The University of British Columbia

Civil Update - May 7, 2008

• Recently we received letters from UBC President Stephen Toope indicating that he will be recommending Dr. Ken Elwood and Dr. Terje Haukaas to the Board of Governors for promotion to the rank of Associate Professor, with tenure. This is excellent news indeed and certainly well deserved by both colleagues.

• Dr. Bernard Laval and his PhD student Alex Forrest were invited to join a NOAA Signature Expedition to do baseline mapping of the state of coral reefs surrounding Bonaire (Dutch Antilles) using UBC-Gavia (our robot submersible). They were also looking for new reefs in deep (150 m+) water. Alex was in Bonaire for the month of January participating in this multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research expedition. Bernard also made the sacrifice of a one-week working visit to Bonaire during January. More information about the expedition can be found at: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/08bonaire/welcome.html.

• Dr. Jonathan Fannin has been awarded a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, to support collaboration with the Soil Mechanics Research Group at Imperial College London, where he will work in partnership on internal erosion of large earth dams. Jonathan will be taking up the fellowship during the upcoming summer term.

• We noticed recent contributions by Dr. Nemy Banthia and Dr. Perry Adebar to news items covered by local media outlets. Nemy was interviewed by CKNW on the topic of civil infrastructure, while Perry contributed information on the Abbotsford church floor collapse to an article published in the Vancouver Sun.

• Earlier this year, Dr. Alan Russell was in residence at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) of Singapore, where he was appointed Tan Swan Beng Endowed Visiting Professor in the NTU School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. While at NTU, Alan delivered three lectures on such topics as public-private partnerships, risk assessment and data visualization.

• Congratulations and best wishes to Max Nazar, who has now reached the lofty height of 35 years of accumulated service at UBC. Max’s personnel file contains a letter from Dr. Dick Campanella, indicating that Max joined the Department of Civil Engineering in July 1977, after being employed by the Triumf Project at UBC for 4 years.

• Dr. Susan Nesbit reports that our 2nd year undergraduate CIVL 202 students were enthusiastic participants this year in UBC’s Community Service Learning (CSL) program. Among the projects involving Civil students was an undertaking to design and build a traditional Ming Dynasty fence in Dr. Sun Yat Sen Gardens to screen the garden's Penjing and Lotus glass greenhouse. For many of the 2nd year students this was their first experience with full project management, moving from initial research about Chinese gardens, to drafting and submitting of design concepts, procurement of materials and construction troubleshooting.

• Plans have now been developed and funding has been secured for two further renewal projects in the Department. The first of these will involve the completion of renovations in the CEME 2nd floor offices area, including the two rooms facing the department office. The second project involves a renewal of our undergraduate soils teaching laboratory, together with concurrent upgrading of some elements of our environmental, materials and hydrotechnical teaching facilities. Architectural drawings have now been completed and applications have been submitted for building permits. It is anticipated that construction will begin early this summer.

• Finally, if you have not visited our web site lately, you might be surprised to learn that a major faculty hiring initiative is in full swing in Civil Engineering. We are now advertising for one Instructor and four Assistant Professors in various specialty areas. We expect to fill the Instructor position over the upcoming summer. The Assistant Professor searches may require more time to conclude. The new Head will be left with the task of finding offices for all of these eagerly anticipated additions to the Department.
  

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Civil Update - November 13, 2007

• We received a letter from the Let’s Talk Science Partnership Program recognizing two of our graduate students for their voluntary contributions to its outreach program over the last two years. Faezah Azhari and Greg Lewsley were specifically acknowledged for their support of the program, which seeks to improve science literacy through the efforts of members of the UBC community.

• During my meetings with representatives of our 4th year undergraduate class, I heard nothing but positive comments about the 2-day field trip that was held in October. This ambitious undertaking was organized by the CIVL 445 instructor team (Dr. Barbara Lence, Prof. Jim Atwater, Dr. John Howie and Dr. Carlos Ventura). In addition to the visits to several civil engineering sites, which were characterized as “awesome”, students particularly valued the evening social/technical night. This was reported to be the first such opportunity for the entire class to meet and greet and as such, was welcomed by all of the students I spoke with. Word of the trip has filtered beyond the 4th year class, as the 2nd years have expressed interest in seeing a similar venture mounted for the 2nd year cohort, beginning sometime in the future.

• Construction is close to beginning on the unfinished upper east wing of the CHBE Building. The finished space will include offices for the Biomedical Engineering Program, another design studio, and study space for MEng students. Our own CIVL MEng students will be eligible candidates for the new study space.

• The new Centre for Engineering Design Building is developing rapidly, such that construction could begin next summer. The two-story building will occupy the site of the current CEME Annex and will provide space for a third design studio, the Centre for Professional Skills Development, student competition rooms, a few meeting rooms, a project room and a reading room outfitted with about 60 computers. The Dean has indicated that fund-raising for the new building is proceeding nicely and that Board approval is anticipated in January.

• Dr. Allan Russell and Dr. Thomas Froese are in China this week. Both are presenting lectures as part of the MEng Program in Project and Construction Management, International Option. Students will complete the two courses in China given by Allan and Thomas, before traveling to Vancouver to begin further MEng coursework at UBC in January.

• The Department has now acquired two shiny new (but previously owned) service vehicles to replace our old “fleet”. Thanks are due to Frank Mueller and Harald Schrempp for their diligence in sorting out all the details related to the vehicle purchases. You will still see the old half-ton pick-up truck around, as it has been purchased jointly by the Materials and Pollution Control groups for use as a research support vehicle.

• Finally, the search process for a new Head of Department is now well underway. Assuming that all goes well, we are expecting to see a Head Designate named before January, 2008.
  

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Civil Update - September 12, 2007

• Once again, the entire Department is running flat out to service the start of the new academic year. Actually, this year we are running somewhat harder than usual, as our intake of students into the 2nd year civil engineering program has increased significantly. Over the last 10 years, our year 2 intake has averaged 99.5 students. This year, in light of the overwhelming demand for Civil, the Dean has requested that we agree to a quota increase to 120. After doing so, and now that the dust has settled, we have been able to count a total of 122 students in 2nd year Civil.

Next year, this cohort will be augmented by another 20-25 students from the Camosun Bridge Program, to bring the base enrolment in our 3rd year core courses to about 140, after attrition. With the service teaching that is above and beyond the Civil enrolment, for the first time, we are expecting in excess of 200 students in courses such as CIVL 311 Soil Mechanics II. We have already convened one meeting of selected faculty to begin to discuss the ways and means of accommodating this new steady state.

• While undergraduate enrolment has increased, graduate admissions are down considerably this year. At last week’s graduate student orientation we welcomed 31 new graduate students to our program. This number is down from 55 in September, 2006.


• We offer greetings and best wishes to Dr. Tarek Sayed, who is beginning his 2nd year of leave. Tarek’s 2nd year away from the Department constitutes a special leave arrangement, during which Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins has stepped up to assume the duties of transportation group leader.


• We have also received word that Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins has been nominated to serve as the new Transportation Research Board (TRB) Representative at UBC. Jacqueline will be replacing long-serving UBC TRB rep Dr. Frank Navin.


• Most of the necessary arrangements have been completed for the upcoming external review of the Department. A team of four external reviewers will be visiting Civil on September 24-25 to assess the Department’s programs, people, facilities and administration. In preparation for the visit, Jenny Ng worked her usual magic to assist with the production of an attractive 160-page self-study report that has now been distributed to the review team members and to Civil specialty group leaders. The external review will be followed closely by a meeting of the Department’s Civil Engineering Advisory Council on October 9.


• The Department has completed a renovation of the graduate computer lab on the first floor of the civil wing of CEME. The renovations included new benches and chairs to accompany the 16 new workstations that were installed and networked by Edward Marcinek. The CEGSS has also located its photocopier and printing equipment in the room to make the lab a one-stop shop for Civil grad students.


• Finally, Dr. Barbara Lence and the CIVL 445 instructor team of Professors John Howie, Jim Atwater and Carlos Ventura, have developed an impressive plan for a two-day field trip for this year’s 445 class. Buses carrying 112 students will visit various civil engineering infrastructure sites and construction projects located between Vancouver and Kamloops, with an overnight stop at Sun Peaks Resort. The evening dinner at Sun Peaks will be staged as a technical conference banquet, complete with technical dinner speakers. The dinner program will focus on the development of the Village of Sun Peaks as a greenfield town site about 15 years ago.  It seems that the field trip has attracted eight Civil faculty members who have decided to participate.
  

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Civil Update - August 8, 2007

• Congratulations to Dr. Carlos Ventura who received notice that APEGBC’s Seismic Review Committee, of which he is a member, will be awarded special recognition at this year’s President’s Awards Gala in Whistler, in October. Apparently the awards ceremony will include a short video presentation on the committee’s achievements and contributions. If possible, we will secure a copy for your viewing pleasure on the departmental office monitor.


• In the leave category, this month we welcome back a well tanned Dr. Thomas Froese, who has returned from 11 months of study leave in Europe and Australia. Thomas is not fully back in harness until September 1, but we notice that he is already attending to construction management business as the incoming group leader. As Thomas returns, we send off Dr. Alan Russell, first on vacation and then to the netherland of study leave. Alan will be in Vancouver for a few months before leaving for visits elsewhere. He will be returning from leave in September, 2008.


• We also received the welcome news last week that one of our graduate students was a successful applicant in the inaugural round of awards under the Pacific Leaders Graduate Fellowship Program. PCWM and Bridge Program MASc student Andrea Miskelly, was one of eight students at UBC awarded a PLGF in the recently completed competition. Andrea is planning to meet her provincial government employment “obligation” with the Ministry of Environment, preferably in the Environmental Protection Division. Andrea describes this as an opportunity, rather than an obligation.


• Dr. Tarek Sayed has been working diligently to establish the newly opened Bureau of Intelligent Transportation Systems and Freight Security (BITSAFS) in CIVL. BITSAFS's research mandate is to focus on the application of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies in the area of goods movement. Using techniques and tools such as simulation modelling, GIS, computer vision, and database systems, the Bureau's research seeks to promote secure and efficient freight movement through the country and across national borders. BITSAFS is located in the ICICS Building where Mr. Clark Lim is providing day to day supervision as Managing Director. We understand that a more formal opening of BITSAFS will be announced in due course.


• We wish Dr. Don Mavinic the best of luck as he begins his appointment as Associate Dean for Faculty and Research. One of Don’s responsibilities will be to assist the Dean and Department Heads in stickhandling ARPT cases through the maze of the UBC review process. Don is uniquely suited to this role by virtue of his just-completed term on the university’s Senior Appointments Committee.
  

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Civil Update - July 11, 2007

• Congratulations to Dr. Ken Elwood who was recognized with the President’s Award from the Los Angeles Tall Building Structural Design Council, at its Annual Meeting in May. The citation states that the award was given “in recognition of [Ken’s] outstanding contribution to the advancement of performance based design methodologies for reinforced concrete buildings”.  In the presentation of the award it was noted that the award recognizes Ken’s role in chairing a committee tasked with revising the concrete provisions of the Seismic Rehabilitation Standard in the US. The work of the same committee was also recognized by an Award of Merit from the Structural Engineering Association of Northern California (SEAONC) presented at their annual Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards Ceremony


• We also noticed with great interest, the recognition of Dr. Bob Sexsmith with the A.B. Sanderson Award by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering’s at its recent annual meeting in Yellowknife. The Sanderson Award is presented to a member of the CSCE who has made particularly outstanding contributions to the development and practice of structural engineering in Canada.


• Congratulations are also due to graduate student Ngoc Tran, with Drs. Alan Russell and Sheryl Staub-French, who were honoured with the 2007 Construction Research Congress’ Best Paper Award, in May. The award was for their manuscript entitled “4D CAD Via Linear Planning and 3D CAD”.


• We received excellent news in copies of letters from President Toope indicating his support for Dr. Rob Millar’s promotion to the rank of Professor and for Dr. Susan Nesbit’s application for tenure and promotion to the rank of Senior Instructor. The Department concluded that both of these cases were strong and it is gratifying to see that the university agrees. Congratulations to Rob and Susan.


• Our eye was caught by the Spring 2007 issue of Focus, the newsletter of the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (ICICS). The page 3 feature story profiles Dr. Sheryl Staub-French and her recent collaboration with UBC Properties Trust on 3D modeling to support design coordination, cost estimating and scheduling in building construction. We particularly enjoyed the photo of Sheryl gazing confidently at a convoluted maze of piping – clearly an excellent application for 3D modeling. Watch for the article to appear soon in our display case.


• Yesterday we received the results of the preliminary placement of 1st year students into our second year program. The preliminary placement represents about 80% of the final complement, so its characteristics are a reasonable foretelling of the final story. Once again this year, Civil has attracted the strongest interest among the eleven undergraduate engineering programs. For our quota of 93 seats, we received 206 first choice requests for a ratio of 2.21. This significantly tops last year’s record request/seats ratio of 1.94. For the current year, the only other engineering program that is showing a ratio of greater than 1.0, is MECH, with a value of 1.22. All in all, we expect that the next entering class will again be a strong one.


• We noticed the following story in a recent UBC media scan. “Waste not, want not for local firm: Process developed at UBC helps turn sewage into commercial fertilizer. Ostara Nutrient Recoveries Technologies has completed trials of a technology developed by UBC civil engineer Dr. Don Mavinic that turns environmentally harmful nutrients in sewage sludge into a marketable commercial fertilizer, Business in Vancouver reports. The company's first major customer is the City of Edmonton, where Ostara's system will be used at an Edmonton sewage plant that treats the waste of 200,000 residents. “


• Finally, we also received notification from the Dean’s Office that our Dr. Alan Russell has been inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE). The Dean wrote that Alan “was most deserving of this acknowledgement of high-calibre scholarly work and outreach. This is a tremendous accomplishment as the CAE maintains extremely high standards for admission. Alan joins a very elite and distinguished group of engineers across the country who ensure the well-being of the public, the environment and the economy.” We would like to add our congratulations to Alan on this singular honour.
  

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Civil Update - June 7, 2007

• The Department marked an important milestone in its academic year on May 29th. At the 1:30 pm congregation ceremony, 10 Civil faculty members were in attendance for the awarding of the 2007 Applied Science Killam Teaching Prize to Dr. Rob Millar and for the enjoyable address offered by graduating BASc student Kelley Peterson. Following the preliminaries, a total of 115 undergraduate students were admitted to the BASc degree in Civil Engineering. The total included 18 students in the Environmental Option. If the May total is augmented by the 5 students who graduated in November, our undergraduate class of 2007 was comprised of 120 graduates. William Hui was the top graduate in both Civil and the Faculty of Applied Science. Accordingly, William was honored with the Governor General’s Silver Medal, awarded for the first time this year to an Applied Science graduate at UBC.


• Congratulations to Dr. Barbara Lence and newly-minted PhD graduate Andrew Wood, who were recently advised that their paper titled "Assessment of Water Main Break Data for Asset Management" was selected for the 2007 American Water Works Association Distribution and Plant Operations Division Best Paper Award. The paper was published in the July 2006 issue of Journal AWWA and the award will be presented at the 2007 Annual AWWA Conference and Exposition in Toronto. By the way, Andrew has been teaching the summer course CIVL 598R Management of Civil Infrastructure.


• Congratulations to Dr. Violeta Martin, Dr. Terje Haukaas, Dr. Rob Millar and Dr. Perry Adebar, who were named “2007 Top Profs” by our 2nd, 3rd and 4th classes respectively.


• We noticed a number of interesting items in the March/April issue of Innovation. First, the Fluor- BC Engineering team took three awards for their non-perishable food sculpture “Passion to Feed”. I happened to stumble on the draft construction of this entry in our Structural Engineering Research Lab, while the team was still in the design phase. Nice to learn that they were eventual winners. Second, we read a piece on our EERF’s participation in E-Week activities, during which children built structures out of drinking straws and tested them on a shake table. Finally, it was good to see the interesting feature on Dr. Carlos Ventura and to learn of his ongoing involvement in bringing education and resources on earthquake and natural hazard disaster prevention to an impoverished area of Guatemala called Solola.


• In a similar vein, Dr. Rob Millar’s article on “Peak Oil” is a feature of the latest issue of Innovation. It makes interesting and provocative reading.


• Received: a letter from the Vancouver Public Library acknowledging the exceptional effort made by two of our undergraduate students who represented UBC at E-Fest2007 in February. The students involved, Matthew Lea and Mike Davis, were happy BASc degree recipients at the congregation ceremony noted above.


• Described: the Dean’s current plans for the Engineering Student Centre, to be constructed as a new wing of CEME on the current location of the CEME Annex (trailers). This will be a $6.4M building to provide new space for the EUS, the Centre for Professional Skills Development, an Engineering Design Studio and assorted student space (competition team space, project group space, etc.). In addition, the plans call for a renovation of the Cheeze to make a small conference centre for Faculty use.


• Received: news from Dr. Sheng Li, whom some of you may remember from his time as a Research Associate and Sessional Lecturer in our hydrotechnical group. Sheng had moved to UBCO in December 2006 to take up an Instructor position. However, he recently learned that he was the successful candidate for an Assistant Professor position at Concordia University, where he will be starting next month. Sheng indicated to me that a nice house near Concordia can be secured for something in the range of $400,000.


• Finally, we recently received the following message, completely unsolicited, from Professor John Meech in Mining Engineering. “This message is to express my appreciation for the research that Dr. Ziad Shawwash's group has been doing in the Civil Engineering department over the past few years together with BC-Hydro. I have been involved with his group as a member of several supervisory committees since 2003 and prior to that I acted in a similar role for Dennis Russell. A number of the students have also taken my graduate level course in Industrial Expert Systems as part of their program of studies. I believe this association with BC-Hydro has produced 3 Ph.D.s, 5 M.A.Sc.s and a number of important software packages that are in use today within BC-Hydro and one (a GIS system) that helped create a UBC spin-off consulting business - Aquarius R&D. The quality and scope of the research must rank among the highest levels in our faculty with respect to how fundamental theory can generate applications that are quickly transferred into industry. The work that has been done by Dr. Shawwash's group has directly led to significant improvements in how BC-Hydro manages the province's electrical power grid and how we sell electricity to customers outside B.C. I suspect the total benefits can be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. It is not often that one finds such a concentrated direct effect of doctoral and masters research projects that impact on an industry in the way that this work has affected BC-Hydro's operating practices.

I suspect that knowledge of these impacts is not well-known outside of those of us who have been closely involved. I would urge your department to consider highlighting this collection of work through publications in the APEGBC monthly journal or through UBC's internal and external publications. The work stands as a major example of direct benefit to the province that should be widely recognized. It provides evidence of the importance of the research being done here at UBC and how research, in general, produces impacts that far out-weight the cost of conducting such studies.”

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