As a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), I regularly receive information and notices proclaiming their annual "grading" of our nation's infrastructure. There is even a website to promote this effort: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/. My opinion on this might not be popular with my colleagues, but frankly I have never thought this report was…
Category: Drinking Water
Water Main Break Clock
The Uni-Bell PVC Pipe Association has set up a Watermain Break Clock site showing real time numbers and costs of water main breaks. According to the information posted, there are 850 water main breaks that occur each day in North America. A quick search on Twitter gives us a snapshot of just a few of these: http://twitter.com/#!/search/water%20main%20break. (I've…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 70
Day 70 GIS Group Meeting Today started out amazing then in the afternoon went to total frustration. I had to leave very early this morning to meet a co-worker for a GIS meeting of IMAUG – Illinois Municipal Arc Users Group. If you are into GIS, this is a great group to get involved with….
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 59
Day 59 Budget Analysis As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had our intern create a spreadsheet so I could track the money that has been spent in the accounts related to my division. Today I started going through that document checking it against invoices and making sure each entry was coded correctly. I…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 29
Day 29 Automatic Meter Reading Research For about a year we've been researching automatic meter read (AMR) systems. Because our neighboring communities to the north and south have also been going through this process, we decided to combine our efforts and collaborate on the research. So as a group we've met with several vendors over…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 25
Day 25 Water Main Extension Most of the first half of my morning was spent working on a cost estimate for the water main extension I have designed. I also filled out all the IEPA permits for the project and had our water superintendent sign them. Then I filled out the EcoCat to determine…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 16
Day 16 Back to work after a weekend of working on a presentation I'm giving in September at the Illinois Association of Highway Engineers conference in Normal, Ill. I'm really looking forward to the event, and if anyone reading this is going make sure to say hi at the conference! Development Meeting So today was…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 9
Day 9 Welcome to Day 9 – a day filled mostly with emails and meetings which is ok because it helped me take care of a lot of correspondence and make a pretty big dent in my emails. Parking Lot Meeting This morning a few of us met with the consultant who is designing the…
Setting Sustainable Water Rates
Raising water or sewer rates is never a popular move, and in this economy many have tried to avoid it as if they are fleeing from a zombie apocalypse. But for many utilities expenditures are exceeding revenues, and there's sometimes little choice other than a rate increase. You can only cut so much from a…
CCDD Update – Get the Scoop on CCDD & Let IEPA Know What You Think
If you’re involved in construction in Illinois, you are probably well aware of new CCDD law passed last year and made effective immediately by our state legislators and governor. Many of us have been struggling to understand this new law because it was created with little guidance but severe penalties for noncompliance. Fortunately the Chicago…