A RC H I T EC T U R E & E N G I N E E R I N G
Before Disaster Strikes
How engineers prepare Shannon & Wilson
for the unknown By Brad Joyal
E
arthquakes, floods, volcanoes, tsunamis, wildfires, and landslides: Alaskans endure a volatile landscape of natural disasters. Whenever these catastrophic events occur, engineers have already prepared for the worst. Whether it’s a dam, a road, an office building, or a hospital, all of the state’s infrastructure is designed to anticipate 10-year, 50-year, or even 100-year disasters in addition to humancaused damage that may occur during its lifetime.
Planning for the Long Term Beyond the minimum standards for any type of project, engineers implement more vigilant requirements and practices depending on a structure’s location and function. “The first thing that engineers typically start looking at is to find the design criteria the engineer will base the entire project on,” says Mark Sams, senior engineer at PND Engineers. “That’s a process the engineer needs to work out with the owner of the project at the beginning to kind of decide, ‘What is the design life of the project? What is the design life of the infrastructure? Is this project a 10-year design life? 62 | February 2022
Are we looking at some sort of mining infrastructure with a design life of 10 years that the project is only there for 10 years and then the mine is going to close up and shut down, or is this a big, long-term infrastructure project that has a 100-year design life?’ That’s a big concern at the beginning of a project that really dictates the environmental loading on a facility.” Once the owner and engineer identify the purpose and longevity of the structure, the next step is recognizing hazards that could complicate construction or present long-term challenges. The most common tool engineers turn to during this process is ASCE 7, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ publication that is released every six years and includes ASCE’s most widely used professional standards. “Every time the ASCE is updated, it gets a lot thicker, and that’s because every so often there’s a major earthquake—as was the case when we had our [2018] Anchorage earthquake— that will affect earthquake design and seismic designs nationally,” says Sams. “Every time there is a national disaster, there are commissions set up to study
what happened, what lessons were learned from damage that occurred, both for big infrastructure and small infrastructure.”
Codes Present the Framework While ASCE-7 is the standard for proper techniques, engineers operate in a framework defined by codes, specifically the International Building Code, the model formulated by the International Code Council and commonly used as the standard in most US jurisdictions. “There are code requirements for ports and harbors, separate code requirements for fuel terminals and facilities, and separate code requirements for infrastructure,” says Kyle Brennan, vice president and Anchorage office manager for Shannon & Wilson. “Depending on what type of work we’re doing, they all have governing codes that determine how we look at hazards.” The scope of a project determines the severity of the codes that must be implemented, but some aspects— especially safety—are non-negotiable. “At a very basic level, the codes are mostly about protecting life safety,”
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