Category Archives: Site updates

DBA Announces Officer Transitions

DBA is excited to announce recent transitions within the company.

Dan Brown, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE, is turning over the reigns of leadership to the next generation in the firm and stepping down as President.   While stepping back from day-to-day management of the company, Dan will remain fully involved in technical aspects and client service in the role of Chief Engineer where he will continue to focus on developing practical solutions to complex and challenging foundation issues.

Three Senior Principal Engineers will assume the roles of the officers of DBA.  Tim Siegel, P.E., G.E., D.GE  has been promoted to Chief Executive Officer.   Paul Axtell, P.E., D.GE has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer.  Robert Thompson, P.E., D.GE has been promoted to Chief Financial Officer.   Tim, Paul, and Robert will provide the management and leadership for the continued growth of DBA and for DBA to provide value to its clients and continue to be a key contributor to the practice of geotechnical engineering.

Tim Siegel, CEO Paul Axtell, COO Robert Thompson, CFO

 

DBA Grows – 2020 Edition!

DBA is happy to announce our two latest additions to the team: Dan Ding, Ph.D., P.E. and Andy Boekmann, Ph.D., P.E.  Dan joined us as a Project Engineer in October of 2019 while Andy came on board as a Senior Engineer in February of this year.   Read a little bit about both of them below.  Go to our About us page to see their resume as well as everyone else on the DBA Team.

Dan Ding, Ph.D., P.E.

Dan received her Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Missouri. Dan specializes in site characterization, geotechnical laboratory testing, Load and Resistance Factor Design, and reliability analysis. Before joining DBA, Dan worked as an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Missouri to teach undergraduate and graduate engineering courses as well as conduct national and state research projects. She also worked as a laboratory geotechnical engineer at Geocomp in Acton, MA for a year after graduation.  Dan is based in Columbia, Missouri.

Andy Boeckmann, Ph.D., P.E.

Prior to joining DBA, Andy was a research engineer at the University of Missouri, where he performed research on topics including post-grouted drilled shafts, reliability of geotechnical designs, foundation reuse, and geotechnical asset management. Andy also earned a Ph.D. at the University of Missouri; his dissertation examined the reliability of foundation designs based on site-specific load tests. Andy is the lead author of two NCHRP Synthesis reports, including Current Practices and Guidelines for the Reuse of Bridge Foundations. Prior to working at MU, Andy was a consulting geotechnical engineer for URS Corp. in St. Louis, where he performed design and analysis for large projects, including post-Hurricane Katrina levee design in New Orleans. Andy is an active member of the Deep Foundations Institute, including serving as the vice-chair of the Subsurface Characterization Committee.  He is also based in Columbia, Missouri.

DBA staff additions for 2018 (and Earlier)

It has been a busy time since our last post, so it is time to “catch up” on the growth of our staff over the last year or so since the last update. Here are the newest faces of DBA. You can find resumes on the About US – Other Engineers page.


Cody Coonradt, E.I. (Staff Engineer) He had several years of experience as a field and laboratory technician before completing his BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. While completing his BS and MS degrees, Cody worked at a geotechnical engineering firm in Buffalo, NY. His experience includes site investigation, stormwater management, slope stabilization, load transfer platforms, retaining structures, and ground improvement. Cody and his family have moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where Cody will be based.

Tayler Day, E.I. (Project Engineer) joined us in Knoxville in October of 2016. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri, with BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering. Talyer is in the process of completing his Ph.D. at Mizzou as well. Tayler is applying his experience in field testing to many projects with a wide variety of foundations types, working from our Knoxville office.

Isaac Jeldes, Ph.D. (Project Engineer) started at DBA in August, 2017. He is a native of Chile and is a civil engineer whose passion is geotechnical engineering. He holds MS and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tennessee. Dr. Jeldes specializes in slope stability analyses and design based on mechanical, erosional, morphological evolution concepts, and numerical techniques for geotechnical modeling. He has international experience in field exploration, foundations, ground improvement, pavement geomechanics, and retaining structures, including sheet pile walls, braced excavations, soil nailing, and active/passive anchored systems. Before Joining DBA, Dr. Jeldes served as faculty for the Engineering Fundamentals Program at the University of Tennessee and as the assistant engineer for research stations at the same university.

Will Shaffer, E.I. (Staff Engineer) is our first new team member for 2019. Will graduated with his BS in Engineering with a Civil Emphasis from Marshall University in 2017, and then obtained his MS in civil engineering from Virginia Tech at the end of 2018. While at VT he was the Charles E. Via Scholar and he conducted research on geophysics and construction vibrations. He has joined us in the Knoxville office.

Sam Sternberg, P.E., D.GE (Senior Engineer) came aboard in April of 2018. Sam joins DBA with over 16 years of geotechnical engineering experience.  He received a BS degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Kentucky, M.Div degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and a MS degree in Civil Engineering from the University of South Alabama.  He has worked in consulting  on numerous private and public projects with primary focus on DOT Transportation projects around the Southeastern US.  He has managed and supported numerous bridge foundation designs, shallow and deep foundations, soft soil remediation, retaining walls (including cantilever, and mechanically stabilized earth walls), bulkhead and relieving platforms.  Sam will be working based in Daphne, Alabama

 

 

DBA website gets an upgrade

DBA website screenshotWe’re almost done with an upgrade to our website. With more than 50% of our site traffic now coming from smartphones and tablets, we needed a responsive web design, i.e., one that provides “an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors that are used for video games as CSGO, with the best mouse cs go and other hardware).” So the site now detects the type and size of your device and reshapes its presentation of the content while keeping the visual design.

That visual design is new, too. We’re using the Twenty Fourteen theme by WordPress, in part because of its ‘magazine style’ presentation of blog content. At the top of the home page, we now feature six blog posts, each with a featured image or photo. Clicking on the title or the photo of any of those takes you to that blog post where a larger version of the photo and the complete content is displayed. If you are looking for black ops 2 hacks on call of duty game, visit iwantcheats.net for more information. Other blog posts that aren’t selected by us to be featured will appear in the usual reverse chronological order on the blog/home page.

Lastly, we’re now showing excerpts of all blog posts on the home page rather than the entire contents of each post as before. This allows you to more quickly scan the latest posts, while giving you enough of a glimpse of each one to help you decide whether it interests you enough to click on it.

If you notice any problems with the new site, we’d appreciate hearing from you via our Contact Us page.

Welcome to DBA, Nathan Glinski!

12_Nathan_s

DBA is proud to announce the addition of Nathan Glinski, E.I. to our staff.  Nathan is a recent graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology (like Dan and Tim! Go Jackets!). Nathan completed his M.S. in civil engineering at Georgia Tech where he also did his undergraduate work. While at Georgia Tech, Nathan was a research assistant under the supervision of Dr. David Frost, P.E. where he investigated the use of pile foundations as geothermal heat exchangers. In addition to his research, Nathan was a teaching assistant for an undergraduate geotechnical engineering course, gaining experience in a wide variety of laboratory soil tests as well as managing the grading of reports and homework for 100 undergraduate students. Nathan has been the resident summer intern for DBA since 2010 and will now be joining us full time as a staff project engineer.

On a more personal note, Nathan is also an accomplished trials motorcycle rider, having been riding since a youth.  He has often ridden the courses and trails at the Trials Training Center (owned by Dan and co-located at DBA World HQ).  He is a big volunteer/instructor/participant in events at the TTC, as seen in two posts last year here (helmet cam while riding a course), and here (instructor).

As you can see from his photo, he has adopted the official hairstyle of DBA.  Coincidentally, being comfortable in a hard hat also means comfort when wearing your trials helmet!

I-70 St. Louis Bridge–New Papers by Paul and Dan

The drilled shaft foundations for the new I-70 Mississippi River Bridge in St. Louis, MO are the subject of two recent papers written by Paul and Dan and published by DFI.  Dan presented the paper focusing on the Alternate Technical Concept (ATC) process at the DFI 36th Annual Conference in October. (previous post here).  A case history paper by Paul and Dan was published last month in Volume 5, Number 2 of the DFI Journal.  Links to the papers are below, as well as on our Publications page.  Other posts on this bridge are here.

Brown, D.A., Axtell, P.J., and Kelley, J. (2011). “The Alternate Technical Concept Process for the Foundations at the New Mississippi River Bridge, St. Louis”,  Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations, 2011, Boston, MA, USA, pp171-177.

This paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations, the 2011 annual meeting of DFI.  Go to www.dfi.org to purchase the procedings or for further information.

Axtell, P.J. and Brown, D.A. (2011). “Case History – Foundations for the New Mississippi River Bridge – St.Louis”, DFI Journal Volume 5, Number 2, December 2011, Deep Foundations Institute, pp3-15.

This paper was originally published in DFI’s bi-annual journal, Volume 5, No. 2 in December 2011.  DFI is an international technical association of firms and individuals involved in the deep foundations and related industry. The DFI Journal is a member publication. To join DFI and receive the journal, go to www.dfi.org for further information.

Dr. Mike Holloway, P.E. comes aboard!

11_Mike_sDBA is pleased to announce that Dr. D. Michael Holloway, P.E. has joined the DBA team.  Mike is a recognized expert in driven pile foundation design and dynamic testing, in-situ testing, instrumentation, and earthquake engineering.  His over 40 years of foundation and geotechnical engineering experience includes stints at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station (WES) in Vicksburg, MS, and Woodward-Clyde Consultants in Oakland, CA. He founded InSituTech, which specialized in engineering deep foundations and applying insitu soil testing services.

When starting InSituTech, Mike broadened the professional practice beyond “conventional” PDA-related testing and analyses services.  Rather than just test and report to satisfy QC requirements during construction, he applied dynamic testing and analyses to enhance foundation design and constructability, as well as to improve on-site troubleshooting of construction problems.   The efforts paid off as the firm made significant changes in the way PDA services became integrated into the design/build process on several major marine facilities and bridge projects in the west and in the Pacific.

Mike is a Blue Devil, having earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. at Duke University in North Carolina.  Raised in New York, he made his way to California seeking engineering gold soon after his time at WES.  He has been based there ever since.

Mike’s presence in California makes DBA a practically coast-to-coast firm (well, at least East Tennessee to California).  We at DBA are excited at the expertise Mike adds to our portfolio and look forward to his contributions to the team.  Welcome, Mike!

Holloway DBA Announcement (Press Release)

New Bloggers at DBA

I (Robert) will now have some help with posting to the blog.  Our two young staff engineers, Aaron Hudson and David Graham, will be helping me with blog maintenance and posting content.  Until now, I have pretty much written all of the posts and have done all other content updates.  Now you will see some new “by lines” on blog posts in the future.  Thanks for reading!

kcICON Bridge Nears Completion

Paul received a few photos of the kcICON bridge that are just too cool not to share.  These were sent to him by Massman Construction. These were taken in September of this year.  MoDOT’s Flicker album of the dedication ceremony is here. The new bridge was dedicated and partially opened to traffic (southbound) on September 27th.   The northbound traffic was shifted to the new structure on October 22nd.  All of the bridges and ramps for the project will be opened by the end of the year – 6 months ahead of schedule.  Can’t wait to see it after the exisitng bridge is demoloshed, though it is a pretty cool image with the old and new bridges together.  Updates for the project are on the project Facebook Page.

Click here for previous posts on kcICON.

 

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KcICON Bridge 100928 View of Pylon_s

 

 

 

kcICON Bridge 220910 Pylon

A Foundation Engineering Trip Down the Mississippi River

A Foundation Engineering Trip_Brown_STGEC 2010Dan recently played the part of storyteller at the Southeastern Transportation Geotechnical Engineering Conference  (STGEC) 2010 conference in Charleston, West Virginia when he gave the lunch presentation on the conference’s first day.  He took the audience on a trip down the Mississippi River from a foundation engineer’s perspective, talking about several bridges that DBA has had the pleasure to work on, or is still working on, along the river the last few years.  Dan began with the I-35W Bridge replacement in Minneapolis, Minnesota and ended at the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Stops along the way included the Hastings Bridge (Hastings Minnesota), the new I-70 Bridge (St. Louis, Missouri), and the Audubon Bridge (New Roads/St. Francisville, Louisiana).  Dan covered some of the technical issues/problems associated with each project and the solutions applied to complete the foundations (or complete the design).  It was a very informative talk presented in a unique way that everyone at the luncheon seemed to enjoy.  Dan’s presentation is now available on our Presentations Page.

 

Posts on Hastings Bridge here.

Posts on I-70 Bridge here.

Posts on Audubon Bridge here.

Posts on the Huey P. Long Bridge here.

 

 

STGEC 2010 - Pile Load Tests in New Orleans - R Thompson 100915Immediately after lunch, Robert made a presentation that described some of the pile load tests performed on two of the storm protection projects in New Orleans that DBA was privileged to be involved with through Kiewit.  By following Dan, it provided a little continuity to the story as Robert took the group below the Huey P. Long Bridge to the levees and canals downstream of New Orleans.  Robert’s presentation can also be found on our Presentations Page.

 

Post on the pile load tests here.