Civil Engineering Consultant – Stormwater Management, Grading & Drainage
Paige Brue Mono Lake is an ancient saline lake located in the Sierra Nevada in California. It has no outlet which has caused a build up in salts and minerals over time. Mono Lake covers 65 square miles and is over one million years old, making it the oldest lake in the United States of America (California … Read more
I have been working in engineering consulting for several years at this point. Throughout that time, I have developed some opinions about how I feel things should work at an engineering firm. Some of these opinions have changed and evolved as I have gained more experience in the industry. I expect some of these opinions … Read more
For civil engineers and other design professionals, contours are a significant part of our working life. This is because contours are very useful when attempting to visualize drainage patterns across the landscape. Unfortunately, contour data (and especially high-quality contour data) can be difficult to find. Some cities and counties provide contour data on their GIS … Read more
I am currently taking a business management class to help enhance my soft skills to prepare for opening my engineering firm in the near future. One of the assignments involved writing a short essay about decision-making. The following blog post is an adapted version of that essay where I share my thoughts about decision-making at … Read more
The following blog post lists some book recommendations for stormwater/water resources professionals who are seeking to enhance their knowledge. The books discussed in this article are not academic in nature, meaning this is not a list of textbook recommendations. Rather, this list of books is comprised of novels and “fun reads.” I hope these books … Read more
Hydrological modeling plays a crucial role in assessing and predicting the behavior of natural and engineered waterways. In the United States, there are two widely used models for hydrological analysis are HEC-1 and HEC-HMS. Both models were developed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC). HEC stopped updating HEC-1 in … Read more
Unsteady flow modeling is often fretted with instability issues. This is especially true when modeling mixed flow in an unsteady flow model due to the complexity of modeling a mixed flow regime (subcritical, supercritical, and hydraulic jumps). This complexity is associated with the nature of the unsteady flow equations (St. Venant equations). The St. Venant … Read more
In March of 2023, I went through the Watershed Management Group’s Water Harvesting Certificate Program. I have wanted to go through this training program since I became more interested in rainwater harvesting a couple of years ago. I felt like there was no better time because I recently committed to running the North Orange County … Read more
Traditionally, the goal of stormwater management and drainage engineering has been to convey flow away from a site as quickly as possible. Over time, the increase in impervious surfaces associated with urbanization created severe flooding and water quality issues. Planners, engineers, and scientists needed to figure out a way to design systems that provided adequate … Read more
Unsteady flow modeling tends to be more complex and time-consuming than steady flow modeling. Instabilities become more of an issue, and addressing these instabilities is both an art and a science. Unfortunately, many modelers end up spending hours tweaking their crashing model only to find out they only needed to change one setting to fix … Read more