Newsfeed_Spring 2017

Fall Issue 2017
McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd. Quarterly Newsletter
NEWSFEED
McElhanney Goes Abroad:
Geothermal exploration in the Eastern
Rift Valley in Africa Page 2
The Atal Setu connects three previously
isolated states in India Page 6
HSE safety corner Page 5
Staff profile: Brook Robazza Page 10
Client spotlight: Ormat Page 11
Flying above the Eastern Rift Valley in Ethiopia.

Message from the President
McElhanney is local everywhere in Western Canada. We find new ways, year after
year, to contribute to the communities where we live, work, and play.
We do, however, take on some interesting international projects, which fit with our
areas of expertise. The two projects we feature in this issue of Newsfeed shed light
on how our work abroad is extremely impactful at a community level. Read about
the Atal Setu, McElhanney’s award-winning cable-stayed bridge project that united
three isolated states in Northern India, and the mapping project in Ethiopia, where
our work could potentially reveal significant geothermal energy sources for local
communities. These are great examples of the hundreds of international projects
that we have completed in many countries over the past 50 years.
As you likely know, I will be on sabbatical from September 24 to December 30. I
thank Colin Adam for taking on the acting President and CEO role during this time.
I look forward to seeing you all upon my return to start the New Year. Until then,
enjoy the rest of summer, fall, and into the holiday season with your families.
Happy reading!
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
Page 1

Feature
Geothermal exploration in the Eastern Rift Valley
in Africa
By: Michelle Grady
A view from the sky in the Aero Turbo Commander.
In 2016, Vancouver's Steve Fraser and Derek Odlum
headed off to Ethiopia to fly the Eastern Rift Valley for
a geothermal energy exploration project for Ormat, an
American alternative and renewable energy company.
“We’ve done several projects with Ormat over the
years,” says Steve Fraser, who provided field supervision
and training. “In fact, this LiDAR project was a
direct award based on past work experience together.”
Other McElhanney projects for Ormat were in Southeast
Asia, Nevada, and California.
“When looking to see whether there’s geothermal
activity in an area, a good indicator is whether the water
coming out of the ground is very hot,” says Dan Tresa,
Manager of Mapping branch. “This tends to be the
case in places where the plate tectonics are separating,
as opposed to subduction zones where the plates are
overlapping.” The Eastern Rift Valley is such an area,
and since the Ethiopian portion of the valley is very
active with volcanoes, the government has known for
some time that there is geothermal energy in the area to
harvest.
“To exploit this resource for power generation, they
need to locate the best places to drill – this means
they’re looking for fault lines and features on the ground
that may be under tree cover and are hard to detect,”
says Dan. This is where Derek and Steve come in:
LiDAR helps create a model of the surface of the terrain
to detect these linear features.
McElhanney was contracted by Ormat to fly LiDAR
over a 1,640km 2 area, and McElhanney sub-contracted
thermal infrared photography to Itres Research of
Calgary, to help more easily reveal thermal hot spots.
Kicking off the project
Steve and Derek were based out of the nation’s capital,
Addis Ababa, near the airport that they needed to
access each day for flying. When asked what a typical
day looked like for the two of them, Steve laughs,
“There wasn’t one!” Each day, they'd start with the
weather report, because the weather dictated whether
they could fly or not. “If the weather wasn’t good for
flying, everything got put on hold,” says Steve. If they
had clear skies, they’d make sure the ground crews
were in place, then get through airport security – which
was quite different from Canada’s.
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
Page 2

The flight team preparing to take off.
“When you work in a place like Ethiopia, the government
is very protective,” says Dan. “In Ethiopia, there
are no private planes, not just anyone can go out
and get their license.” Because of this, Derek – who
navigated the plane – and Steve had to wear an official
airman’s shirt with the appropriate number of stripes on
the epaulettes. “They don’t care who you are, you have
to look the part,” laughs Dan. “So we made sure they
looked official.”
Once they had donned their official garb each morning,
they’d walk across the tarmac to where their plane
was kept. “This was almost a 30-minute walk away,
but we’d walk by a bunch of huge planes so this part
was actually really interesting,” says Derek, who did the
navigating for the pilot of the plane and the data acquisition
for this project. “Once we arrived at the plane –
which was an Aero Turbo Commander, a pressurized
aircraft with a jet turbine engine versus the piston engine
planes we use here – we would take off and be in the
plane all day, usually for 5 to 6 hours, before I’d return
and Steve would download the data.”
Collecting the data
Derek spent each day flying the flight path he and Steve
had planned. Not only was the project about data
acquisition and interpretation, but there was a knowledge
transfer component that both Steve and Derek
participated in and enjoyed. “There were usually a few
government staff in the plane with me while we flew,”
says Derek. “I’d be training them on how to operate
the LiDAR system. They would operate it and I’d walk
them through the steps and oversee their work. It felt
like we were pioneering the industry of LiDAR in Ethiopia
because LiDAR data acquisition was new for them. But
they were all super smart people, really willing to learn,
and I really enjoyed this aspect of the project.”
Once Derek had flown the entire flight plan for the day,
he would return to base where Steve would begin the
data processing. “Once I received the data, I’d ensure it
was entered into the georeferenced, unclassified point
cloud,” says Steve. “For security reasons, we had to
do all data processing in the government offices. We
trained several of their staff to work through the data
from GNSS and Inertial processing to computing the
point cloud.”
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
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Derek at work acquiring the LiDAR data with his crew.
Though it sounds like the two had a seamless tag
team going throughout the project, they still faced
their fair share of obstacles. “Logistically, we had many
challenges,” says Steve. “Cultural differences and
language barriers aside, we had to pay for everything in
cash, and getting a hold of enough local currency was
a constant challenge.” Money seemed to be on both
Derek and Steve’s list of challenges. “Getting money out
of the ATMs was like a lottery,” says Derek. “Sometimes
they worked and sometimes they didn’t.”
Steve and Derek stayed in Ethiopia collecting and
processing data for 20 days; the Vancouver Mapping
branch completed the rest of the processing, classification,
and editing was done over the next three months
back in Vancouver.
crew. “Ethiopia’s history runs quite deep,” he says. “It’s
referred to as the ‘Cradle of Humanity.’ Being a part of
this project and seeing this history was probably the
most amazing part of being there. Besides the fake pilot
shirts, which I still have.”
When asked if he enjoys these international projects,
Steve has mixed feelings. “At home, we have a huge
base of support – there’s always someone around to
ask for help. When you’re abroad, you’re very much left
to your own devices since there’s basically a 24-hour
Project wrap up
Having returned home and had time to decompress,
Steve and Derek reflect on the project with positive
feelings. “I was pleasantly surprised by the local culture
and the people,” says Steve. “I found everyone to be
really open and very friendly.” Derek notes that when
they wrapped up the LiDAR work, he was able to
cruise around the Eastern Rift Valley with the flight
Derek enjoying a break in his "official" pilot's shirt.
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
Page 4

HSE corner - Safety
during unexpected
natural disasters
By: Rob Dhillon
The flight crew hard at work.
delay between asking a question and getting an
answer,” he says. “The international work is way more
challenging, but there’s a reward and a real sense of
accomplishment when it all works out.”
Dan agrees that the work can be complicated to pull
off. “In Canada, you don’t have to have permits to fly
any specific path; in Ethiopia, the Information Network
Security Agency must approve all flight paths,” says
Dan. Because of all these hurdles, Ormat, our client,
has been very happy with our team’s work. “Just the
fact that we could carry the project out impressed them,
because it’s certainly not an easy project,” he says.
Both Steve and Derek were happy to return home after
such an intensive project, but Derek misses one thing
in particular: the coffee. “The coffee was excellent,” he
says enthusiastically.
Our Tampa Bay office recently had a near miss, as it
was in the direct path of Hurricane Irma. Luckily, its
path changed at the last minute, and though the area
was still severely impacted, all our employees were
accounted for. This event as well as the wildfires
we’ve been experiencing in Western Canada are an
opportunity to examine our protocols and ensure we
are prepared for future emergencies.
Staying safe at home and work is about planning.
We develop plans to prevent loss from occurring.
With natural disasters and other similar emergencies,
we plan and prepare for them the best we can and
execute our plans before, during, and after the event.
Actively planning can mean the difference between
life and death.
I encourage all employees to take a moment at home
and at work to think about how prepared you are if
an emergency occurred tomorrow. Are you prepared
to survive days without access to water, communication
networks, and potentially emergency first
responders? Could you go weeks without electricity?
If you had to quickly grab everything you need and
evacuate on very short notice, would you be ready?
Do you know the Emergency Response Plan at your
office? Take the time to answer these questions,
know the potential emergencies locally, and have a
plan in place. Better to prepare than to regret.
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
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Feature
The Atal Setu connects previously isolated
communities in three Indian states
By: Raj Singh
The Atal Setu creates a critical link for communities on either side of the bridge.
Addressing the client’s objectives
The Atal Setu is the first cable-stayed bridge in India
procured under a design-build contract to connect
the states of Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir across
the River Ravi in Northern India. This new connection
has reduced travel times by over four hours, and
created a critical link for emergency response access
to the Kashmir Valley. In August 2010, Border Roads
Organization of the Indian Ministry of Defense selected
the contractor team of IRCON/SP Singla Constructions
Pvt. Ltd. to construct the 592m bridge through a
highly competitive design-build bidding process. The
contractor engaged McElhanney as the prime consultant
for the conceptual and detailed design, construction
engineering, and site support aspects of the project.
The foremost challenge for McElhanney’s team was to
develop a design concept that suited the unique site
conditions and reduced construction cost and duration
while respecting the bid documents’ constraints.
Project complexity
The bridge site is in a high seismic region near the
Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates, where several
severe earthquakes have occurred. The site’s high
seismic activity and strong wind conditions of 140km/h
posed unique challenges. The extremely narrow 13.2mwide
two-lane deck over a 350m main span was vulnerable
to aerodynamic instability, meaning that stability
under high winds needed to be carefully considered
during erection and operation. Steep rocky banks and
large fluctuations in the river water levels made the
erection of the main span segments from below very
difficult. Because the side spans were unconventionally
shorter than the main span, the imbalanced superstructure
created significant uplift forces at the abutment.
To address the bridge erection challenges from the
river, the team developed a customized gantry to lift
the superstructure steel segments from overhead
and hoist them into position, transporting them along
the side spans, which were completed on falsework
prior to the main span cantilevering operations.
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
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McElhanney’s team made some key innovative refinements
to the reference concept to enhance the structural
system’s efficiency while minimizing costs:
Modified diamond-shaped towers, which reduced
lateral seismic response and improved aerodynamic
stability, while still being easier to construct compared
to a traditional diamond-shape tower. The diamond
portion of the tower was kept as small as possible
based on traffic clearance constraints; the upper portion
was designed as a single 53m vertical cantilever where
all the cables connected. Construction of this vertical
cantilever was simpler and faster than the inclined legs
of a traditional diamond shape. “Working at the Atal
Setu site in such a remote area of India brought me
back in time,” says Chad Amiel, Field Reviewer and
Construction Support. “With labour being cheap and
equipment and technology being expensive, excavations
were dug by hand, rocks were moved by men,
and falsework was erected with ropes and pulleys
instead of a crane. This was a vast contrast to construction
sites in North America, where labor is expensive,
and it informed some of our design decisions.”
Novel intermediate pier props, installed under the
side spans, helped stiffen the tower and superstructure
and reduce demands from wind and live load
by over 50%. These relatively inexpensive tension/
compression piers only needed to be 10m tall because
the side spans were already low to the ground,
owing to the shallow natural terrain. Though the piers
may seem relatively insignificant, they led to major
material savings in the superstructure and tower.
The savings became even more appreciable for this
bridge as it is designed to Indian Road Congress
(IRC) code, where the live load requirement is one
of the heaviest in the world and includes provisions
for military tanks crossing the bridge. Similar
bridges with low-to-ground side spans generally
provide standard bents to support the superstructure,
including resisting lateral load effects, and
require a significant structure with foundations.
Unique hybrid superstructure, comprised of composite
steel in the main span and cast-in-place concrete
in the side spans. Taking advantage of the shallow
natural terrain on either side of the river, the team
decided to cast-in-place the side spans on falsework
using the readily available local labour forces.
In this way, the lightweight composite steel girder
system with a 225mm deck in the longer main
span was counterbalanced by the heavier concrete
edge girder system supporting a 400mm deck in
the shorter side span which eliminated uplift at the
abutments during service conditions – very important
since one of the most vulnerable components on
a cable-stayed bridge is the uplift anchorage.
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
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Project management hurdles
Aside from technical challenges, the team faced several
important project management challenges throughout.
The contractor set an extremely aggressive design
schedule of only six months compared to the nine to
12 months usually allocated for the design of similar
cable-stayed bridges. The schedule for this bridge
was compressed because, after award, as is common
in India, the contractor solicited value engineering
proposals from multiple consultants to reduce project
costs. This consultant selection phase stretched longer
than anticipated, however, consuming five months
of the active design-build contract period, before
McElhanney was appointed as the prime consultant.
McElhanney successfully delivered the design plans
within six months, recovering the initial time lost and
allowing construction to commence as planned. “We
collocated our production team to a modern home-stay
office facility in Gurgaon, India, with fully furnished
rooms, a common lounge, and dining on the lower two
levels, and offices on the third,” says Morgan. “The
team lived and worked together for up to six months
to meet the challenging schedule while enjoying the
opportunity to visit a foreign country in their down time.”
This on-site project office also helped mitigate some of
the coordination problems associated with a 12-hour
time difference. This office facilitated better communication
among team members, aided in understanding and
interpreting the IRC code, and added further support
for the client’s proof-checking process performed by
IIT Delhi. “I found that the ‘face-time’ with the Indian
construction staff meant more effective communication
and teamwork, resulting in a good quality bridge,”
says Morgan Trowland, Senior Site Manager. “With
one of us on-site every day, they would treat us as
part of their team, share every detail of the job, and
in turn we would respond much more quickly and
helpfully than we would if we were back in Vancouver.”
Connecting communities
“There were quite a few shopkeepers that I talked
to each day while walking back from the site,”
says Morgan. “They were usually quite languid,
but they’d always light up when the time came to
ask when the bridge would be finished. Clearly
they’d been looking forward to it for decades.”
Since completion, the bridge has reduced travel time
from Basohli in Jammu & Kashmir to Dunera in Punjab
by over four hours. This major time-savings has meant
a boon for the previously isolated communities living
across the river in the Himalayan town of Basohli, drastically
improving locals’ quality of life. “It was satisfying
to engineer this important piece of infrastructure that
has made a major difference to the lives of the local
people,” says David Jeakle, Engineer of Record.
Chad Amiel, second from right, on-site with some of the construction workers.
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
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Reports already indicate an economic boost from
increased tourism activity to the scenic region and the
commercial mining of gypsum and limestone. Small
businesses and restaurants are sprouting up on either
side of the bridge to cater to the needs of tourists and
industry commuters. The connection has empowered
the local communities by renewing inter-state
business, art, and cultural exchange – including revival
of nuptial ties, as families have also started considering
arranged marriage proposals from across the river. The
connection is also encouraging local youth to consider
educational opportunities in more prestigious colleges
across the river. Security in the region has significantly
improved now that troops have quick access
to the insurgency-prone areas in the Kashmir Valley.
The bridge was inaugurated by India’s Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in
December 2015.
The bridge’s opening
All project deliverables were completed on time and on
budget, and the bridge opened to traffic in December
2015, after just 4 years of construction, cutting the
construction time by more than half when compared
to similar cable-stayed bridges in the country.
The much-anticipated opening of the bridge drew
a huge crowd for the inauguration by the Defense
Minister of India. This landmark bridge is being proudly
described by the local community as an “engineering
marvel.” The Atal Setu has been recognized thus far
with an ACEC-BC Award of Excellence in the transportation
category. “The Award of Excellence is of
momentous value to us as it recognizes engineering
excellence,” says Dave Jeakle. “This award recognizes
McElhanney’s extraordinary efforts in designing
and constructing the first design-build cablestayed
bridge in Northern India in record time.”
Locals enjoy the pedestrian passageway along the bridge after opening.
McElhanney's staff were on-site for many months during the project.
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
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Employee spotlight
Brook Robazza, MASc, EIT, Bridge Engineer, Vancouver
find that when you’re a tourist, you mostly just go to the
larger hubs or touristy areas of a country; you don’t get
to sit down and work with the real people doing their
real jobs in more conservative rural areas. This really
lets you see how things are done in different places in
the world. And you get a real appreciation for North
American construction practice and safety standards!
Brook has been with McElhanney since 2015. He has
been involved with many of our international bridge
projects, travelling most recently to India for the Arrah-
Chhapra Bridge project (recently renamed as the Veer
Kunwar Singh Setu) in Bihar, India. He took some time
to let us know about his experience with McElhanney,
and working abroad.
How many international bridge projects
have you worked on?
Three, all in India: the Atal Setu in Jammu Kashmir, the
the Sultanganj Bridge in Bihar (currently under construction),
and the Veer Kunwar Singh Setu in Bihar. The last
is my favourite bridge, it’s the world’s longest multispan
extradosed bridge. I spent over four months straight
on site at the beginning of construction and revisited
another six times up until its completion.
What do you enjoy most about travelling
abroad for work?
I love diving into cultures that are different than my
own; the things you experience really put your life into
perspective and let you see through a different lens. I
What do you like about being a McElhanney
employee?
The best thing about being a McElhanney employee
is the huge amount of opportunity and responsibility
provided to you right away, if you want to take
it and show you can handle it. Even though it can be
challenging and can be a baptism by fire, I think there’s
no better way to learn.
Can you share a current project with us that
you’re excited about?
We are currently working on the design of the
Sultanganj superstructure, while the substructure
construction has already commenced. This is an
especially exciting project that features a 270m cablestayed
main span and a series of 163m extradosed
approach spans, summing to a total bridge length
of over 3km. Some of the approach spans lie on the
portion of the road profile that includes both vertical and
horizontal curves, which presents interesting challenges
to the stay cable geometry and analysis.
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
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Aerial view of the Nevada project.
Client spotlight Ormat
4 years of service
McElhanney started working with Ormat in 2013,
when we were connected with them through LICA,
the company with which we worked for LiDAR equipment.
LICA endorsed us for a LiDAR project in Sarulla
on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, as, at the time,
we had an office in Indonesia. Since this first project
together, Ormat has either hired us directly for projects
or provided us with several critical recommendations.
We won a geothermal exploration project with
the St. Lucian Government after Ormat recommended
the project to us, and we submitted a bid. Ormat
sole-sourced us for the Eastern Rift project (as featured
in this issue), as well as for the geothermal exploration
project in Nevada and California that included 20
sites. Recently, Ormat recommended us to the Nevada
Bureau of Mines and Geology for a geothermal exploration
project; we submitted our bid and won. The Bureau
has since recommended us to the US Navy for a project
at China Lake, California. We’re the preferred proponent
for the project.
Flying over Reno, NV, for Ormat.
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
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Congratulate your colleagues:
Staff milestones
July milestones
30 years
Grant Stewart, Surrey
10 years
Kerry Barth, Courtenay
JiJun Sun, Surrey
Beatrice Gaal, Prince George
5 years
Heather Bruce, Edmonton
Sean Twomey, Kitimat
Victoria Sjoberg, Nanaimo
3 years
Edward Mullen, Campbell River
Martin Prihoda, Vancouver
Joan Yau, Vancouver
Vicki Pistner, Prince George
Simon Armstrong-Bayliss, Calgary
Vanessa Braun, Vancouver
Elaine Collins, Corp Vancouver
1 year
Alexander Fachler, Courtenay
Joana Mendes, Surrey
Tristan McMullan, Terrace
Peter Earles, Campbell River
Samaneh Ghazanfari Hashemi,
Surrey
Yan Linwood, Tampa
Kristine Seibel, Calgary
Joshua Columbus, Surrey
August milestones
15 years
Alan Teed, Surrey
3 years
Neil Penner, Courtenay
Dora Ivekovic, Vancouver
Loretta Irish, Nanaimo
Penelope Kazoleas, Corp
Vancouver
1 year
Gregory Seselja, Vancouver
Garret Dillabough, Canmore
Oleg Lurye, Corp Vancouver
Sandra Penner, Prince Rupert
Victoria Ritco, Saskatoon
Jakov Jakus, Vancouver
Christopher Lee, Victoria
Jennifer Kasprowicz, Canmore
Gaven Kramer, Canmore
September milestones
20 years
Franco Leggiadro, Vancouver
Raju Daniel, Edmonton
15 years
Ferdinand Estrellado, Vancouver
5 years
Jonathan Stenzel, Penticton
Jamie DeVries, Terrace
Daniel Fowler, Calgary
3 years
Lucie Seveckova, Vancouver
Vicki Kilpatrick, Corp Vancouver
Chad Amiel, Vancouver
Dan Ashby, Vancouver
Dylan Brockmeyer, Vancouver
Robert Gaskins, Tampa
David Jeakle, Tampa
Thomas Peake, Tampa
Raj Singh, Vancouver
Benjamin Ticknor, Vancouver
Vikram Verma, Vancouver
Song Zhang, Vancouver
Jim Cardwell, Corp Vancouver
Edward George, Corp Vancouver
Allan Premia, Vancouver
1 year
JP Vidizzon, Corp Vancouver
Mary Beaudet, Canmore
Tannis Herauf, Calgary
Paul Sean, Edmonton
Jeffrey Brown, Calgary
Rachel Hoinkes, Calgary
Solaleh Khezri, Calgary
Amanda Peardon, Calgary
Graham Pendray, Calgary
Michael Stercl, Calgary
Roger Towsley, Calgary
Steven Vogt, Calgary
Rani-Lee Wiedemann, Calgary
Robert Wiedemann, Calgary
MCSL Quarterly Newsletter Fall Issue 2017
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