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CEIE
Seminars - Spring 2007 
About
the CEIE seminar series
The
seminar is open to all interested parties on or off
GMU campus. Participation in the seminar series is mandatory
for CEIE graduate students who are admitted to the program
in Fall 2001 or later.
CEIE Seminar Series – All
Seminars in Room 122 ST2 unless noted. Last Updated:
February 18, 2007
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Bios of Student Speakers:
Speaker |
Bio |
Nelson Rulona |
Nelson Rulona currently works as a Program Manager at the Directorate of Military Programs, HQ US Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, DC. He helps oversee a program (approx $1B/yr) of design and construction projects in the Pacific Ocean Division. These diverse projects are located in Hawaii, Alaska, Japan, Korea and the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands. Our customers include the Army, Air Force, Marines and other Department of Defense components. Mr. Rulona has worked at Corps offices in Hawaii and Japan in both Engineering and Construction Divisions prior to accepting his current position. He is a registered professional engineer in Hawaii and expects to receive his MS in Civil and Infrastructure Engineering in the Summer of 2007.
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Abstracts
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Speaker |
Abstract |
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Dr. George Donohue |
Air Transportation:
A Tale of Prisoners, Sheep and Autocrats
Almost everyone has experienced the frustration
of long security lines at airports and delayed
or canceled flights. Many of our oldest and best
known airlines are either liquidated (PanAm,
Eastern, Western, Braniff, TWA) or in and out of
Chapter 11 (Continental, United, USAirways,
Delta). The FAA is known to be a tombstone
agency when it comes to aviation safety and is
constantly on the National Transportation Safety
Board's “delinquent” list of programs and
procedures. It is projected that the FAA will
experience over $4 billion in operating budget
shortfall between now and 2010 under current
funding policy. Over 70% of the current staff
of air traffic controllers will retire within 10
years. This lecture will explain why current US
governmental policies are creating these
problems and what you as a citizen can do about
it.
This lecture is part of the
Vision Series sponsored by the Provost’s
Office of George Mason. Free tickets can be
ordered
here, or are available at the Center for the
Arts box office Tuesdays through Saturdays 10 am
– 6 pm, or on the evening of the lecture. |
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Mr. Paul Swanson, PE |
Engineering Career
Development: Paths, Opportunities, and Case
Studies The presentation focuses on what
it is really like to be an engineer. Mr. Swanson
will discuss the various types of engineering
opportunities available to graduates such as
with government agencies, A/E firms,
contractors, academia, and consulting. He
will discuss the type of work commonly involved
in each area of engineering and what an engineer
that decides to work in these areas might be
expected to do on a day to day basis. He will
discuss the skill sets, other than the technical
skills that all engineers possess, that they
will need to develop during their careers such
as project management, public speaking,
technical writing, etc.
Three case studies will be presented to
illustrate the different roles of the engineers
involved. The first case study is the people
mover and tunneling project on-going at Dulles
Airport. The project involves construction,
structural engineering, geotechnical
engineering, and instrumentation. The second
project involves repair and reconstruction of an
elevated post-tensioned parking garage at the
Watergate complex in downtown D. C. That project
will touch on materials engineering, structural,
mechanical, wind and moisture consulting, and
instrumentation. The third project is a pavement
failure in Norfolk, Virginia. That project gets
into geotechnical engineering, site civil
design, construction, and forensic engineering.
Paul Swanson is a
Principal and co-founder of FEA. He earned his
Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering
and Master of Science Degree in Geotechnical
Engineering from Cornell University, and has 35
years of consulting engineering experience in
the Washington, DC Metropolitan area, throughout
the United States and internationally. Mr.
Swanson is a Registered Professional Engineer in
the Commonwealth of Virginia, Maryland, and New
York and is an EPA Licensed Asbestos Inspector.
Mr. Swanson has been a member of the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) since 1972. |
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Mr. Lawrence Roth |
The New Orleans Levees: The Worst
Engineering Catastrophe in U.S. History -- What
Went Wrong and Why
Recently, Mr. Roth led the American
Society of Civil Engineer’s response to
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. He is currently
serving as the chief of staff and project
manager for ASCE’s External Review Panel, which
was assembled to provide an independent
assessment of the performance evaluation of the
New Orleans hurricane protection system that is
being conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers Interagency Performance Evaluation
Task Force.
During this presentation, Mr. Roth will
summarize the findings and conclusions of the
External Review Panel. Much of the destruction
from Hurricane Katrina was caused not by the
storm itself, but by a series of engineering and
engineering-related policy failures. The levees
and floodwalls breached because of a combination
of unfortunate choices and decisions, made over
many years, at almost all levels of
responsibility.
There were two direct causes of the levee
breaches. First, several levees with concrete
floodwalls collapsed because of the way they
were designed. Second, many levees and
floodwalls were overtopped by water pouring over
them eroding their foundations. However, there
were also many indirect causes as well. During
this presentation Mr. Roth will describe other
key additional failures that strongly
contributed to the levee failures.
The lessons learned from Katrina go beyond
the issues of levees in Southeast Louisiana. Mr.
Roth will discuss how these lessons should cause
all civil engineers to bring about shifts in the
way they approach projects that impact public
health, safety, and welfare. These shifts
include developing a better understanding of
risk and safety; reevaluating and fixing
hurricane- and flood-protection systems
throughout the United States; and demanding
engineering quality.
Mr. Roth earned his bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in civil and environmental engineering
from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and
serves on the Department’s Visiting Committee.
In the fall of 2000, Mr. Roth received the
Distinguished Service Citation from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison College of
Engineering.
As the Deputy Executive Director of the
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE),
Lawrence H. Roth is responsible for its
professional, technical, and educational
activities. He also oversees ASCE’s publications
and continuing education programs. Mr. Roth
joined ASCE after a thirty-year career in
consulting practice where he was a nationally
recognized leader in civil and geotechnical
engineering. During his years in practice, he
specialized in geotechnical engineering for
design and construction of water resource
projects including dams and canals. |
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Dr. Stuart G Walesh |
Personal Time Management: Work Smarter, Not
Harder—An ASCE Seminar
We professionals often claim we “don’t have the
time,” as though we have less time than others.
In fact, each of us has 24 hours a day and 365
days per year. Time is a resource or, perhaps
more profoundly, a gift. Our time—our use of
this gift—should be carefully managed. After
all, we “only go around once.” Some
professionals achieve major significance and
success in their personal, family, financial,
community and professional lives. Others, in
spite of ample talent and good intentions, fill
their lives with mediocrity. French writer
Victor Hugo explained it this way: “But where no
plan is laid, where the disposal of time is
surrendered merely in the chance of incidence,
chaos will soon reign.” Personal time
management, when carried out in support of
selected roles and ambitious goals, is often the
deciding factor. This one-hour workshop will
help you “find” time and reduce stress. It
begins by helping participants define roles and
goals and then offers a time management toolbox
to help fulfill the roles and achieve the goals.
Participants receive a detailed handout on which
the webinar will draw. The handout includes
references to articles, books, e-newsletters,
websites, and other self-study materials. |
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Dr. Michael Casey
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Dubai Rising: A first hand account of
achievements and concerns with Dubai's
unprecedented development.
In January 2007 the GMU Chapter of ASCE
toured Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
In this seminar, Dr. Casey will recount
the impressions and experiences of the trip.
Dubai is undergoing a metamorphosis from a small
desert port city to a massive commerce, tourism,
and trading hub. Fueled by re-investment
of oil wealth and private development capital,
the city is adding a massive downtown
development which will include the world's
tallest building, 4 man-made island chains in
the Arabian gulf, a new airport, metro system,
and the world's largest theme park. With
over $100 billion of construction currently
underway, and the frenetic pace of development,
there are some concerns about the long term
impact on infrastructure and the environment.
This seminar will highlight several of the
development projects and discuss sustainability
in modern urban development. |
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Dr. Mark Houck |
Reducing Physical Threats to
Water Supplies
Water supplies are fundamental to the
functioning of society, and they are susceptible
to physical attack because they typically
include a large array of components, spread over
a significant area, with varying levels of
security. Recognizing that it is virtually
impossible to protect the entire system, it is
important to identify the key elements of the
system whose protection will result in the
greatest reduction in risk. Optimization
modeling is used to analyze a complex water
distribution system with the goal of identifying
the most critical components of the system, and
thereby identifying those elements that should
be protected to reduce risk significantly. |
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Dr. Sayedul Choudhury
Dr. Sharon deMonsabert
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Policy Implications in the TMDL Program
The Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972 establishes
the framework from which water quality standards
and Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) are
developed to protect the nation's streams,
lakes, and estuaries from unsustainable levels
of pollution. A TMDL is the total pollutant load
a water body can assimilate without exceeding
the water quality standard. Section 303(d) of
the CWA requires that the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) and the states develop
TMDLs to restore pollution-impaired waters.
Since 1996, numerous EPA-approved TMDLs have
been developed for surface waters of the US. The
developed TMDLs vary according to objective
(e.g. pollutant, water quality standard) as well
as technical approach. State policies also have
a significant impact on the ultimate waste
allocation strategy. This seminar will
investigate the technical deficiencies in the
TMDL program based on the “lessons learned” from
TMDLs developed for impaired water bodies in
Virginia. The seminar will further examine how
the policy issues impact TMDLs and the success
of the TMDL program in restoring the nation’s
waters. Research questions suggested by the
potential inadequacies of the technical and
policy features of the TMDL program will be
posed. |
Mr. Nelson Rulona |
Corporate Lessons Learned
Formalized processes and systems for capturing and disseminating lessons learned within large organizations have received increased attention in recent years. The Department of Defense, Coast Guard, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Energy, etc have developed lessons learned processes and supporting software systems. The purpose being to promote the dissemination of knowledge gained the hard way through the experiences of an organization’s employees. A system for collecting, archiving, and disseminating lessons learned is a critical component of experienced-based processes, such as the design and construction of Military Construction (MILCON) projects executed by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).
It will discuss and evaluate how Lessons Learned (LL) derived primarily from executing the US Army Military Construction Program will be formalized in a Corporate Lessons Learned System. It will also provide recommendations on energizing the LL business process in conjunction with being a Learning Organization.
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