Invent Civil

According to the Daily Commercial News, the Ontario General Contractors Association president (OGCA) Clive Thurston claimed that the Ontario government needs to expand it’s spending to include more road and sewer projects. According to the article, “Recent efforts have focused mainly on the health sector, hospitals in particular,” he told the provincial government’s standing committee [...]

A couple weeks ago, I linked to an article about the corruption in Africa’s water development.  Well as it turns out, it’s not just a problem with Africa.  Apparently rich-ass CEO’s don’t mind getting a few extra contracts through the hands of a corrupt African government. According to ENR.com, “Jack” Stanley has pleaded guilty of [...]

According to an article from popular mechanics, the US Corps of Engineers is responsible for repairing and maintainging the erosion along the country’s coastlines.  Apparently one of the common erosion control measures is pumping truckloads of additional sand & sediments to replace eroded shorelines. It’s interesting to see a method like this used on such [...]

Yesterday, premier Dalton McGuinty announced that $1.1 Billion will be given to improve municipal infrastructure.  This was done to adhere to the Investing in Ontario Act, which dictates that a portion of all budget surplus goes towards provincial debt, with the remainder to be invested in municipal infrastructure.  According to the article, the funds will [...]

Yesterday, premier Dalton McGuinty announced that $1.1 Billion will be given to improve municipal infrastructure.  This was done to adhere to the Investing in Ontario Act, which dictates that a portion of all budget surplus goes towards provincial debt, with the remainder to be invested in municipal infrastructure.  According to the article, the funds will [...]

The StarPhoenix has posted a news article discussing the replacement of a sewage pumping station in the city of Saskatoon. According to the article, if the pumping station fails, houses may experience sewer backups, or worse (in my opinion) – raw sewage could spill into the South Saskatchewan River. The lift station west of Idylwyld [...]

The olympics fever is already catching, and I’ve already seen a few posts relating the olympics and civil engineers. The first post is a look at the interesting structures that were designed and constructed for Beijing 2008. While the post does not go into much detail about the design and functionality of the buildings, there [...]

An interesting article has been published at civilcommotion. About a year ago, the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah collapsed, killing a total of 9 people. Bob Felton discusses the difficulty in analyzing geotechnical data, and how this should be addressed in cases like this. In particular, Bob describes how model calibration is a very important [...]