Floodwater Lessons Learned: The Best of Lessons Learned (Online)
3 hours · $59.95
Description
In this online professional engineer license renewal PDH course, we examined key features of flood control and bank protection projects that worked over time and a number of those that faced challenges during their long life. Suggestions for improvement were made for many of the problems encountered. This PE continuing education course highlights the best lessons learned from many floodwater engineering projects across the southwest US.
Read the text and test before you buy (PDF)
One thing common to all engineering disciplines is protection against flooding. Our systems need to work when it rains.
This course in Best of Floodwater Lessons Learned is intended to encourage the professional engineer to consider the big-picture result of field performance of many projects over many decades.
The engineer’s duty is to make things work. Following instructions, complying with the law, and using current best practices are usually good enough for the present. But the engineer’s task to make things work in the future. This requires making projections about future conditions and use. While engineers prefer hard facts, we are sometimes forced to work with “soft data” that require evaluating many possible options. During this evaluation, we use legal requirements and best technology as tools.
When the author headed the Albuquerque District’s Inspection of Completed Works (one of three major programs I had as Chief of Emergency Management for a dozen years), I noticed the same design/construction errors being repeated. The US Army’s version of Total Quality Management (TQM) was Total Army Quality (TAQ). Under TAQ, the process of continuous improvement was building, feedback, and improved building.
The problem was a lack of feedback because flood control structures may sit for decades without being tested by significant flooding. I strove to compensate for this lack of immediate feedback by having studies made of the histories of over one hundred projects constructed by the Albuquerque District Corps of Engineers since 1948. I selected Professor Richard J. Heggen, a hydrology/hydraulics teacher at UNM, to write many of these, including Best of Lessons Learned. His interesting and entertaining lecture style is reflected in his writing.
Course Objectives
Upon successful completion of this PE license renewal PDH course, the professional engineer will be able to:
- Recognize many defects in existing flood control structures.
- Review plans to avoid those defects.
- Consider how the life of flood control structures may impact current engineering systems.
- Inspect flood control projects.
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PDH Credits
This course is eligible for engineering PDH credits in the following states:
Be sure to review your state board’s CE licensing requirements before registering for courses. See our frequently asked questions for more information.
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