To some extent, all I could see were technical issues\u00a0when I was out west earlier this month.\u00a0 Technical issues like we investigate in civil litigation, forensic engineering and for insurance claims. \u00a0The size of Vancouver impressed me – so much built environment, so many potential technical issues. \u00a0I had similar thoughts in Edmonton a few days later and in Toronto after that.<\/p>\n
They say in Edmonton that they have two seasons, a winter season and a construction season – building more built environment everywhere you look.<\/p>\n
How\u00a0many technical issues you might ask?\u00a0 I have no\u00a0real idea.\u00a0 But the engineer in me thought 10% to 20% – a range that crops up often enough in matters to do with human nature. \u00a0Technical issues can often be traced back to the people involved in design, construction and maintenance engineering.<\/p>\n
Percent of what?\u00a0 How about the\u00a01,000s of structures and their infrastructure and the 10s of 1,000s of components comprising these\u00a0structures?\u00a0 It’s the structures and their components that fail giving rise to the technical issues that we investigate.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
I was in Vancouver to attend the birthday party of a close friend, Sheilagh Simpson, a writer.\u00a0 I stayed with another close friend, John Hughes, also an engineer.<\/p>\n
The mountainous scenery in the Vancouver area overwhelms, particularly on the drive to the Whistler ski resort and also to Princeton in the interior. \u00a0A different and quite beautiful scenery in Edmonton – flat, treeless grazing land, and farm crops as far as the eye can see.\u00a0 And in Toronto?\u00a0 Dense urbanization – structures and infrastructure everywhere.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Being struck by the potential for technical issues is different when gazing on beautiful scenery. \u00a0Not quite what you would expect. \u00a0Some examples might justify my view.<\/p>\n
1.<\/strong> John referred a friend to me. \u00a0His friend has an environmental spill problem in Vancouver. The spill’s plume of contamination needs to be located. \u00a0(Liquid contaminants sometimes flow through the ground in the shape of a bird’s feather – a plume) \u00a0Hopefully the plume is still on the owner’s property and hasn’t migrated to adjacent property where it could be a technical issue.<\/p>\n 2.<\/strong> I saw near-vertical rock faces cut into the hillside during construction of the new highway to Whistler. \u00a0I know how these rock slopes are assessed in geotechnical engineering – to an acceptable degree of risk like in all engineering, in this case the risk of a rock slide. But a risk nevertheless, and a potential technical issue.<\/p>\n 3.<\/strong> I told you earlier this year about the Groat Road bridge failure in Edmonton. (Refs 1, 2 and 3) \u00a0I visited the site while there and it’s been fixed. \u00a0But there are hundreds of bridges in the Edmonton area and new ones are being constructed every day.<\/p>\n 4.<\/strong> Steel bridge beams can fail as we saw but so can the deep bridge abutment fills – in the sense of not performing as they should. \u00a0Abutment fills are those deep layers of soil that support the road up to the bridge. \u00a0They were several 10s of feet deep in the new construction I saw in Edmonton.<\/p>\n Layers of soil fill settle a little or a lot depending on the degree of compaction they get during construction. \u00a0The soil is compacted with construction equipment to make it denser, more rigid, and less compressible. \u00a0For certain, the fills are being well compacted almost all the time so there is minimal settlement at the road surface.<\/p>\n But still there is risk. \u00a0A little less compaction than needed in one of the abutment fills resulting in settlement and deterioration of the road surface – poor performance, and we have a technical issue. \u00a0Car drivers sometimes experience poor compaction and fill settlement when they hit a bump at the end of a bridge deck. \u00a0Also when they drive across those little depressions in the road surface. \u00a0We experience the depressions almost every day on our highways.<\/p>\n 5. <\/strong>I also drew your attention last year to the many dozens of ways a building and its components can fail – collapse or perform inadequately. 209+ ways to be exact. (Ref. 4) Buildings are just one of dozens of different types of structures in the built environment. So it was okay for me to think technical issues when driving back and forth in the dense urban environment of Toronto. They are there. \u00a0Some unknown, others known but accepted, and a few the technical issues in civil litigation.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n With so much built environment how could the forensic engineer in me not see technical issues when I was out west? \u00a0But for the most part the built environment works. \u00a0The engineering design has been constructed properly, and only a small percentage will show up as technical issues in civil litigation. \u00a0I’m sure much less than 10% to 20%.<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n To some extent, all I could see were technical issues\u00a0when I was out west earlier this month.\u00a0 Technical issues like we investigate in civil litigation, forensic engineering and for insurance claims. \u00a0The size of Vancouver impressed me – so much … Continue reading \n