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Geotechnical News • June 2012
ASFE NEWS
THE
GEOPROFESSIONAL
BUSINESS
ASSOCIATION
ASFE nominating committee announces 2012-13 slate
ASFE’s Nominating Committee has announced its slate of officers and
directors for ASFE’s 2012-13 fiscal year. Although the fiscal year starts
on May 1, the new Board of Directors will take office immediately
after the election. ASFE President-Elect
David A. Schoenwolf, P.E.
(
Haley & Aldrich, Inc.)
will become president. Those nominated for
the other positions are:
For President-Elect:
Kurt R. Fraese,
L.G. (
GeoEngineers, Inc.
)
;
For Secretary-Treasurer:
Steven D.
Thorne, P.E., D.GE (
GEI Consul-
tants, Inc.)
;
For Directors-at-Large:
Joel G. Carson (
Kleinfelder
)
;
Mark K. Kramer, P.E.
(Soil and
Materials Engineers, Inc.
)
;
Gordon M. Matheson, Ph.D., P.E.,
P.G. (
Schnabel Engineering)
;
Laura R. Reinbold, P.E. (
TTL, Inc.
)
;
and
Woodward L. Vogt, P.E., F.ACI,
F.ASCE (
Paradigm Consultants,
Inc.)
.
Six of the seven who will be voted on
already serve. The “newby” – and also
the first woman ever to be nomi-
nated to the ASFE Board – is
Laura
Reinbold,
a principal of TTL, Inc.,
a 180-person geoprofessional firm
serving the United States from offices
throughout the Southeast. Laura began
her engineering career more than 25
years ago, after earning her Bachelor
of Engineering degree from Vanderbilt
University. The manager of TTL’s
Nashville office, Laura chairs ASFE’s
Education Committee and also serves
on committees of ACEC, the Urban
Land Institute, and the Nashville
Chamber of Commerce. She is a
licensed professional engineer and a
LEED Accredited Professional.
Vancouver, BC experimenting
with rubber sidewalks
Vancouver, BC is experimenting
with a recycled-tire material for use
in sidewalks installed in soft-soil
areas. The test site – a sidewalk on
the 500-block stretch of East 17th
Avenue – previously required frequent
filling of concrete with asphalt cracks.
Now, interlocking grey rubber tiles,
each two inches thick and imprinted
with a brick pattern, extend along the
south side of the street; the north side
features a half-block of almost-white
concrete reinforced with wire mesh
and a half-block of asphalt.
Eco-Flex (Edmonton, Alta.) manufac-
tures the material, using 14 discarded
tires for each five-foot-by-four-foot
tile. The company grinds the tires,
mixes in some glue, and then uses
pressure, not heat, to produce its
products.
According to Jonas Moon, a project
engineer with the city, Vancouver will
monitor the rubber surface’s perfor-
mance for four years. “We think that
we’re going to save on maintenance
in the long run because we don’t have
to go out there and patch cracks or
have to replace the whole sidewalk,”
Moon said. The city calculates it costs
$250 to buy and install each square
meter of rubber sidewalk. By contrast,
one square meter of standard concrete
sidewalk costs $150. The higher cost
is incurred in part because a rubber
sidewalk requires more preparation in
soft-soil areas, but it can be ready for
use faster than concrete, which needs
time to cure. In addition, making con-
crete and asphalt is resource intensive,
whereas using recycled tires to manu-
facture rubber sidewalks results in far
fewer greenhouse-gas emissions and
reduces landfill requirements.
Moon said the city has a applied for a
grant from Tire Stewardship B.C. to
test rubber sidewalks in areas where
tree roots cause sidewalks to heave.
There, workers can lift the rubber
panels, trim the roots, then replace the
panels. Rubber sidewalks could also
better serve joggers and people using
wheelchairs and walkers, Moon said.
Just how important are
geoprofessionals and the issues
they contend with?
Sometimes when you’re in the middle
of things for a long time you lose per-
spective about the importance of what
you’re doing. This fact was empha-
sized in mid-December, when your
ASFE NewsLog
editor received an
e-mail from
Engineering News-Record
with links to the top ten stories. How
many of those stories involved geo-
professional issues directly or indi-
rectly? You be the judge.
The first headline – “
Gulf Oil-Spill
Report Calls for Revamped Blowout
Preventers
” – focused mainly on the
need to redesign offshore oil-well
blow-out-prevention systems, which
is only marginally a geoprofessional
issue. But then we noticed this:
Perhaps the most significant factor
in the accident, the study authors
conclude, was the decision to
abandon the Macondo well
temporarily despite the results
of multiple negative pressure
tests. Those tests showed that
the cement put in place had not
formed an effective seal or barrier
to isolate hydrocarbons from the
well bore.
We submit that any well-trained,
properly motivated CoMET field
