Some Stories

[BigH]

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!

 

[oldestguy]

OK I'll bite. Only one right now. At Janesville,WI for a new K-Mart store the parking lot grades were very close to existing grades. Someone with the design-build outfit decided all topsoil had to be stripped first. After seeing many a properly fundtioning pavement built on topsoil, I did some checking and found no problem with what was on site as suitable subgrade as long as it was not subjected to rain before placing road gravel base. It took a little discussing with the builder, but with the question "Are you prejudiced against black?" was enough to convince the guy.

 

[oldestguy]

Another, somewhat related. In my first days in Wisconsin DOT as their first Soils Engineer, I had the opportunity of playing with the first Nuclear density meter. It was made by Nuclear Chicago and was very professionally looking . Later in a bidding situation, Troxler won out with a real crappy looking unit. Anyhow I took the density Nuc out testing it on compacted earth subgrades to compare against the sand cone method. In the winter the first interstate highway in Wisconsin was to open, from the south border with Illinois. The boss of the materials Section DOT wanted to know if the nuc was capable of finding the re-bars in the concrete pavements, where continuously reinforcing was first used. I took the machine to the south end at the Illinois border. Temp around zero F and snowy. Shoulders had not been paved yet, so a snow plow came along and cleared that. Then a paver came with hot mix. Of course the standard specs were violated (40 degrees F was the lowest temp allowed). Later that pavement held up great.

Anyhow I took the opportunity to go into Illinois and buy colored oleo. At the time Wisconsin did not allow oleo and you had to stick with butter, from the Dairy State.

A few days later the road was to open and the Governor went there to cut the ribbon. However, his driver got lost, so they say. However, the story goes that the Governor did as I did, taking the opportunity to "make the oleo run across the border".

Oh, that nuc found no difference in readings due to re bars.

 

[Ron]

Back in the mid 70's I was a young engineer at Law Engineering Testing Company. I was a bit of an experimental hire in that I came with a structural background and they wanted me to be a materials engineer, not one of their elite geotechnical guys. I loved it. Best experience I could have ever had...but that's not the story....

One of the more senior geotechs in our office was going to a Florida DOT Aviation Conference for pavement design, and since I was the only materials guy in a group of 8 or 10 geotechs, they wanted me to go as well. Off we go to Daytona Beach, Florida for a 2-day conference. First day was all technical junk and we decided to hit the town that night....well, the two of us and a friend who worked for Sverdrup hit the local night spots and, imagine this, imbibed a bit too much.

As with any corporate entity, we always had to share hotel rooms for cost savings. We made it back to the room and collapsed on our respective beds. Sometime during the night, my associate decided to heed the call of nature. Now the bathroom was only one door away from the exterior door. Since he was at least as inebriated as I, he confused the two and went outside, several stories up on a walkway....in his underwear only. He proceeded to bang on the door for me to let him back inside.....I, of course, didn't hear him; however, hotel security did....so he ended up in the lobby in his underwear and I slept through the whole ordeal, but the next day was ready to tackle the adventures of aviation pavement design....which I've done quite a few times since! Moral...don't go to a conference with me. I'm no help!

 

[oldestguy]

Training the boss.

After I left Wisconsin DOT, I joined a local small consulting firm in 1963. I was the only true soils engineer of a few others. As a result the two drilling crews were under me. The boss was a real go getter, but very congenial most of the time. However, his zeal was behind the company really growing those days. Since I was an apparent expert in all sorts of things now, he bounced things off of me, etc. His work day didn't end at 5 PM, so I'd get evening calls at home all hours before bed time. Many of them were something that could wait 'til the next day. I had a shop in the garage and frequently was called in to these calls. After many months of this, I left word in the house that I was out in the shop and would call. So, I'd make sure the delay was sufficient to cool the urgency and gradually made them much later and sometimes found him there yet. It did not take long until no more "can wait to tomorrow" calls came my way.

The drill crews used a cat head and a heavy manila rope for spoon driving, casing driving and pulling, etc. Due to water being used a lot, they had rubber gloves. We kept a stock in the lab where they could reach them. When the stock got low, I'd let the boss know and more would come. However, boss let it be known that they were not to waste them, due to the cost. I kept track of the usage and noted very little wastage. Repeat orders were followed by more gripes about the cost of gloves. So, I figured, no point in going thru that hassle again, so after that I bought all the gloves out of my own pocket. Time went on and it came time for annual review and possible salary talk with the boss. During that talk he complimented me on how the guys were not wasting his gloves now. Needles to say I told him who was paying for them. You can bet not another word from him after that on the guys wasting money on gloves.

He was 10 years my senior and this spring I attended his funeral at his age of 96. We had a roaring good time relating stories like this and there were many. After he retired and I also went on my own, I kept in touch with him frequently. A real friend I must say, and a quick learner.

 

[Mccoy]

I was working with a piling and deep foundations contractor. A job I ran away from after a short while since the managing director was an incredibly weird guy. I was a field geologist, but this Group of workers started to call me a gynecologist, because of the assonance and just because they liked the idea of a gynecologist and what it implied better. They called me more often than needed, just for the sake of hearing the gynecologist word. Not much time went on that whenever they called me it started with 'the gynecologist...', and it became such a deep set habit within the workers that it came to be perfectly normal. Well, maybe at that stage being called geologist would have even sounded weird to me.

One day there was this rig operator, a worker who usually worked in other places. He heard the other guys call me. Troughout the Whole morning, he went on giving strange glances to me. At the noon break, he couldn't contain himself any longer, and went: "Just tell me what the hell is a gynecologist doing in this place??"