A wetlands system project that saved the city of Prineville tens of millions of dollars took top honors Wednesday night at the 2018 Engineering Excellence Awards event hosted by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Oregon.

In winning the Project of the Year title, the Crooked River Wetlands project, submitted by Anderson Perry & Associates and the city of Prineville, also claimed the right to advance to the ACEC Engineering Excellence national awards competition.

Judges for the local competition gave the wetlands project high marks for providing both an affordable solution that protects the environment and the community with valuable lessons in conservation and stewardship.

The project was the result of a population boom in Prineville that severely taxed the city’s existing wastewater treatment system. Rather than invest $62 million in construction of a traditional mechanical facility, the city approached Anderson Perry & Associates to identify alternatives. The firm’s team designed a series of wetland cells that treat wastewater before releasing it back into the environment. The wetlands area, which ended up costing approximately $8 million, includes walking paths and pavilions as well as informational kiosks created by local schoolchildren.

Parametrix scored two wins during the Wednesday evening event. The company earned the award for Best Small Project for its work on the Deschutes River Trail Boardwalk, a collaborative project with Oregon Parks and Recreation Department staff. The company also stepped forward with Kittelson & Associates to claim a Best in Category award for their respective work on the U.S. 20 Barclay Roundabout for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

KPFF and GRI scored a Best in Category award for their combined work on the Cultural Crossing, an expansion project at the Portland Japanese Garden.

Five firms received Grand awards for work on four projects. Nishkian Dean received one for its work on the commercial crew tower capability project at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. PAE‘s Grand award resulted from its work on the Oregon Zoo Education Center. Shannon & Wilson and HBH Consulting Engineers teamed up for their award-winning Southern Flow Corridor project for the Port of Tillamook Bay and Tillamook County. OBEC Consulting Engineers received its Grand award for work on the Peter Courtney Minto Island Bridge for the city of Salem.

Sixteen other projects received Honor awards.

The awards were selected by a jury of building industry professionals that included Mark Kennedy, associate dean and professor of civil engineering in the Donald P. Shiley School of Engineering at the University of Portland; Tova Peltz, region 1 geo-environmental unit manager for the Oregon Department of Transportation; Nick Bjork, publisher of the Daily Journal of Commerce; Mark Hanson, chief of the structural and architectural design section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Portland District; and Ermel Quevedo, a past president of ACEC Oregon.

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Designing an educational facility for a university usually isn’t like designing a U.S. embassy. But an expansion of Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport presented Yost Grube Hall Architecture many challenges similar to those posed by a government building on foreign soil.

“We do a lot of work for U.S. State Department,” YGH principal Tom Robbins said. “With embassies, you design for a bomb going off. In both cases you have to design for things you don’t want to happen.”

What OSU officials don’t want is for an earthquake and resultant tsunami to kill or injure people in or near the facility. That risk is a major concern for the new $50 million, 72,000-square-foot building that will sit on a man-made sand spit in Yaquina Bay. The site sits squarely inside the expected inundation zone in a sizable seismic event.

A three-story core space will connect to a two-story wing that will have an auditorium, an innovation lab and community space. The building is designed to serve as a “vertical evacuation” site. The only similar structure in the U.S. is Ocosta Elementary School near the Pacific Ocean in Westport, Washington.

“I would say this has been more intriguing (than an embassy project) because it has not been done before,” Robbins said. “It’s been harder due to the defining criteria. I would also say it is also much more exciting.”

The building had to be able to withstand a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resultant tsunami. Such an earthquake would likely cause liquefaction, softening the land directly underneath. Then a predicted 30-foot-tall wall of water would hit the building at 30 mph. The inundation zone would likely extend beyond OSU’s Newport campus.

“The tsunami is the attention-grabber,” Robbins said. “The building is designed to take an impact. We did a number of computer simulations on debris flow. We do kind of benefit from the location. The site likely won’t have a lot of debris.”

In order to address the likelihood of liquefaction, the building’s foundation will extend more than 100 feet below the surface – more than twice the 45-foot height above ground. A progressive collapse system will keep the building upright even if two of its columns collapse.

The building will also serve evacuees unable to reach Newport’s Safe Haven Hill site, which is approximately a 15-minute jog from the city. A ramp will allow people to reach the roof, and two staircases inside will be built within a hardened shell. Also, an elevator within the shell will rely on a separate power source.

“You have to pay attention to everything from the foundation as well as scouring from the tsunami,” said Robert Cowen, director of the Hatfield Marine Science Center. “We will have large items striking the building. Engineers have looked at all of the aspects.”

General contractor Andersen Construction, structural engineer KPFF and geotechnical engineer GRI all oversaw design elements. That information was then checked by OSU’s own engineers.

“It has been examined by a large number of engineers,” Cowen said. “We had a suite of engineers with an oversight committee examine how the data was being looked at and interpreted.”

That work gave OSU officials confidence that the site could accommodate a structure able to serve students and the five state and federal agencies currently on the campus, but also survive an earthquake and tsunami. The idea was to allow different disciplines to work in a combined environment. It will have rolling whiteboards, an auditorium, classrooms and office space.

“We have designed it with open laboratories,” Cowen said. “You might find a physicist next to a marine biologist next to a resource economist. We are trying to meet the needs of a broad group.”

OSU is also hoping to prove critics wrong and show that a safe building can be built in a seismically active coastal area.

“We want to make this building a demonstration project of how to build responsibly in a tsunami zone,” Robbins said. “Our team is excited about that.”

On the Boards is a 91ĘÓƵ feature offering a look at the projects in Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact 91ĘÓƵ architecture and engineering reporter Kent Hohlfeld at 503-802-7224 or khohlfeld@djcOregon.com.

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One discussion between two Geotechnical Resources Inc.Ěý(GRI) colleagues – Erica Hann and Tadesse Meskele – led to an effort to improve access to engineering textbooks in Ethiopia.

“I have been doing editing here,” said Hann, a GRI production manager. “Tadesse came in one day and saw my giant bookshelf full of books that I hardly use. We realized that there are there are tons of people that have all these books they don’t use, and it’s a chance to put them to use.”

Meskele, a GRI staff engineer, saw the need for textbooks in Ethiopia firsthand when he attended school there as a youth.

“Back there, it is really hard to borrow books,” said Meskele, who has a doctorate in geotechnical engineering from Oregon State University. “You get them for an hour and then someone else gets them. The books are up-to-date; there just aren’t enough of them.”

It was not uncommon, he said, for a school to have 50 students for every textbook.

“They don’t have (many) resources,” he said. “The number of students is too high. It’s hard to buy those books.”

Hann and Meskele are working with the Ethiopian Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Network to collect textbooks to donate to libraries at Adama Science and Technology University in Adama, Ethiopia, and Addis Ababa Science and Technology University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The STEM Network includes Ethiopian engineers working in the United States and Canada. The group’s aim is to help promote science and engineering in Ethiopia though teaching.

“We are hoping to get as many books as we can,” Meskele said. “So far we have about 100 books.”

The group is collecting books that focus on general civil engineering, structural engineering, hydrology, geology, fluid mechanics, statics, dynamics and fundamentals of engineering. Most of the books so far have come from consultants and area engineers.

Books can dropped off at GRI offices, or arrangements can be made for pickup by contacting either Hann or Meskele at 503-641-3478. The group is also looking for monetary donations to help defray shipping costs.

“We are hoping to finish picking up the books from consultants (July 14),” Hann said. “We might be able to extend it if there is more interest.”

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When the U.S. State Department in 2015 issued a travel warning about the dangers of visiting Honduras, the small village of Guadalupe Carney stood to be hurt more than most. Members of Engineers Without Borders‘ University of Portland chapter, which was working on a project to help the village address monsoon flooding issues and increase access to safe drinking water, would not be able to visit.

That was when Engineers Without Borders’ Portland-metro professionals chapter stepped up.

“Students can’t travel to countries with travel warnings,” said Theo Malone, a mentor and a member of a team of professionals preparing to travel to Guadalupe Carney next month. “So they reached out to the professional chapter to see if we could take this project over from them.”

The village of approximately 1,000 people on the Caribbean coast annually is hit by monsoon rains that trigger floods that wash out road crossings and damage water systems. The group of professional engineers from Portland first visited Guadalupe Carney in 2015.

“Our initial assessment was to re-establish connection,” said Malone, who works as a fish screening and passage engineer for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “We looked at what (University of Portland students) had done. We talked to the community (about) what they wanted done.”

In May, the group will return to perform a more thorough assessment. The most pressing issues are improved access to clean water and infrastructure to prevent floods from washing out road crossings. Since 2000, when floods have forced villagers onto more highly traveled highways, more than 20 have died.

“They are extremely impoverished,” said engineer Kyle Wolf, the project team’s leader. “There is not government looking out for these guys. They are on their own.”

The monsoon rains also damage pipes that provide water from the reservoir in the hills above the village, knocking out supply for weeks. Even at its best, the water system serves only about one-quarter of the population.

The project is being paid for through donations to Engineers Without Borders and a 5 percent match from the locals. In Guadalupe Carney, the group will face challenges seldom seen by engineers in the U.S. Just deciding which materials to use can be a challenge.

“In terms of engineering, we learn how to deal with certain constraints like availability and affordability of materials,” said Margaret Oscilia, who serves as the group’s program leader. “Here, if you ask for crushed rock or three-quarter minus (gravel), we get it. There, it is harder to get what we need for our designs.”

“In the U.S., (if) you want a 40-inch culvert, you pick it up and it is cut to the right size and it’s ready to go,” added Wolf, who is an engineer for Geotechnical Resources Inc. (GRI). “There, you have to find the materials, then have them shipped in. You have to figure out how to do it.”

Then there is the education aspect. The local officials must be taught how to maintain the system the group leaves behind.

“During the construction process, we are on the ground walking through with community members on what we are doing and why, and simplifying it as much as possible,” said Quinn Behnke, who handles the educational part of the project. “We have to provide training and actual documentation for what was built and its operation in Spanish.”

The team also must be prepared for security issues associated with flying into San Pedro Sula – Honduras’ second-largest city and one of the most dangerous in the world outside of war zones. On average, San Pedro Sula suffers three homicides each day; it also is a major hub for extortion and drug trafficking.

“My mom didn’t want me to go,” Oscilia said. “It did concern me initially.”

The group next month will arrive in San Pedro Sula, but then leave for Guadalupe Carney as quickly as possible.

“We get out right away,” said Oscilia, who is an engineer with Farallon Consulting. “We land and then take our transport for a six-hour drive to Guadalupe Carney.”

The reward for team members is being able to live with village residents temporarily and get a taste of their culture.

“It’s a chance to … see things you never get to otherwise,” Oscilia said.

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