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Learning From Oroville: HDR’s Dam Inspection Program
A rope-access inspection of an unlined emergency spillway in conjunction with the remediation of a service chute spillway using ropes and a rolling scaffolding.
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n February 2017, the service spillway of California’s Oroville Dam was damaged, resulting in an emergency that required the temporary evacuation of 188,000 people downstream. While the danger was contained and the spillway was reconstructed the following year, the Oroville incident was serious enough to provoke a thorough rethink of dam maintenance and inspection practices across California and nationwide. The personnel of engineering firm HDR, Inc., were onsite at Oroville Dam and played a major role both in responding to the initial damage and in developing new methods and practices for dam and spillway inspection. In this interview, HDR Principal Hydraulic Structures Engineer Sam Planck and Hydraulic Structures Practice Leader Kenny Dosanjh tell Municipal Water Leader about their work promoting dam safety in the aftermath of the Oroville spillway incident. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.
34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
Kenny Dosanjh: I’m HDR’s hydraulic structure practice leader. I’ve been with the company for 15 years now. My background has focused heavily on rope-access inspections for various types of structures, including radial gates, spillways, and one-off structures like outlets and intake structures. I’ve also done a lot of finite element analysis of various hydraulic structures and design and repairs of flood walls, gates, and spillways. I was the dams and hydraulics structures section manager for approximately 4 years. Municipal Water Leader: What services does HDR perform with regard to dams? Sam Planck: It’s a pretty extensive list. Some of the more traditional items on it would be inspection, analysis, and design. We also do a significant amount of dam safety work related to potential failure mode analyses, risk assessments, and the development of dam safety training learning tools. We also conduct hydraulic, geotechnical, and structural analyses.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF HDR.
Sam Planck: My background is primarily in hydraulic structures. I’ve been with HDR for 30 years. The way I usually describe my work is that I’m engaged with the steeland-concrete end of water resources. This could be tied to dam safety, flood control, or fisheries. My work typically focuses on all those pieces at a dam site that aren’t the actual
dam. I’ve been in my current role managing one of the California Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) dam safety contracts for HDR for about 6 years. Before that, I managed the hydraulic structures group at HDR.
