Category Archives: DBA News

DBA News

Tim Siegel to Teach Karst Seminar in Tennessee, awarded Diplomate, Geotechnical Engineering

Our own Tim Siegel, P.E., D.GE. will be part of the seminar Foundation Design in Karst Terrain in two locations:  Johnson City, TN (also known as the Tri-Cities) on June 16th, and in Chattanooga on August 27th.  Tim will be instructing on evaluating karst terrain and designing foundations in such terrain.  If you are interested in the seminar, information can be found here.

 

We also want to say Congratulations! to Tim for receiving the specialty certification Diplomate, Geotechnical Engineering (D.GE) from The Academy of Geo-Professionals (AGP).  Tim received the designation at the recent Geo-Institute conference Geo-Florida 2010 at West Palm Beach.  The excerpt below comes form the AGP web site.  Tim is on the second row, far left.

 

Latest Class of D.GEs Inducted in West Palm Beach, FL


(Back Row, Left to Right: Timothy Siegel, Melvin Esrig, John Wolosick, Thomas Zimmie, Kenneth Stokoe, II, Roberto Sanchez, Marco Boscardin, Allen Cadden, Thomas Witherspoon, Daniel Pradel, Edward Ulrich, Jr., Robert Lukas; Front Row, Left to Right: Peter Nicholson, Derek Cornforth, Don Dotson, Larry Jedele, Delon Hampton, Joram Amir, Anand Puppala, Larry Madrid, Ivan Contreras, Craig Benson, Tuncer Edil)

The Academy of Geo-Professional (AGP), held its latest induction ceremony on February 21st in West Palm Beach, Florida at the GeoFlorida 2010. If you have at least 8 years (post-licensure) in the geotechnical field, a P.E., and a Masters or equivalent, then you may qualify to become a Diplomate, Geotechnical Engineering (D.GE). Above is a picture of the Diplomates who were present to receive their certification plaque and pin.

DBA News, Drilled Shafts, Load Testing

DBA on successful St. Louis Bridge team

BridgeImage2009_MS STL mrb-logo

DBA is on the successful team that was awarded the contract for the new Mississippi River Bridge in St. Louis, Missouri.  The project is a joint project of MoDOT/IDOT with MoDOT being the lead agency.  HNTB is the lead bridge designer for the new cable-stayed bridge carrying I-70 over the river.  The bridge is one part of a larger project that also includes the Missouri North I-70 Interchange, the Illinois I-70 Connection, and the Illinois Tri-level Exchange.

From the project web site:

The $640 million Mississippi River Bridge project is proceeding through design, with construction scheduled to start in early 2010. The new Mississippi River Bridge is the first bridge built connecting downtown St. Louis and southwestern Illinois in more than 40 years. Currently, the only urban interstate bridge between Illinois and Missouri is the Poplar Street Bridge, known locally as the PSB. The PSB is one of two bridges in the United States that carry three interstates. By relocating one interstate (I-70) from the Poplar Street Bridge to the new Mississippi River Bridge, drivers will experience less congestion, fewer crashes and less unnecessary fuel use.

The new Mississippi River Bridge will be a 1,500 foot cable-stayed bridge across the Mississippi River between Metro East and St. Louis, Missouri. The bridge is two lanes in each direction, but is wide enough to be restriped for three lanes in each direction if traffic volumes warrant and additional funding is secured. In addition, the bridge project includes approaches on the Illinois and Missouri sides to get traffic to the bridge.

The wining contractor team is Massman/Traylor Brothers/Alberici Constructors.  DBA’s role was to help prepare an alternate concept for the drilled shaft foundation design which will include load test measurements.  We anticipate construction to begin in March with load test shaft.

An overview of the bridge is here.  The press release for the award of the main bridge is here.

logo-massman logo-traylor alberici

DBA News, Site updates

Tim Siegel, P.E. joins DBA!

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DBA is growing again with the addition of Tim Siegel, P.E. to our team! 

Tim has been primarily involved in the analysis and design of geotechnical structures including drilled shafts, cast-in-place piles, micropiles, and earth retention systems.  Tim is a Georgia Tech grad (like Dan!) and has worked most of his career since at S&ME and Berkel & Company Contractors, Inc. During his 12 years with S&ME, he advanced from Geotechnical Engineer to Technical Principal and Chief Engineer while developing expertise in construction in karst, seismic design, numerical modeling, and specialty foundations and retaining systems.  After leaving S&ME, he was a Senior Geotechnical Engineer with Berkel and was involved in large deep foundation projects all over the United States. While at Berkel, he led the development of the ground improvement technique using Berkel’s ground displacement technology. While at S&ME and then while at Berkel, he taught upper level and graduate level courses while on the faculty of the University of Tennessee.  Tim’s resume can be found in the About US section of our site.

We are really glad to have Tim joining us.  As you can see by his photo, he has the requisite hair style!

DBA News, Drilled Piles, Drilled Shafts, Driven Piles, Micropiles, Miscellaneous, Site updates

Events Calendar Updated for 2010

 

I have updated our calendar for 2010 to include many events in the geotechnical and foundation engineering world that may be of interest, plus known speaking/teaching appearances by Dan.  I’ll put in a plug for the events calendars and listings for ADSC, DFI, Geo-Institute, and PDCA.  I get most of my information from them.

 

Some, but not all events,(in addition to my previous post) are:

 

DFI Helical Foundations & Tiebacks Specialty Seminar – Feb 1

 

geo_header_2009    Geo-Florida 2010 – Feb 20-24

 

DFI and PDCA – A Joint Conference on Driven Pile – Mar 12

 

adsc_logo_color_small1 ADSC Drilled Shaft Foundations Seminar – Mar 19

 

PDCALogo PDCA 14th Annual International Conference and Expo – May 6-8

 

2nd International Symposium on Cone Penetration Testing – May 9-11

 

bridge-home-template_r1_c6_sm International Bridge Conference 2010 – June 6-10

 

DFI Super Pile – June 10-11

 

er2010_header_002 Earth Retention 2010 – Aug 1-4

 

DFILogo DFI 34th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations – Oct 12-15 

 

5c24ff58c9bf4a5f988f0f34e0266ffc TRB 7th International Bridge Conference – Dec 1-2

DBA News, Site updates

DBA blog now optimized for mobile devices

As part of our ongoing attempts to try to get in front of the technology pack (or at least not fall behind!), We’ve installed a WordPress plugin called WPTouch that allows for much faster optimized viewing of the this DBA blog when using the iPhone, iPod touch, Android (Google), BlackBerry and other touch-screen mobile devices. The photos below are are of a G1.  Your results will vary by model. If you need to read some reviews about the new technology out there, then check out identoo.com.

Comments are visible after clicking on any post and you can add a comment as well. The best way to keep track of comments, however, is to use an RSS reader app on your device and subscribe to our comments RSS feed. Then if you see a comment that you’d like to comment on, click the link to the comment. It will activate the mobile-optimized view of the web page and position you for typing in your comment.

 

 

 

 

 

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Images are from Griff Wigley of Wigley & Associates, our blog coach.

DBA News, Miscellaneous, Site updates

DBA on Twitter and Facebook

I am slowly learning and working on getting DBA involved in using some of the social media tools that are very quickly becoming popular means of communicating.  DBA has a Facebook Page where you can become a Fan of DBA and see what we are doing.  You can also follow us on Twitter.  This blog will feed to both of those locations.

twitter_logo_header Facebook

And as I previously posted, we also have all our photos on picasa20x20 Picassa Web Albums and have videos on youtube20x20 YouTube.

 

And as always, you can also subscribe to our RSS feed.

DBA News

34th Annual DFI Conference – DBA photos!

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Dan, Paul and Erik were at the 34th Deep Foundations Institute Annual Conference in Kansas City last month.  Dan was one of the keynote speakers where he presented our paper on the drilled shafts for the Missouri River Bridge on the kcICON project in Kansas City.   Paul was also able to receive the Special Recognition Award (honorable mention) in the annual project awards for the pile foundations at the Biloxi Bay Bridge project.

More photos from the conference are at this link.

DBA News, Drilled Shafts

Foundation Work is Finished at Audubon Bridge!!!

Yes, you read that right – the last drilled shaft has been installed on the John James Audubon Bridge near New Road, Louisiana.  The project has been quite an adventure for us, especially Steve.  He spent the most time on the site during shaft excavation, tip grouting, load testing, and even pile driving.  Robert got to spend a fair amount of time, too, over the last couple of years.  Paul was even lucky enough to make a couple of trips.

The shaft construction was concluded with one last O-cell test on Shaft 3W South.  Dan was present for the last load test which went fabulously well.

If you are going to the Geo-Institute congress GeoForida 2010 next February in West Palm Beach, you can hear Steve present the paper he and Dan wrote on the tip grouting and load test program.

The bridge is still under construction, of course, and will be an awesome structure when completed.  It was an exciting project for us to be a part of the team.  We’ll have a project summary posted in the near future to highlight the details of the foundations.  For now, you will have to be satisfied with the slideshows below (in reverse chronological order) from some of our visits this summer and fall.

Load Test at Shaft 3W South – October 2009

Excavation of Shaft 3W South – September 2009

Shaft Grouting and other Construction – June 2009

Shaft Excavation, Pile Driving, and Cofferdams – May 2009