able
to publicly talk about what you're doing and then for
whatever reason I had to brief so many dignitaries during
this work that I found out I actually had a
ability to do that. Um so that's something else
I was able to use uh over and over again
in the years ahead. And then because of all
all the work that I had here experiences a project
engineer and supervisory uh project engineer, what am I
doing here? It turns off and on. Okay
. I'm just, we're just going to start advancing
it manually. This keeps them okay. You're just
magic. So I got the opportunity to be the
site resident engineer for the first call, shared flood
control project in the Army Corps of Engineers. And
this is in colorado. And this was a combination
of soul mixing ground curtains, um, embankments,
just about every uh exciting detect feature you can think
of to help reduce risk and the other benefit of
this project besides finishing eight months early. So I
got to learn all about how to manage construction schedules
As I met my husband there in the, in
the city, not on the project, we had
our 23rd wedding anniversary last week. And then after
another job in between, I ended up in new
Mexico um and can on your force base. But
with the Army Corps of Engineers as a resin engineer
to do the black build up, basically establish a
construction team, established offices and then run a program
. And this is where also I found out that
um I could also be a project manager. So
I got to be a project manager on a hospital
project. I never worked in hospitals before. So
just to learn all the different aspects of that with
surgical suites and the connection and the exact system was
pretty incredible. And I tell you all of this
just uh there's just so many different things you can
do. And I think part of that is you
can never be afraid of failure but you can't be
afraid of success. You know when you're taking on
some of these hard jobs, you know two things
are happening. You're gonna either fall terribly or you're
going to exceed to a great degree. You can't
be afraid of doing things that are hard and do
whatever it takes to succeed. And then once you
succeed and you like what you're doing well that leads
to more success and also leads to greater responsibilities and
greater opportunities. So all the different things that I
learned to do this led to opportunities. Um this
one this is an anniston Alabama at the time it
was the anniston army depot and somewhere around I think
the World War two area, the military was storing
mustard and nerve gas agents and bunkers in different army
depots around the nation. So at the time they
probably thought it was okay. But several years ago
by turned out to be a really bad idea because
what are these weapons do they leak? So you
have leaking mustard and nerve gas agents that are literally
pretty close, you know, in cities that grew
up around there. So this was a plant,
the design and construction of this plan to dispose of
these weapons. It was the hardest technical thing that
I've ever done. But it was also one of
the most publicly contentious things I've ever been involved in
protests, people lying down in front of the earth
moving equipment. We had folks, they're working from
all over the world. Some of their kids were
getting harassed in school publicly. It was, it
was very, very, very hard. So I
really learned even more risk communication, you know,
going out to technical workshops, uh, being able
to deal and people have a right to be upset
but be able to be calm about it to keep
cheap focus. I could go on and on about
the lessons learned from that. Um, one of
the things we were talking about last night is making
decisions. I had a hard time making a decision
on this project is not staying too long. You
know, I figured I should be there about five
years and about the four year mark. I had
an opportunity to become the Chief of Construction and Operations
in sacramento California, which covered a multistate area and
vertical construction and military construction. So I competed,
I was selected for that job. Um It would
have been great to stay there another year because the
technical piece was exciting. But to think about,
you know, Allan was talking about thinking about your
career, thinking what was heading in my career,
it was the right thing to do. But it's
those decisions don't come lightly. Let me go back
to this one. Army Corps of Engineers has been
deploying civilian engineers to the battlefield since the days of
Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, we've deployed, There's
been over 33,000 civilians deployed. 11 thousands of them
are from the Army Corps of Engineers. Most are
engineers, but there's other things as well. When
you're working on a project, it's a team and
so you have contracting people are real estate people,
or lawyers, or biologists and just every, every
different function you can think of that you'll need for
a successful project. So I deployed to Iraq in
2005 for about a year. Very, very hard
. Um, I couldn't believe the state of the
infrastructure there. Most people in that country at that
time did not have access to clean water. Most
of the sewage system. The waste was getting bypassed
and dumped into the river. Unless you were in
Saddam's inner circle, you didn't have electricity much of
the day. It was amazing to see engineers there
, what they were doing to keep their plant going
. And then of course there was a big recovery
for the people that live there. So there's a
few shots from there from the one on the lower
right is this is a oil terminal in southern Iraq
, which is kind of the economic lifeblood. Um
This is cedar city at that time, was extremely
violent and kind of a destroyed area. You see
Children living there despite that. Oh this is in
Erbil, if you hear about Kurdistan on the news
today at that time and now this is probably one
of the, probably the only secure area where you
can actually walk around these are some construction sites and
health clinics. You hear about Mosul dam because when
the terrorists took over this damn a couple months ago
, the fear was they could open up the gates
and flood everything below the dam including Baghdad. So
it's back in the hands of the Iraqi government.
But I bring this up because for several years we
were working on the stand because they have big seepage
problems have a grout curtain that wasn't working quite correctly
. We kept trying to regret it through all kinds
of things. But this dam was built there because
Saddam Hussein wanted there at the time. I was
there and the Rocky engineers and say what should we
do build another dam now, we've got to keep
it here. Okay, well here's the risk you'll
take for years to come. So that's that's pretty
significant. Pretty scary. And then this 1 um
divide developed a network of these are Iraqi women engineers
that we're starting up their own businesses and we were
able to partner them with existing firms. So I
just got to tell you, pretty heartbreaking to see
what's going on in that country now with a lot
of, a lot of the progress and work is
now being undone. Um So partly because of the
big program experience that I had in Iraq, I
learned I learned how to manage multibillion dollar construction programs
, learn how to use earned value, you learn
how to use trend forecasting, all kinds of techniques
and different contracting methods being a ji attack. Having
that background to understand it. I was I was
asked I got to got to do this. I
was asked to go down and leave the reconstruction program
in New Orleans after Katrina. Um Again, one
of the hardest things I've ever done, but one
of the most satisfying, you know, talk about
making history. So this was a system that wasn't
integrated. Where's dr Phil's we were talking earlier there
you are, you're talking about the integrated system and
components. Whether time Katrina hit, none of these
components were integrated at all. They were all handled
differently and that contributed apart To the failures that occurred
after Katrina. You can tell it's a very big
system 350 miles and so forth. There were four
failed flood walls. It's hard to believe now,
it's been nine years since Katrina and Rita Head And
all those flood walls were marked with stars. These
were failed flood walls, they failed through different types
of stability problems that contributed to 75 of the flooding
in New Orleans. So to get there after that
and then figure out what we needed to do,
how to improve the system, new design criteria,
new modeling, just about new everything was quite a
challenge. Um for Dr Brandon, who's involved in
this in several years, you know that R.
And D. Effort in the university contributions to it
have been absolutely huge. Here's some pictures of the
damage, that's what their actual bar Jonah levy there
on the left of large, is there on the
righteous, on a broken projects? It was pretty
incredible. And then there was the public aspect again
, of being able to deal with people that are
rightfully upset the tragedy, people lost their lives.
You have to be able to calmly focused and be
able to get something done. Um I keep this
because to me this defines what we did there and
what we have to think of in this nation,
a lot of other projects and that's combining the environmental
features, March Restoration, cypress forest. Uh This
is a perimeter surge barrier modeled after similar systems in
the Netherlands to keep keep surge flooding from happening,
allow navigation in these navigational canals. And you see
there here on the right, that's a navigational canal
. So, navigational canal, this is downtown New
Orleans here in the background and put all that together
. It's um, and accommodate and balance all these
competing needs was pretty incredible. So when you hear
about integrated system that some of the professors are working
on here, this is what we're talking about.
And in days past, in times past, we
never would have worried about the environmental features or navigation
. We've been a priority or flood damage and hear
everything, you know, everything had to be accommodated
. So it was pretty, pretty awesome to it
being an engineering achievement involved in that. There's some
of the pictures of the work. I'm always takes
my breath away. The magnitude of the work and
all the things involved. A lot of the construction
was river. Um we had crews on work barges
and did the construction from the water which had its
own set of challenges, safety and construction wise.
Um Alan, you talked about an Angela Angelea.
So Duncan one of our lead engineers. That's her
right there. She's not working for private industry.
This lady here was an executive with the new Orleans
sewage and water board. She's about probably 10 years
older than I am or more a woman of color
, true pioneer and and and coming up through the
ranks and combining all the different uh engineering and technical
achievements and executive to make things happen. So uh
and then I met a lot of heroes down there
too. Oh, this is the magnitude of work
, This is a flood wall, see how big
it is. Some of the things that we learned
surge barrier, some of the we were standing there
and you're one of the construction sites is my friend
Angela. Again like this shot this is the day
we realized we spend so much time at work our
families to know what we did. So if you
were able to, you brought your partner with you
and that's my husband there right behind me. So
this is learning to apply new technology. That's another
thing you have to do is an engineer. You
have to keep abreast with changes in design practice and
the profession, modeling everything and learn to adapt and
so we had to adapt from an old flood wall
. It's a T wall and that's a new eye
wall there on the left. You can see the
difference in scale of the stem and everything else surge
barrier from above and then there's the project. Okay
. Another thing that I spent a lot of time
on for the last several years is risk, flood
mapping, inundation maps and then how people use those
labs, whether they're certifying levee systems are trying to
get a flood insurance accreditation. So before we built
the system, this is our expected flooding of that
100-year event, one chance of every year and this
is after the system is put in there. So
it makes an incredible difference is the easy way to
basically assumed tell the public what we were doing.
This is one of my favorite shots. There were
one time as many as 150 construction cranes on the
ground in a compressed area. It's pretty incredible because
after that I headed to Washington D. C.
Home and then earlier this year for the first time
in its history, this project one The American Society
of Civil Engineers, Outstanding Civility and Achievement Award.
This was really gratifying to a lot of us because
A. F. C. And others with some
of our harshest critics after Katrina. So to have
put all that work in place to be recognized for
this is an international war where it was pretty incredible
. All right so just a couple other things.
Disaster response. I might as well have done a
cloud around the entire United States. You know between
drought, river flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, power
outages, ice jams, mudslides, we're busy and
you'll see some of the international events as I was
walking through the engineering building today, I saw posters
explaining teams that were there in a Christchurch new Zealand
. You see that one up here? We sent
teams of engineers there and two years in a row
at their request there were structural engineers who basically decide
of a building damaged buildings safe to enter. We
also had blasting experts and a demolition contractor because we
were over there to help them implode 40 damaged buildings
. And they hired our contractor directly to take down
60 more of them. And I had significant flooding
in Queensland Australia. We've been over there for a
few years and then a lot of these other events
are here in this country, especially Superstorm Sandy And
then in 2013 and 14, while we're still busy
, not too far away from here. Maybe you
all remember this earlier this year, Remember the chemical
spill that happened in west Virginia and had a water
quality problem? We just happen to have engineers that
were nearby there. They were there for some technical
meetings as soon as this happened, they didn't,
they didn't wait to be asked. They went right
over when we're there in the, in the States
. Uh, where's the Operations center helping out with
the technical evaluation of the work and another tragedy earlier
this year. This is a mudslide in Oslo Washington
. Uh, we got involved in. So I
want to do one more thing. We had historical
flooding in in the year 2011 went on for months
. Remember I talked about being able to talk about
what we do and do it sometimes and get pretty
costly comments from the media. So, and from
the public, I did a couple of live call
in um, with a C span Washington journal was
like television. You don't know what questions should kind
of get. So I'm going to skip to that
combat operation watershed 2011. It's linked on our website
dot org and you can find their on our website
. Character gets here. She's the director of Contingency
Operations for the Army Corps. We're talking about their
response to the foreign fighters. Bold lines a little
bit differently. Eastern Central Mountain, pacific anyway,
have a special lines outside with those that are impacted
by the floods. You can dial in at 2-6-80205
late in Tacoma Washington. Your first. Go ahead
. Good morning. I have just a couple of
quick parents. I was just like to say what
they need to us during Hurricane Katrina. The Army
Corps of Engineers actually destroyed the let me in some
of the same ways that they're doing now and you'll
see what happened with that when they're trying to pick
winners and losers. I don't support that. I
think that kind of the wishes on the people that
would be getting the short end of the stick.
That's my first comment and my second comment if I
personally think that this is the hand of God at
work. I mean we're having with the flood.
I mean look at the tornado that just went through
Alabama. I mean you know this is just ridiculous
like Okay, look at that. What about the
decision to blow up levees? There was resistance in
Missouri when you blew up a levee last monday.
What goes into that decision? Why are you doing
? It is so hard to make decisions like that
. That is a floodway that we actually built early
thirties and had three sections of the levee that were
designed but we had to be removed. So there
are five statements from those levels. When we actually
Pumps of Liberty explosive in to remove those sections of
11. We have purchased eastern for 70 years Knowing
that at one time we could have a popular study
to allow that blood way to put it there.
103,000 acres of mostly agricultural area split it. But
in doing that there's 2.5 million acres that are not
. So it's all about leading a system. What
happens to the land that is flooded? Do those
folks get complicated? I'm an engineer. And for
most of that there are all kinds of very complicated
realities of what's in the east minutes. What more
can people do outside of the U. S.
R. 20 engineers? So the federal government is
looking and that is what type of compensation would be
available. Yeah. Okay so here we are live
tv. And this was this was one of the
more common questions. My favorite one was a guy
that called and said you blew up levees in new
Orleans. You all just like to blow things up
. We didn't blow up levees in new Orleans,
but that's not the point. So there's times,
you know, you have to be able to stand
tall under stress their scrutiny, be calm and just
just call me, get to it. And sometimes
when some of the questions or comments are really emotional
, the only response is thank you. So you
can find yourself in those kind of situations. Hurricane
Sandy was another wake up call for the country.
High urban populated area. Either presidential election flooded the
subway systems in new york city. So part of
our job, my job was figuring out what teams
to put that ahead of the hurricane to do temporary
power, temporary housing, all kinds of things and
be able to respond as soon as the storm passed
. So lots of unique situations besides unwatering the subway
systems. So we're moving all kinds of material in
new york city, um, everything for vegetation,
putting in a new temporary housing, just all kinds
of things. Quite a big engineering challenge that's led
into, uh, continue resiliency work. You know
, the last thing I'll leave you with is no
matter what you find yourself as an engineer, just
remember you've got to keep a balance, you know
, when your school, you don't really think about
that. But if you're gonna last in a profession
, you have to, you know, no matter
what you do, you've got to find something you
enjoy. So I spent a lot of my time
on a Harley. Um, I was able to
, this is a army public safety announcement that we
did last year because we were getting a lot of
fatalities, soldiers and motorcycle accidents, but I write
as much as I can and that helps me keep
my, my balance as well as my mental energy
. I'll just leave you with the last thing.
This is a friend of mine who's also deployed all
over the country contracting officer because you can't, you
can't do anything without a contract acquisition. So this
was a milestone in New Orleans when we hit the
uh, 100 year level of risk reduction. And
so this was another proud moment. So I think
that's all I have right now. We have time
. Then we can do some questions and answers.
Thank you. It's time for questions. I know
you probably will be able to answer much very specifically
about this, but we are in the news frequently
about sea level rise in the ports and harbors and
all the, what is the sort of, what
is the Corps of Engineers sort of broad goals and
direction with regards to what they're doing about? Okay
, I'll try to make this a short answer because
it's a complicated topic. So a couple of things
I'm starting with after Katrina, you know, you
can't design an earth and levy for long term because
levies aside, you have to go back in and
add earth and lives, you can design a hardened
structure of concrete structure and so for all the work
that we did in in new Orleans, uh coastal
Mississippi etcetera. We design for a 50 year footprint
, Estimated sea level rise and what that could be
50 years from now and then it's conquered. We
can do that and post sandy along with fema and
the Noah National Oceanic Administration. We did a sea
level rise calculator tool for 1500 years scenarios, fema
, did flood inundation maps. Noah came up with
the scenarios and we provided this to floodplain managers in
New york and New Jersey so they can make decisions
on community development, what we've done in the last
few years, no matter what project or type of
work we're doing we do estimate a sea level rise
, climate change and then design our new work around
that. And we were part of a climate change
adaptation resiliency effort by the administration and we have people
that they basically work on that full time. Does
that answer? Okay, thank you. I'd like
to ask if you could go to your introductory slide
. I have a question on Okay. Might be
easier if we just two events. All right.
Yeah, I wanted to take this off point out
those who do in the audience who are in uniform
, but I think everybody can relate to this analogy
. Um what does pg mean a professional engineer?
Everybody knows that. What does SCS means? Uh
huh. I will tell you sp sp the Senior
Executive Service and in one sentence analogy analogy, Excuse
me, um this doesn't, excuse me, Durham
Aguilera is a General officer equipment and the civilian service
, Federal service. So we're contemporaries wearing uniform all
have stars. So I just wanted to point that
out because it's pretty impressive set of initials and those
of you who might come into contact working within the
U. S. Army Corps of Engineers because we
know it's a predominantly civilian organization um also has a
small contingent military key leadership positions, but when you
come across an individual that has for their That's senior
executives. All right, well, thank you.
So senior executive service is one half of one of
the federal workforce And um and in the military,
I'm the equivalent of a two star general. Okay
, so that means a lot, you know,
to be a senior executive. It means my colleagues
, you know, are the general officers, but
I think really kind of the way to look at
it, it's it's sphere of influence, You know
, so I've been a fortunate enough of my career
to progress will have a very large sphere of influence
. I've been a senior executive now for 11.5 years
, so thank you for pointing that out. You
know, one other commercial, it's been a lot
of time with working with other agencies and I really
believe that the strength of the Army Corps of Engineers
to get things done is this mix of military and
civilians, You know, we're big engineering firm,
we have 36,000 civilian employees. We have a little
over 700 officers, but that leadership that drive to
execute, that's what makes us strong. But it
also means his engineering if you want. You can
do a lot of places, knew a lot of
things. So thank you. All right. Oh
, oh man. Did you ask me that last
night? Well that's because I can't, you know
, because I've gotten so many that, you know
, I tried to I had pictures of some of
the place, the work I've done that were some
of the most significant to me. Um I mean
there's a few things that really stand out to rewarding
because they were the hardest. Well the work in
New Orleans absolutely technically hard, publicly hard, socially
hard. You know, we could have failed big
on that, but we didn't and I got to
lead that whole program. Um It was the most
rewarding and hardest things I've ever done, you know
, and no regrets at all going to rock very
, very hard, you know, deployed to a
war zone is hard, but I'm glad I did
it. And aside from the Contingency Ops piece,
um, I learned a lot of things that I
, that I used later. And one of the
reasons I got to go to New Orleans, only
that program. So I was fortunate enough, I
was making decisions along the way, you know,
in different paths that I took their turned out to
have been to have stood me well. But you
know, the other thing too, if you make
a decision and you take a job or a path
and it doesn't work out, I'll do something else
. So I can't give you one answer, Alan
, because there's tons of them. So you mentioned
earlier that our profession is a reflection of society and
so based upon your experience, if you could forecast
ahead in the future, what will be reflected future
, What will we be doing? You know?
Uh that's kind of hard right now because there's so
many other economic needs that are kind of getting in
the way. I think that in this country we
are under investing in water resources infrastructure. We are
not as globally competitive as, say, china,
what they're doing more than anyone, what they're doing
in brazil. I hope that we don't wake up
one day and say, what the heck happened?
How do we let our infrastructure fail? Because we're
not keeping up economically with other people in the world
. So that, that worries me. Um there's
the aging infrastructure, there's environmental needs, but making
investment decisions today, I worry you're gonna haunt us
years from now and when you all are out there
in the profession, you're gonna be facing these things
okay. Probably know what the actual walking quite different
from the college learning. So, you know,
could you mention that one or two things that you
think the students are not doing well in the first
few years? But I saw could you mention something
that is really key for the student to survive for
the first few years, but not quite well done
from the college. Sure. If I understand your
question, um, you know, the engineering curriculum
is basically, it's your foundational knowledge and the engineering
principles and hopefully you're learning how to apply them.
Um, some of the things that are, that
are new today, that when I was in school
, I'm really glad to hear about is the risk
analysis piece and that's still probably fairly new and that's
part of that did not usually part of the curriculum
and that is just huge. You have to be
able to assess risk of anything that you're going to
do. Anything you're going to build and hope that
you make the best decision. I understand the university
here is fairly new with seismic, you know,
size and classes here. All right, so that's
good. That's very important because those are no noticed
events were going to be reacting to them. I
think the biggest thing though, aside from the technical
piece, that when you, depending on what you're
doing, the professional, it's the communication piece,
it's a communication and it's not just communication with the
team, you're gonna be working with people that are
not engineers and you have to be able to take
their input and be able to apply it so that
you arrive at the best solution, you know,
and I don't know, I don't think you can
teach that in school and that's something you have to
, you have to learn by doing, but you
have to be constantly aware of it. And then
the public communication piece, you know, no matter
what you're doing, you have to be able to
explain, especially to a non engineer and the republic
what you're doing in a clear manner and be able
to be persuasive and then realize that there's some people
you will not convince I am okay. You know
, I mean, I mentioned Aniston, we had
some horrible public meetings. There were people there that
said you lie to us about the effects of Agent
Orange in Vietnam. You're lying now, thank you
. There's nothing to say. You can't debate something
like that, but you also have to be able
to just realize what's going on. So the communication
are working with multi discipline team to come into solution
. I think those are some of the hardest things
that I really don't know. If you can learn
in school, would you certainly have to be aware
of it? I'm glad to hear. There's risk
analysis now being taught in universities that is just vitally
important. Uh Does that help? Yeah. Okay
thank you. Uh you're on the new show talking
about blowing up the levees in New Orleans, How
did you wait to blow up levees in New Orleans
? It was a color that said that we removed
sections of levees. We did have to blow them
up and birds started matter which was in Missouri But
part of the prevailing that we got accused of for
years was blowing up levees in New Orleans after hurricane
besties in the 60s and during Katrina. So you
know you have to apologize but it's it's you know
just that's a question we get being accused, you
blew up the levees. Well we didn't blow up
levees, but when you answer a question like that
, you don't answer with a negative. You say
, well, what we did was X, Y
Z. So I'm sorry. You had another question
. All right. I'll make it a little bit
more generic. How do you handle? Obviously some
of the projects are going to affect the people that
are around that area displacing people out of home.
How do you handle the people that are working for
you that don't necessarily agree with displacing those people.
Okay. That's that's a that's a various two questions
. So, we made the decision to blow up
the levees and birds pointing metric. You're supposed to
smile now it was a really hard decision because I
don't know if everybody caught on when I said we
purchased Eastman's for 70 years. Does anybody know what
that means? We basically paid rent. We paid
rent to the people that have property in that floodway
floodway which means water is supposed to go in there
for 70 years. One day we said we're going
to need it, So we paid rent for 70
years and then and then one day it happened happened
we had to move in. So we spent literally
days of tracking all the river gauges because this was
all operational triggers loading explosives into barge, moving them
up. River constant several times a day with the
public. If the river gets this, hi this
is going to happen, if the volume gets this
high, that's going to happen. So a lot
of it was constant public communication. There were people
that were already flooded before we remove sections of those
levees, they had to be evacuated. Um The
state of Missouri took us all the way the Supreme
Court on the side, they were helping us because
they knew we had to do it and I happened
to be was in Kentucky smithfield Kentucky. Right after
we operate the floodway, remove sections of levees by
explosives and relieving pressure in the area. And those
people there would say what took you so long because
they had they were literally holding back the river with
with tarps and sandbags and wire baskets until we remove
that sections of levy to relieve the pressure on the
system. So it's a constant balancing act when it
comes down to it it's got to make the hard
decisions. And the people who lived in that floodway
, they knew of the risk for 70 years.
I don't have to worry about it. So that's
a lot of the things that went into that.
Does that help? Okay. Another question. But
as far as the people that were working for you
that we're physically removing the levees, did you experience
any resistance from them? As far as not wanting
to do it? You know? No part of
it is because this is something that we had studied
and plan to practice for years. Some people that
were saying we'll never do what we'll never do it
. I was always wash in Washington, D.
C. Then my job as far as constantly know
what's going on as I was the one they had
to go to Department Homeland Security uh brief. All
those officials even briefed the president because they had to
know what we were doing and they had to be
able to support it even though it's our decision.
Um So the people that were all involved in this
as a whole big group, most of the debate
is when. But the two star general on the
ground had to make the decision. But it was
when, when, when, when and we were
we were having disagreements about when that should be,
you know? But as far as actually doing it
. No. But it's kind of answer. Uh
another part of your question, Katrina, we have
a big office in New Orleans, District of the
Army Corps of Engineers, about 1500 people. Katrina
, a lot of them lost their property. They
lost family members. Um It's very difficult and all
those people the next day there right back at work
even though their homes for some of their homes were
flooded, they had no place to sleep, no
place to live, but they felt the call of
duty. So resistance from all of this is not
doing the work. It's it's really the technical debate
of how to go about it and that's okay.
If you can't have a technical discussion and challenge each
other, you're not going to come up with the
best solution. But eventually, you have to have
leaders who somebody's going to make the decision. You
know, tom Braden was involved in an effort we
had with one of our canals and tom the biggest
debates that we had through all of that was the
decision I made the decision, you know, because
eventually you gotta do it. So it's more the
technical discussions that it is the resistance. But,
you know, 36,000 people a lot just always be
people that aren't going to agree. We had some
people on some of this work, they end up
has been calling whistleblowers and calm, disgruntled, you
know, they came out publicly. I don't agree
with this. Okay. And then we have the
order to show up over and over again and that's
just something you got to deal with. Okay.
All right. Thanks. All right. Oh,
I do have one other thing for some reason.
Every time people come down to Virginia Tech for the
first time, they asked what a Okay. So
just to make sure she never forgets we have something
for it takes off. Okay. So thank you
Karen, you didn't disappoint. Wonderful informative, particularly
the student. Thank you very much for coming.
Alan, thank you again. Happy shopping there to
sponsor the lecture of the year. Okay. As
I said earlier, a great opportunity for us as
faculty and students together. And finally, and perhaps
the most important I want to acknowledge savings symptoms.
Sitting up here deserves the credit for bringing lots of
the logistical details. Society. Thanks very much.
Okay. Mhm. Yeah.