Camp Mackall hangar receives top industry awards

SAVANNAH, Ga. – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials recently unveiled a new, award-winning facility to house tactical unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for the XVIII Airborne Corps, one of the Army’s elite units based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Engineers assess integrity of Fort Bragg infrastructure following Hurricane Matthew

Flooding and wind damage brought on by the late season Hurricane Matthew tested not only the resilience of the Fort Bragg community but the integrity of its sprawling and aging infrastructure.

Educators turn lessons learned into lesson plans

SAVANNAH, Ga. – The school year continued for 15 educators who returned to the classroom to unearth ways to bring curriculum to life during the CSS Georgia Teacher’s Institute held May 31 – June 3 at Georgia Tech Savannah.

Lucky 13 tour new Diamond Elementary School site

Thirteen contest winners of Archer Western Contractor’s poster contest toured the site of the new Diamond Elementary School currently under construction at Fort Stewart, Georgia May 3. Diamond students from kindergarten through 6th grade submitted posters emphasizing safety themes in recognition of Safety Week celebrated May 2-6. The winning submissions were printed on the firm’s calendar that will be available throughout the Fort Stewart community. The culminating tour allowed students to preview the jobsite, which is about 60 percent complete, donning hard hats and safety glasses. Construction is overseen by the Corps of Engineer’s area resident office at Fort Stewart and scheduled to be completed December 2016.

SAVANNAH, Ga. – Excavators, bulldozers and dump trucks garnished the construction site of the new Diamond Elementary School where 13 wide-eyed students discovered diamonds aren’t forever but they can be your best friend.

Risk cadre renews commitment to Corps’ most vulnerable structures

SAVANNAH, Ga. – Across the Corps’ portfolio of dams and levees requiring rehabilitation, a risk cadre team here sets out to identify issues that could lead to further degradation of structures and pose economic or life-threatening risks to surrounding communities.

Savannah’s risk cadre recently renewed a memorandum of agreement for dam safety technical support for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Risk Management Center (RMC). The new three-year agreement will provide a full-time risk cadre to support national dam safety program activities managed by the RMC, said Phillip Smith, risk cadre lead.

The cadre imparts technical expertise to evaluate and recommend procedures to reduce risks to the highest hazard dams within the Corp’s inventory of more than 600 dams. The lengthy process merges research (review design work, historical documents and performance history), in-depth risk assessments, reports and follow-up recommendations, said Smith.

The team determines failure likelihood based on loading on the dam (hydrologic or seismic) and downstream consequences of potential failures. They evaluate failure mechanisms such as embankment or foundation internal erosion, slope stability, embankment overtopping, and spillway and gate issues, said Smith.

“These risks can be reduced by structural repairs to make the dam safer, reducing consequences by better downstream awareness and warning time, or both,” said Smith.

Smith, a 30-year veteran in the district’s engineering division, oversees five full-time members who handle two to three projects per year, often in unfamiliar terrains that come with their own challenges.

“Dams on the West Coast have geological and seismic issues that we don’t deal with on the East Coast,” said Smith. “But those obstacles have widened our exposure and sharpened our expertise.”

Their expertise has been cultivated on projects in the New England, Fort Worth, Huntington, Albuquerque, and Vicksburg districts. And with a renewed RMC partnership, the team resumes work on the Mill Creek Dam for the Seattle District, and Hills Creek and Lookout Point dams for the Portland District.

Top brass engineer leads from the front

SAVANNAH, Ga. – As if deploying to Afghanistan does not pose enough of a challenge, making a dramatic mission change in the m
iddle only adds to personal and professional demands. However, Gordon Simmons, Savannah District’s chief of engineering, would not let that slow him from pushing forward to help the people of that war-torn nation.

Tapped by division leaders for a deployment to Afghanistan, Simmons oversaw more than 200 projects of strategic and economic importance as the Chief of Engineering and Construction for USACE’s Transatlantic Division from Sept. 1, 2014 to Aug. 29, 2015.