Posted on 01/11/2018 9:52:11 AM PST by bkopto
Indeed. Except they are long dead/retired.
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>> “was there a time when one could get a California PE license without taking an exam?” <<
No!
Even a comity license requires a short exam, plus a valid license in another state.
.
Living in Sacramento near the American River, just miles downstream from two other dams (Folsom and Nimbus) we watched this with quite a bit of interest... and one thing both my girlfriend and I noticed early on in the failure of the alternate spillway was there seemed to be NO rebar, i.e. steel reinforcement, in the concrete of the spillway. We watched carefully as the concrete broke away and never did we see any sign of steel rods or a grid or a even chicken wire to strengthen the concrete of either the floors or sides of that spillway.
Not once did any of the talking heads or the “experts” they brought on to discuss what was happening, mention a thing about the structural failure of how it was built. . . lacking that simple reinforcement, which, to our minds, would have likely prevented the failure.
First, it’s not the graduate student’s fault nearly as much as it is that of the administrators who let that student define such an important design - literally with peoples lives in the balance. Second, this practice of putting critical projects and legislative actions in the hands of inexperienced recent college and graduate school graduates is way too common in government, and many of our laws are designed and written by teams of very young and inexperienced people at the beginning stages of their careers.
This has to stop.
The work may have been done by a grad student, but a PE has stamped the plan and signed it.
This is not uncommon.
However, 2banana, it had never been used for its designed purpose in all those 60 years. When finally called on for that use, it DID fail.
We kept looking and never once saw a piece of REBAR in all that concrete. No one is looking to see who sold that inappropriate mix of concrete either. Someone made out like a bandit, likely because they were a bandit!
I suspect that there were a few engineers over the years who screamed bloody murder about it but it was all poopooed by the higher ups. I’ve seen stuff like that happen. Middle managers are demons from hell.
How many people on here have read about the building of the new Bay Bridge between Oakland and Treasure Island going toward San Francisco. . . and how CalTrans decided they could do it all in-house? They FIRED the one engineer who kept raising red flags about how all the test weld radiographs that were being sent from the Chinese company making the critical steel, were all IDENTICAL down to identical flaws, that the metallurgy reports did not jibe with the specs, that the bolts did not meet specs, and that nothing seemed to meet requirements that WOULD HAVE BEEN MET had CalTrans properly had an American Contractor build the bridge!
CalTrans swept everything reported wrong under the rug. . . enamored with their “modern” design bridge and using the Chinese company who had only built CRANES, that had NEVER built a bridge before, being the primary supplier. . . and routinely ignored their own engineer’s reports from on-site in China that the work was substandard.
I have seen too many times where when an engineer goes into management, he thinks he can forget all his engineering and just sling bovine scat. This was mostly in the NYC area.
Then you have managers who are strictly bean counters who think they know better than the engineers.
These are the worst kinds of managers, and all too common.
I did all the designs in our office. But my boss is the one that checked them and approved them.
Ed
There were many opportunities to intervene and prevent the incident, but the overall system of interconnected factors operated in a way that these opportunities were missed. Numerous human, organizational, and industry factors led to the physical factors not being recognized and properly addressed, and to the decision-making during the incident. The following are some of the key factors which are specific to DWR:
• The dam safety culture and program within DWR, although maturing rapidly and on the right path, was still relatively immature at the time of the incident and has been too reliant on regulators and the regulatory process.
• Like many other large dam owners, DWR has been somewhat overconfident and complacent regarding the integrity of its civil infrastructure and has tended to emphasize shorter-term operational considerations. Combined with cost pressures, this resulted in strained internal relationships and inadequate priority for dam safety.
• DWR has been a somewhat insular organization, which inhibited accessing industry knowledge and developing needed technical expertise.
• DWR’s ability to build the appropriate size, composition, and expertise of its technical staff involved in dam engineering and safety has been limited by bureaucratic constraints.
Hey! It last about 50 years? Not bad in this day and age. The follow-up repairs, inspections, etc., should have caught it long ago.
Are we seeing 20/20 hindsight here?
As we all know Democrats/Liberals love blame as long as it’s in the direction they are pointing. California is, and has been run if not by an elected Democrat by a Democrat Deep State for about sixty years.
The point being the appearance current Democrats have found a scapegoat albeit nameless.
I could have designed the dam and emergency spill way a lot better than these guys, and I’m not even an engineer. Gee whiz. This is something you would expect from a third-world country.
Not really, Californians were just lucky, and it seems their luck is finally running out.
Maybe he was related to William Mulholland.
I agree. It’s kind of like sex.
No matter how many playboys you see
How much porn you watch
It’s nothing compared to doing the horizontal mamba.
Yep - and the busted up pieces of the aprons were awful thin instead of having some heft - and maybe even footers to allow outside land erosion while maintaining integrity.
Of interest.
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