BigH
Geotechnical
- Dec 1, 2002
- 6,012
Hey all,
We have a wide range of engineers in the group (if you want more, let me know who and we can add them) and I think that we all have stories that we could tell about aspects of our experience. So thought I would start out with one and see where this goes (I am really trying to get OldestGuy to tell the volumes he has hidden away in his mind . . .)
Early, like a year and a half, into my career I joined Geocon in Toronto Canada - no, not GeoKon (instrumentation) or Geo-Con (the ground improvement company) but, in my view the original Geocon. Geocon was the geotechnical engineering division of the Foundation Company of Canada (contractors) along with a sister company Foundation Engineering Company of Canada (Fenco). They were broken out of the Contractor and formed their own incorporated companies back in 1954. N.D.Lea was involved with Fenco at the time. My mentor, Fred (MAJ) Matich started with them not long after graduating from Harvard under Karl Terzaghi. Geocon did most of the geotechnical investigations along the St Lawrence Seaway, many highways in Ontario including the Don Valley Highway and most of the pulp and paper mills of Northern Ontario along with mining. At that time, Golder was not yet formed and, in fact, Vic Milligan, John Seychuk, Finn Heffernan, Norm MacCammon along with a host of others worked for Geocon. Fred later became a Legget Award Winner and has published numerous articles in the Canadian Geotechnical Journal among others (including using dynamite for remoulded a silt in order to build a major causeway).
Anyway, in my first year with the company I was sent to Guyana for constructing tailings dams for the bauxite industry there. The man running the Red Mud Group ended up becoming the Prime Minister of Guyana (and he was the one who told me that the little city (Linden) had a basketball league - another story). Well, the soil was very weak - .lightly cemented marine clay - as the original dykes were being built, the undrained shear strengths decreased - either breaking of the cementatious bonds or going past peak values (250 psf was the maximum before anything was built) - the embankment failed when it was only a few metres high. So, new design was needed and this meant that the tailings dykes had to be widened considerably to get 11H:1 slopes. As slimes were up against the dykes, a method of the "rolling surcharge" was to be used (see Tschebotarioff's book). The first thing was to build a decant tower. So, we went merrily on our way to displace the tailing slimes by building up a short 3 or so ft high berm at the upstream side and then using a dozer to climb up and force a planar slide - the sand pushing down through the slimes causing mudwaves out into the slime areas. It was pretty cool in that a latter borehole showed that we had displaced 39 ft of slimes (and it was only supposed to be about 10 ft maximum - found out letter that this area had been the limit of the open pit mine!). Still had about 10 ft of slimes below.
Okay - anyway we had this "finger" pushed out on the upstream side and we wanted to know how much settlement would occur before building the decant tower. How to do so - put a few settlement plates a few feet down for monitoring. They had to be called something - so rather than using something like SP-01, SP-02, etc. I named them Tom, Dick and Harry. Well, I got an earful about that - wasn't professional, etc. etc. (oops, Fred would use the words, "and the like" instead of "etc.")
Spring forward 17 years. Geocon was now part of a larger entity (Lavalin, then in 1991 merging with SNC to form SNC-Lavalin). It was being broken into two groups - foundations and mining. The mining group was to keep the name Geocon and the foundation group (me and few others) was to be merged with Fenco MacLaren Engineers (Civil and Environmental group of SNC-Lavalin). I found that the young mining lads had decided to throw out all the drawings (original drafting) of Geocon's past projects - something, as a love of history, I couldn't see. So I took all the drawings out of the garbage bins, wrote a cheque for $100 for garbage and they were mine. Now, what to do with these - I took my time and rolled them all up to store in drawing boxes.
Anyway - as I was doing this, I noted that one set of drawings had boreholes on them named "Mary" "Susan" "Rebecca" and the like - I looked down at the title block and saw MAJM initials! Whoa, Fred, what gives? Tom, Dick and Harry was no good but Mary, Susan, Rebecca were okay? Mmmmm.
I had a chance to speak with Fred a few days later - "Hey Fred, I was going over some drawings for one of the Northern Ontario causeways and ran into boreholes named Mary, Susan, Rebecca . . . Do you remember giving me grief for Tom, Dick and Harry?" Well Fred chuckled a bit and owned up to the borehole names on the drawing. Then, he told me the story. He, Fred, was a young engineer who was looking after the drilling operations up north (remote area) but the CEO of the Foundation Company of Canada was heavily involved with the project AND he chose the names for the boreholes . . . let's see - Mary - that was his wife . . . Susan and Rebecca were his daughters . . .
Now this is why the chuckle - at the time, Fred had to report daily on the progress of the work to the CEO - they did this by teletype (no faxes, not emails). "You know, Howard," said Fred, "how embarrassing it was to tell the CEO that we had just drilled his daughter 10 ft.??"
Anyway - all, that is one story I have - I'd and I am hoping the other members would like to hear yours - and multiple ones . . . Y'all have a great day!
We have a wide range of engineers in the group (if you want more, let me know who and we can add them) and I think that we all have stories that we could tell about aspects of our experience. So thought I would start out with one and see where this goes (I am really trying to get OldestGuy to tell the volumes he has hidden away in his mind . . .)
Early, like a year and a half, into my career I joined Geocon in Toronto Canada - no, not GeoKon (instrumentation) or Geo-Con (the ground improvement company) but, in my view the original Geocon. Geocon was the geotechnical engineering division of the Foundation Company of Canada (contractors) along with a sister company Foundation Engineering Company of Canada (Fenco). They were broken out of the Contractor and formed their own incorporated companies back in 1954. N.D.Lea was involved with Fenco at the time. My mentor, Fred (MAJ) Matich started with them not long after graduating from Harvard under Karl Terzaghi. Geocon did most of the geotechnical investigations along the St Lawrence Seaway, many highways in Ontario including the Don Valley Highway and most of the pulp and paper mills of Northern Ontario along with mining. At that time, Golder was not yet formed and, in fact, Vic Milligan, John Seychuk, Finn Heffernan, Norm MacCammon along with a host of others worked for Geocon. Fred later became a Legget Award Winner and has published numerous articles in the Canadian Geotechnical Journal among others (including using dynamite for remoulded a silt in order to build a major causeway).
Anyway, in my first year with the company I was sent to Guyana for constructing tailings dams for the bauxite industry there. The man running the Red Mud Group ended up becoming the Prime Minister of Guyana (and he was the one who told me that the little city (Linden) had a basketball league - another story). Well, the soil was very weak - .lightly cemented marine clay - as the original dykes were being built, the undrained shear strengths decreased - either breaking of the cementatious bonds or going past peak values (250 psf was the maximum before anything was built) - the embankment failed when it was only a few metres high. So, new design was needed and this meant that the tailings dykes had to be widened considerably to get 11H:1 slopes. As slimes were up against the dykes, a method of the "rolling surcharge" was to be used (see Tschebotarioff's book). The first thing was to build a decant tower. So, we went merrily on our way to displace the tailing slimes by building up a short 3 or so ft high berm at the upstream side and then using a dozer to climb up and force a planar slide - the sand pushing down through the slimes causing mudwaves out into the slime areas. It was pretty cool in that a latter borehole showed that we had displaced 39 ft of slimes (and it was only supposed to be about 10 ft maximum - found out letter that this area had been the limit of the open pit mine!). Still had about 10 ft of slimes below.
Okay - anyway we had this "finger" pushed out on the upstream side and we wanted to know how much settlement would occur before building the decant tower. How to do so - put a few settlement plates a few feet down for monitoring. They had to be called something - so rather than using something like SP-01, SP-02, etc. I named them Tom, Dick and Harry. Well, I got an earful about that - wasn't professional, etc. etc. (oops, Fred would use the words, "and the like" instead of "etc.")
Spring forward 17 years. Geocon was now part of a larger entity (Lavalin, then in 1991 merging with SNC to form SNC-Lavalin). It was being broken into two groups - foundations and mining. The mining group was to keep the name Geocon and the foundation group (me and few others) was to be merged with Fenco MacLaren Engineers (Civil and Environmental group of SNC-Lavalin). I found that the young mining lads had decided to throw out all the drawings (original drafting) of Geocon's past projects - something, as a love of history, I couldn't see. So I took all the drawings out of the garbage bins, wrote a cheque for $100 for garbage and they were mine. Now, what to do with these - I took my time and rolled them all up to store in drawing boxes.
Anyway - as I was doing this, I noted that one set of drawings had boreholes on them named "Mary" "Susan" "Rebecca" and the like - I looked down at the title block and saw MAJM initials! Whoa, Fred, what gives? Tom, Dick and Harry was no good but Mary, Susan, Rebecca were okay? Mmmmm.
I had a chance to speak with Fred a few days later - "Hey Fred, I was going over some drawings for one of the Northern Ontario causeways and ran into boreholes named Mary, Susan, Rebecca . . . Do you remember giving me grief for Tom, Dick and Harry?" Well Fred chuckled a bit and owned up to the borehole names on the drawing. Then, he told me the story. He, Fred, was a young engineer who was looking after the drilling operations up north (remote area) but the CEO of the Foundation Company of Canada was heavily involved with the project AND he chose the names for the boreholes . . . let's see - Mary - that was his wife . . . Susan and Rebecca were his daughters . . .
Now this is why the chuckle - at the time, Fred had to report daily on the progress of the work to the CEO - they did this by teletype (no faxes, not emails). "You know, Howard," said Fred, "how embarrassing it was to tell the CEO that we had just drilled his daughter 10 ft.??"
Anyway - all, that is one story I have - I'd and I am hoping the other members would like to hear yours - and multiple ones . . . Y'all have a great day!