A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 61

Day 61

Balancing Budget Line Items

I finally completed the analysis of my budget and identified two line items that needed to have funds amended to agree with the actual expenditures. Fortunately there were amounts in related funds that I could amend to a lower amount so the overall change to my division’s budget is zero. I’m also hoping that we get new software at some point so the whole process of monitoring the finances for our divisions is easier and more efficient.

Culvert Lining Project

We stopped out at our culvert lining project again today to check out the grouting operation. The crews created bulkheads at each end of the culvert. They had placed plastic pipes into the annular space through which they pumped grout. It took the whole day to pump a total of 18 cubic yards into the space. Next they will form up the headwalls and probably pour on Monday. The one photo shows the concrete truck discharging the grout to the pump and the line from the pump to the plastic pipe leading to the annular space. The other photo below is a close up of the grout line and the plastic piping leading into the annular space.

Prairie Green

Our city owns a large natural area called Prairie Green. It was purchased and developed through a bond several years ago after the citizens voted to pursue creating a green buffer at the city’s west limits. Part of the area will eventually be a developed wetland – so far we only have a portion of the total wetland completed and are monitoring it. One of the issues we’ve been having is establishing the proper plant material because the area floods each Spring. So last week, our water department installed a culvert across a berm through the southern portion of the property. The plan is that this pipe will help drain the area that floods. Today the community development director, who is the project manager, and I visited the site to inspect the new culvert.

Miscellaneous work

I spent the rest of the day handling a lot of small, miscellaneous tasks such as checking out questions from developers, organizing my room and desk (it really needed it!), organizing email, helping our intern with measuring the proposed sidewalk/curb ramp work for next year’s road project, and discussing with one of the street foremen what roads should be patched or paved next year. I also contacted our IT department to ask them to look at helping out one of my staff get their computer running better. For some reason it was taking forever to start up each morning. Fortunately it looks like they found the problem and were able to get it operating faster.

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