This logjam at the Greely Bridge across the Illecillewaet River was a result of a debris flow last week. I provided information gathered on this event to the Revelstoke Times Review for an article. The slide caused water flows to increase almost six-fold in the span of less than two hours. According to hydrometric data […]
Category Archives: Canada
Watermain Replacement
Among other things, one of my projects in the past month was pulling an old 40m water main out of a culvert under the Trans Canada Highway. We had no information on the condition of the culvert or exactly how the pipe was held together, we spent several utilities meetings working through possible solutions and problem-solving to find […]
Highway One Problems & Solutions
Summer is time for road-trips and camping, Albertan’s spilling into BC to enjoy the Province’s natural beauty, families travelling to visit relatives, beach vacations – and unfortunately for many of these trips, the Trans-Canada Highway is a necessary part of the route. On twitter, I have several searches that I check before I head out […]
Infrastructure, the Economy and Local Governments
Some of the greatest challenges that local governments face in Canada revolve around the concept of the “Infrastructure Deficit”. In Canada, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, (FCM) has a position statement on the infrastructure deficit: All governments – federal, provincial, territorial and municipal – must work together and with the private sector to make immediate infrastructure repairs […]
Illecillewaet River in the Spring
With the recent flooding in the Balkans’ it is easy to get complacent about flood risk in this part of the world. But the reality is that we have a huge amount of snow still up in those mountains, and warm weather and rain could cause flooding here like that seen in Calgary last year. […]
Rural Engineering Education
A challenge of living and working as a professional in a small rural community, (regardless of how world-renowned a destination it may be) is that it is very difficult to commit to and participate in conventional education opportunities that may be longer than a week ((this post is intended to challenge education providers, professional associations […]
Transparent Snow Plowing – ClearStreets
I feel like I’m tempting fate by writing about snowplowing in the middle of November, but here goes! As part of and leveraging the OpenCity initiative in Chicago, some data-hounds pulled together a slick interface for viewing real-time snow plow data, and turning this into an estimate of which streets have been plowed. Each of the city’s […]
My Totally Unscientific LinkedIn Groups Experiment
Over the past week I conducted an experiment on LinkedIn partially in an attempt to see whether there was value in participating in groups. As a Civil Engineer in Canada, it seemed obvious to attempt to connect through several groups all of while I’ve been a “silent member” of for over a year – (membership statistics below […]