Engineering News

Been stuck in traffic, lately? Do you need a better road to the industrial park to attract employers?

Do you want access bus/train service with shorter headways? Most would say, "Yep!" If you have been in an hour long traffic jam, the answer can be more colorful.

In short, we have a serious mobility problem all over Georgia. What do we do about it? This was the premise for creation of the "Joint Study Committee on Transportation Funding". Created by the 2007 General Assembly, its purpose was to "undertake a study of the conditions, needs, issues, and problems" associated with t.... READ MORE18

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has experienced a drastic increase in international traffic by more than 80 percent since the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. In 2002, almost six million travelers chose Atlanta as their gateway in or out of the United States. That number will be much more than doubled in the next decade. This has necessitated Airport planners to expand the facilities at Hartsfield-Jackson. The Maynard Holbrook Jackson International Terminal project is a component of the Airport's 10-year, $6 billion- plus Hartsfield-Jackson Development Program.

Schematic desi.... READ MORE18

"It's all about alignment: having shared goals and working together to achieve them." That's how one government contractor sums up the key to a successful project. The contract allows for that type of collaboration, of course. But you'll need to look beyond the contract to figure out how to make it happen.

To get some insider tips for newcomers to government work, we went to some "old hands" for advice. From the Corps of Engineers, Savannah District, we talked to Billy Birdwell (Chief of Public Affairs), Leila Hollis (Deputy for Small Business), and John Caggiano, Jr., P.E. (Deputy Chi.... READ MORE18

The material shortages created by World War II essentially became the foundation for what is
now known as Value Engineering. An employee of a major defense contractor determined that his employer would be more competitive in the marketplace if the company was more innovative. The employee created the functional analysis concept, which later became the basis for Value Engineering.

Other companies, along with the US Army and Navy, adopted the concept of Value Engineering, and in 1959 the "Society of American Value Engineers" was created. Value Engineering became an established manageme.... READ MORE18

Working through constraints isn't anything new for the Georgia Department of Transportation and our partners. Every day our work revolves around melding federal laws, sound engineering standards and community input into transportation improvements that keep Georgia on the move.

From the beginning of its design the reconstruction of the Interstate 85 and State Route 316 interchange in Gwinnett County has been a study in working through constraints:

• How do you get traffic from SR 316 west to Pleasant Hill Road or to I-85 south?
• How do you get a bridge across five lanes .... READ MORE18

Atlanta has a rich history as a transportation hub serving the region and the Southeast. Today
MARTA is the 9th largest transit system in the nation. We are also the backbone of a growing regional system that includes Cobb Community Transit, Gwinnett County Transit, Clayton County's CTRAN, the GRTA Xpress system, and a number of circulator systems.

Over the past thirty years, MARTA's presence has contributed significantly to making this fast-growing region a true national competitor that boasts a strong economy, educated workforce, and vibrant quality of life. A study conducted by th.... READ MORE18

Most people dream of living a more successful life: They want a better job, a salary increase, more responsibility at work, and the respect of their peers. Unfortunately, few people are willing to take the needed risks to make their dreams a reality. Instead, they sit back and watch a select few climb the corporate ladder, while they wallow in self-pity and wonder why good things never happen to them.

The fact is that good things don't just happen to anyone. Good things happen to those who take risks, thus making their positive outcomes possible. For example, consider sports athletes. T.... READ MORE18

O.C.G.A. 43-15-23 states that the practice of Professional Engineering by a licensed individual and
those under his or her direct supervision through a firm, corporation, partnership or other entity is acceptable provided that the entity has been issued a Certificate of Authorization (COA) by the Georgia Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. Nearly half of all complaints received by the Board are for the practice of engineering or land surveying through a firm that does not have a valid COA.

Many complaints arise from applications for licensure by an individual working .... READ MORE18

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HEATING, REFRIGERATING AND AIR-CONDITIONING ENGINEERS and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) have joined forces to sponsor a one-year fellowship in Washington, D.C., that will allow the participant to work in the federal government in a technical advisory role. Members of ASHRAE or USGBC may apply.

Possible placement areas include Congress, a federal agency such as the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency or the General Services Administration, or the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.... READ MORE18

In case you haven't noticed, getting around in Midtown is a little trickier these days. The reason is the closure of the existing 14th Street bridge over I-75/85 and all associated closures and detours. And be patient, Atlanta. These conditions will continue until the summer of 2010.

So what's going on? The Georgia Department of Transportation closed the 14th Street Bridge to accommodate construction of a new northbound underpass exit ramp to the 17th Street Bridge. Designed by Moreland Altobelli, Inc. the purpose of this project is to improve the pedestrian environment, and to improve .... READ MORE18

Georgia's transportation agencies are working hard to keep pace with ever-increasing transportation challenges, while also planning for the state's future. Those challenges include ever rising travel demands, dramatic escalation in transportation infrastructure costs, declining transportation funds, and complex environmental and funding requirements. These challenges are most evident on one of the state's more notorious stretches of highway- I-285 north from I-75 in Cobb County through Fulton County to I-85 in DeKalb County- commonly known as the perimeter highway's "top end."

Interstat.... READ MORE18

As you fly across the Alabama line just north of Interstate 20, you will notice a large cleared patch in the midst of a heavily wooded area. That patch is what will soon be the Paulding County Regional Airport, located approximately six miles west of Dallas, Georgia along US 278. Paulding County is sometimes referred to as a "bedroom community" where most residents leave the County in their daily commute to work. With the lack of businesses in the County, the majority of the County's tax base comes from residential taxes, putting the tax burden on homeowners. Paulding County decided to bring b.... READ MORE18

Surrounded by thousands of drivers tapping the breaks during the afternoon commute, it's no surprise Atlantans spend more than 1.7 billion hours driving annually. Metro Atlanta commuters have one of the worst commutes in the United States. In fact, Metro Atlanta ranks second nationally for number of hours the average driver spends stuck in traffic: 60 hours every year at a cost of more than $1,100. People are ready for a smart solution.

One alternative solution has been on the Georgia Department of Transportation's books for the better part of two decades. Commuter rail service in the A.... READ MORE18

Cobb County Department of Transportation (CCDOT) recently implemented Georgia's first SCATS adaptive traffic signal control system. SCATS, an acronym for Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System, is an adaptive traffic signal control system originally developed in the early 1970s for Sydney, Australia by the Roads and Transport Authority of New South Wales. This system controls more than 10,000 intersections in over 50 cities around the world and more than 600 intersections in 10 jurisdictions in the United States.

Phase 1 of the Cobb County SCATS system, initially implemented in May .... READ MORE18

Imagine you're driving north on I- 75, going to dinner at Maggiano's at Cumberland Mall. As usual, traffic is backed up for miles. But, as you cringe at the thought of fighting gridlock, you remember that you can easily exit on Cumberland Boulevard, and take it directly to the mall.

For many, Cumberland Boulevard is just that- a quicker way to get from I-75 to the amenities in the Cumberland Galleria area. For those who live and work in the area, it is more. Cumberland Boulevard provides direct access across Atlanta's busiest highways to offices, shopping, recreation, dining and other i.... READ MORE18

Currently, the vehicular traffic on the two bridges and the sea-faring traffic are beyond their maximum capacities. "It takes an hour and a half to cross the bridge over the Istanbul Strait during rush hour," said Steen Lykke, the General Project Manager from Avrasyaconsult who works at the construction site and has been assigned to this project since 2002. Both freight and passenger traffic passageways are regularly clogged and travel is consequently sometimes dangerous. "Typically, 55,000 ships pass from north to south, while 250,000 to 300,000 passenger ferries travel from east to west ever.... READ MORE18

In March of 2006, The Transit Planning Board (TPB) was created through a memorandum of understanding between the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) and MARTA to resolve a number of issues regarding transit that presently face the metro Atlanta region. Our board is composed of local elected officials, agency representatives, appointees from the Governor and the leadership of all of our key transportation agencies.

The premise behind the TPB is that we have the right people at the table for regional decision making. More importan.... READ MORE18

Thomas C. Leslie, P.E.
Director of External Affairs
Georgia Engineering Alliance


The 2008 Georgia General Assembly adjourned at midnight on Friday, April 4th, amid a flurry of activity. In the last few minutes of the session before Sine Die, tax cuts and a referendum on enhanced transportation funding were both rejected. Following these actions, the Senate approved a major reservoir bill (at one minute to midnight) which combined legislation that gives new authority to the State Soil and Water Conservation Commission with legislation that gives new authority to the Geo.... READ MORE18

Certainly the technology in one of today's modern landfills would have amazed General Oglethorpe and his men as they climbed the bluffs of the Savannah River to found our great state, but the solid waste management methodology would not have. Land filling has been the primary solid waste disposal method for over hundreds of years and it is likely that landfills will continue to be the most feasible method of disposal well into the future. Despite concentrated efforts to recycle and reduce waste disposed of in the landfills over the past 30 years, the per capita disposal rate in Georgia has con.... READ MORE18

"The Paper Industry: Going Green," or as I would like to say Greener. In today's society the word "green" has become the buzz word of the new millennium. It is a fact that nearly everywhere we go, we will come in contact with the "green regime" advertising and propaganda. Whether it's through billboards, newspapers or the packaging of our consumer products the global green initiative is ever present. Most of these good hearted, awareness tools have one outlying thing in common. The paper they are printed on. Now, more than ever, we are seeing an overwhelming initiative by the paper industry t.... READ MORE18

Two government agencies have teamed up in the Atlanta area to build a $36 million, 411-acre (166 ha) reservoir that will help bolster water supplies needed for two booming metro counties already approaching a combined population of one million residents.

The Hickory Log Creek Reservoir near Canton, Georgia, will feature a huge roller-compacted concrete dam towering 180 feet high and stretching 980 feet across a rocky ravine.

The reservoir and dam, touted as the highest non-federal dam in Georgia, is expected to help meet the water needs of the area until the year 2050.
.... READ MORE18

Drip irrigation as a wastewater reclamation solution is coming full circle as engineers, developers, government decision makers and others charged with guarding our water resources seek practical, immediately deployable water conservation technologies.
  
Drip technology uses sub-surface irrigation to distribute large volumes of wastewater uniformly and in controlled application doses at the root level of vegetation. Not only does this controlled distribution prevent surfacing and run-off, but it also enhances nature's "bio-filter" to clean the wastewater, convert and consume .... READ MORE18

This is a brief story of how archaeologists assisting the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) discovered an ancient prehistoric center in Bartow County whose Native American rulers and resident's participated in trade and exchange across eastern North America from about 300 BC to about AD 650. You would never know it now, but two millennia ago; the Leake Site (the final e is silent in Leake) was the location of a large community consisting of a village separated by a deep ditch from two earthen mounds. Nearby was a burial mound constructed .... READ MORE18

Recognizing the importance of the shortage of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) graduates in the United States, Governor Sonny Perdue signed-off on the state budget for fiscal year 2009 that included $33.3 million for the construction of a new Engineering Technology Center (ETC) at Southern Polytechnic State University (SPSU).  The ETC is a significant step forward to address the shortage of STEM educated professionals in the state as it will house five of SPSU's academic programs: electrical, computer, and telecommunications engineering technology, mechanical engin.... READ MORE18

The more closely an employee is connected to his role (he likes what he does) and the more personally the employee is connected to his manager (has a strong relationship) the better he performs. These "connections" are the power behind all millennial performance.
   
Today, service is king; service events are passionate or connective events. The more passionate a customer is about a brand, product or company, the more he buys. The more passionate an employee is about his work and his manager, the better he performs. Feeling connected is the key to igniting passion; by loo.... READ MORE18

September 10, 2008 proved to be a fine day for mankind's oldest and most trusted form of science: smashing things open. Where in the past man was limited to the use of rocks to smash open other rocks, or perhaps a rotten log, now he can do the kind of smashing that his distant ancestors would have drooled (more than usual) over. Now man can break apart things smaller than atoms, and thanks to the efforts of the scientists and engineers at CERN (the European Center for Nuclear Research). we will presently be able to do this with unprecedented effectiveness.

Over the past 28 years the.... READ MORE18

Traffic Congestion and Its Effects
The dramatic growth of the metro Atlanta area continues to exceed the capacity of our highway system. The results are gridlock, pollution, reduced quality of life, and a greater risk of injury.
   
This year Forbes magazine ranked Atlanta #1 on its list of "Worst Cities for Commuters" due to the time residents spend in traffic. However, more than half of all traffic congestion in the metro area is caused by non-recurring incidents such as crashes. According to a AAA-commissioned study published in March, the monetary cost of crashes .... READ MORE18

DLPE is a full service educational organization of the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) that delivers world class programs and degrees, both credit and non-credit to countries around the globe. During 2008, over 1000 courses were offered to more than 18,000 students which created an enrollment of over 20,000! DLPE has four mission and service areas: (1) distance delivered education, (2) professional masters and non-credit professional/executive programs, (3) English as second language and (4) professional meeting room rentals in the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center (GLC). The center is.... READ MORE18

Other than the introduction of high-occupancy vehicle lanes in the mid-1990s, the freeway system in metro Atlanta has not seen any major operational changes in the last few decades. While lanes have been added and some interchanges have been modified, the basic concept of a limited-access roadway with entrance and exit ramps has remained virtually the same. That changed in 2008 when the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) began implementing region-wide ramp metering on nearly all the freeway entrance ramps in the Atlanta metropolitan region. These devices introduced the concept of "con.... READ MORE18

It' s time to make our transportation network better. For everyone.  Georgia's Investing in Tomorrow's Transportation Today (IT3) initiative gives us the opportunity to do just that.
   
IT3 is developing a business case and a guiding strategy for improving Georgia's statewide transportation network—its roads and highways, public transit, bridges, railroads, airports and seaports. Rather than just building projects we can afford and then seeing if they get us where we want to go, as we do today, we'll first figure out where we want to go and then build the projects t.... READ MORE18

In January of 2006, Mayor Rex Millsaps told me directly that the water department budget is going to be in the black or we are going to get out of the business. Needless to say, the Mayor had my attention! I was determined to demonstrate the potential for producing up to 80 percent of the city's daily water needs from the wells that we had. Most were drilled over the last 22 years but there are two that are much older. Well #1 was drilled in 1915, and well #14 was drilled in 1945. The city relies on Gwinnett County to make up the difference the wells cannot supply. The city does not have the c.... READ MORE18

For the first time in 30 years, nuclear reactors are again becoming a serious option for power generation in Georgia. Recently, Georgia Power came one step closer to building two new 1115 megawatt Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2011 and finish in 2016 for Unit Three and 2017 for Unit Four.

You may have noticed a stir in the media back in February 2009, when a bill to allow Georgia Power to begin recovering costs associated with the two proposed 1115 Megawatt nuclear reactors for Plant Vogtle was pass.... READ MORE18

The date is set and the final logistics are in the works for the 2009 ITS Georgia annual meeting and conference.  The dates are October 4 -6 at beautiful Brasstown Valley Resort in the north Georgia mountains.
   
Our theme for this year is "Improving Transportation Sustainability," which correlates to our organization's name and is one of the core principles driving intelligent transportation technology.
   
So, how does ITS equate to Improving Transportation Sustainability?
   
The three fundamental tenets of sustainabili.... READ MORE18

As I sit down to write this, I realize that this is my final President's Message as I will turn over the gavel to our next president at our summer meeting in June 2009.  While the time it takes to write these articles is often spent late night, on a plane, or crammed between two other deadlines, I've got to tell you…I'm really going to miss writing them.    
   
The theme of this issue of the Georgia Engineer is "Natural Resources".  The first article I wrote as President last year had the same theme, and I started off talking about the ugly cardb.... READ MORE18

An architectural and engineering marvel, the new $1.3-billion Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, is the largest NFL stadium in the world.  The 2.3 million square-foot stadium has an approximate capacity of 80,000 and the flexibility to accommodate up to 100,000 fans for special events, including Superbowl XLV in 2011.  The stadium features signature monumental arches, an expansive retractable roof, glass retractable end zone doors, and the world's largest center-hung video screen. But perhaps the stadium's grandeur is best exemplified by the venue's stunning glass skin, the .... READ MORE18