MISSISSIPPI VALLE Y DIVISION
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS VISIT LOCK AND DAM 11 BY JIM FINN, Rock Island District
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Benjamin Mack. “As an engineering student, we can read blueprints and create certain structures, but the construction aspect is a bit harder to understand with the limited experience we have received.” The work performed during this winter’s maintenance project at Lock and Dam 11 included drilling relief wells, placing caps on the new relief wells, demolishing embedded miter gate anchorages, and placing new anchorage plates. During their visit to the lock, students got an eagle-eye view of the dewatered lock chamber from the site’s observation deck and learned why relief wells are needed for the lock to be dewatered safely. After the overview from above, students split into two groups and traveled down into the dewatered lock chamber for a rare look inside. Providing tours of the dewatered lock is not something USACE regularly offers to the public, but Stephens saw it as an opportunity to showcase the district’s work.
PHOTO BY JIM FINN
group of students with the University of WisconsinPlatteville (UWP) American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) chapter got an inside look at Lock and Dam 11 in Dubuque, Iowa, while it was dewatered for winter maintenance. The tour was led by civil engineer Erica Stephens, Lock and Dam 11 lockmaster Gary Kilburg, and construction project engineer Charles Bauer. While touring the dewatered lock, students learned how winter maintenance on the Rock Island District’s locks are critical to keeping aging infrastructure up and running. Getting to walk on the bottom of the lock chamber was a unique experience for the students, as very few people outside of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and its contractors ever get to visit the inside of a dewatered lock. “As an engineer, it is important to see what is going on in a construction zone,” said UWP ASCE Student President-elect (now President)
Gary Kilburg, lockmaster for Lock and Dam 11, explains the winter maintenance process to University of Wisconsin-Platteville engineering students.
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