The West Coast Chapter held its second Electronic Meeting on September 25, 2015. This was another successful E-meeting with good attendance, including several members who were first-time attendees and several technical affiliates. We agreed to make all of our future Fall Board Meetings electronic in format.
The Education Committee is putting together a student Education Session for the Southern California area. They are hoping to incorporate a job site visit along with classroom education sometime this coming winter or early spring. Please contact Rick Walsh, or Tony Kraut, if you are able to help.
The Safety Committee has renewed the alliance between the WCC and Fed-OSHA District 10. Everyone was reminded that ADSC International and Bill Hagstotz, with Construction Images, still need your worksites for the Anchored Earth Micro Pile Safety Video.
Along with all of our regular DOT committee reports, and the International ADSC report from Mike Moore (thanks again Mike) we discussed having some sort of workshop on Oahu in 2016 as part of the ADSC International Summer Meeting in Maui. It’s not often the chapter has an opportunity to provide education in Hawaii, we are excited about the opportunity.
The WCC IAF is currently funding two research projects. The UC Irvine Find A Pile project is progressing well but the OSU Lateral Loads project is stuck, in need of member help. Specifically, they need to install the reaction elements:
- 12 reaction piles with central bar
- Reaction pile to provide 300 kips working load
- Each pile to include a central bar with 500 kips ultimate/yield load
- The length and diameter of the elements will depend on the type of construction (e.g., micro pile, auger cast, drilled shaft: all acceptable, but each has different design approaches)
Please, if any of you can assist this project – contact me right away!
Per our request, the WCC IAF sent $5000 to ADSC International to fund the Faculty Workshop 2016.
The Fall Board meeting is our time for housekeeping. We reviewed the 2016 budget and the WCC Business Plan. We need further input on the business plan so will revisit it in January. I reminded everyone that there are a few WCC logo Polo Shirts available for sale and that our great new website needs more advertisers. We discussed our presence at Western Bridge Engineers’ Seminar and the DFI Conference. The tabletop looks good; it is nice to have our name out there. Thanks to John Bickford and Ray Fassett for their help with the booth.
Our next meeting will be in Cerritos, California at Sinclair Products. January 9, 2016 at 9am. We will be having our first Contractor 15-minute presentation – Becho, Inc. will present a case study as part of the meeting. The January meeting is also your first opportunity to sign up for Annual Meeting sponsorships!
Looking forward to our Annual meeting next May, Ray Fassett has agreed to help Will Gehrke assemble the Education Session agenda. Will already has ideas for several speakers and will reach out to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for student attendees. Thanks Ray, and Will, we look forward to another great Education session.