Floodwater Lessons Learned: Santa Fe Channel Stabilization (Online)

Description

In this online 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 continuing education course uses lessons learned over many years through the review of a very interesting long-term project and will satisfy all state requirements for your professional engineer license renewal.

Read the text and test before you buy (PDF)

I am proud to present this professional engineer license renewal PDH course.  I was a young civil engineer with the Corp of Engineers when I was called out to investigate some minor flooding in Santa Fe, NM.  The cause of that minor flood was a large branch caught in a concrete box culvert under St. Francis Drive.  There I met the Santa Fe city engineer.  He explained his long-range plan to reduce the number of residents in the 100-year floodplain.  The challenge he faced was a large number of old (Santa Fe was started in 1607) structures that functioned as de facto grade controls.  These structures had raised the channel bottom and robbed the channel of much-needed floodwater capacity.  His plan was to remove these structures and let erosion wash out the accumulated sediment.  It worked!  Neighborhoods were removed from the 100-year floodplain.  The erosion brought challenges to stabilize the channel at its new capacity.  This course describes how those challenges were met.  I was inspired to meet a public servant with the confidence and judgment to pursue a plan that benefited the citizens of his community.

This online PE PDH course satisfies 2-hours of engineering continuing education requirement for Professional Engineer license renewal.

One thing common to all engineering disciplines is protection against flooding. Our systems need to work when it rains.  

This PE course in Floodwater Lessons Learned: Channel Stabilization in Santa Fe, NM 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 professional 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 I 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 Channel Stabilization in Santa Fr, NM. His interesting and entertaining lecture style is reflected in his writing.

---

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this professional engineer license renewal PDH course, the PE 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.
• Be able to consider making and implementing a long-range urban vision.

Get instant access for $47.99

Add to Cart

We proudly accept