With many disciplines working together on a variety of projects, perhaps the best way to get a feel for a firm’s impact is simply, a coffee with… the people doing the work.
This video series features experts sharing insights gained during their time in the AEC industry, with an emphasis on the importance of collaboration to meet a common goal of creating improved communities.
In this edition, we sit down with leaders in transportation, structures, and water resource engineering from the Colorado region. Hear how their work overlaps to enhance both mobility and sustainability for communities.
Hear the full conversation in the video above and check out the transcript below:
Kevin: All these things, there’s so many details that go into the process, and before you know it, you look up and it’s built, and you’re like, “Wow, this went pretty well.”
Introductions
0:14 [Skip to this chapter]
Kevin: Hi, my name is Kevin Dooley. I am the Business Unit Leader of Transportation and Infrastructure here in Colorado in the Rocky Mountain West region for Otak.
I have about 20 years of experience in the industry, depending on when you start counting.
Tracy: I’m Tracy Emmanuel. I’m the Business Unit Lead for Water and Natural Resources for the Colorado region. Started my professional career as a fluvial geomorphologist working in the Pacific Northwest, and then most of my career has been back here in Colorado.
David: I’m David Graff. I’m the Structural Engineering Business Unit Lead in Colorado. I’ve been in the industry for about 15 years, and at Otak for about nine.
How does your infrastructure work help communities thrive?
0:59 [Skip to this chapter]
Kevin: These are often major safety upgrades for a lot of people. They’re much needed projects. And I think making sure that we’re addressing the needs of the community in the project goals. That’s one thing that always stands out to me after these projects are built.
Whether we’re getting cyclists off of a three-foot paved shoulder that was built in the ’60s and putting them on an eight-foot paved path behind the curb, to sight lines associated with retaining walls, replacing old infrastructure associated with bridges; and then also the work that goes into analysis of the floodplain. Obviously, that has this huge scope that we need to take into account on these projects, and it’s great when it works together and comes out.
Tracy: Being able to support our communities, I think that’s a big driver for our whole office, which is fun for that environment for us to be all having that goal in mind, or that driving passion for our communities.
And, for us, having rivers and streams that are in reasonable condition for generations to come. And then for folks to be able to get to them via bike or hike or what have you, I think is a fun overlap with all of our teams.
David: I really enjoy the fact that many of our projects are very local to us. That we get the opportunity to go out and use the projects that we’ve designed once they’re finished and once they’re constructed.
I think it really makes you think about the design in just a little bit more detail, knowing that you and your family and your friends are going to be the ones going out to use these projects.
Tracy: Mm-hmm. Yeah, agreed. Just a couple of weeks ago, we did the happy hour where we rode to the happy hour location via all of the trails and bridges and crossings and underpasses that you guys have designed.
It was pretty darn special for Scott [Belonger, active transportation lead] to be giving us a tour of all the different sites, and it was right here. We rode right from our office, which I agree, I think that’s pretty special.
What does multidisciplinary collaboration really look like?
3:20 [Skip to this chapter]
Kevin: Our structures and roadway and trails and transportation groups have historically collaborated very frequently. I mean, almost on every project, right?
And I think the benefit of that is us, our staff, have learned a lot about each other over the years. And so you get to wear many hats, you know what I mean? You start to think like a structural engineer, or a structural engineer may think a little bit more like a roadway or transportation engineer.
I think that that’s the great opportunity and the beauty of working together in a multidisciplinary group such as ourselves.
Tracy: It’s not always perfect. I think as we’re working through bigger and bigger projects, I feel like we’re learning from maybe mistakes or where things could have gone smoother. And I think that’s huge in terms of the next big projects.
I think the biggest lessons learned are communication early and often. I feel like you say that, and it’s like so what? But it’s very true.
David: And I think we’re also learning how to all speak each other’s languages, at least on a conversational level.
Learning what are the constraints of a 1D versus a 2D hydraulic model, and when you use one, when you use the other. Even just having a low-level understanding of that can help me understand what are the limitations of what’s being done and how that impacts the design of our portion of the project.
Tracy: Yeah. It’s a learning process, right?
Kevin: It is. And now that we’ve grown in that we’re starting to work on larger projects together. What’s really important to collaboration is not working in silos but understanding how each group affects the other.
Navigating complexity on a unique mountain trail
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Kevin: One project that stands out recently is the Maroon Creek Trail project. That was a trail project up in Aspen that was needed and on planners’ minds for a long time.
And the reason it hadn’t been done is because it was challenging. There was challenging right of way, there was challenging drainage and existing structures, dealing with a lot of the local schools.
We approached it with all of those needs in mind and came out with a project that just was great. It’s hard sometimes to fit a public trail and that type of a transportation, mobility trail within a really tight corridor like that and have it fit so well into a landscape.
David: That project, the solution, and I think where Otak works really well is after it’s been built, it feels as though the solution was obvious, but the solution was not obvious.
That had to be worked through. The problems were challenging because it had been so many years on the docket is because there wasn’t an obvious solution.
And then once we came in and we solved the problem in a way that does feel obvious, we almost become a little invisible to that. But that’s the kind of space that we like to work in where we do have to work together with the trail, the river, the structures all have to work together in tandem to provide a good solution.
Small changes become big eureka moments in Breckenridge
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David: I think Blue River Pathways is maybe a good way to say it. It was a path rehabilitation, [pedestrian bridge design] replacement, and river restoration project. Because it did go right through the middle of downtown Breckenridge, it was a very constrained project that really required a lot of coordination.
If one team said, “Hey, we need to make the structure a little longer,” well, that impacted the trail, or it impacted the river. So, at every point, if one team needed something, it was taking away from someone else.
Kevin: Those eureka moments don’t always have to be these huge things. They can be something really small.
Like placing a curb and gutter on our approach to the underpass on the high side of the trail. Those little design details solve a lot of problems down the road.
David: Absolutely, yeah. We skewed the box by seven degrees, the underpass, and that helped with so much more of the river capacity that then downstream we didn’t have to do as much work because we were able to just rotate the structure.
And that was something we didn’t consider because we always, at least as a starting point, put a box perpendicular to a roadway because that’s the most efficient from our standpoint. But then once that was recognized, it’s like, oh, it doesn’t really change much for us, but it’s huge for the river.
Tracy: Yeah. That’s a good one.
There’s probably a lot of understanding, to your point, the terminology and saying, “okay, why does this change impact the floodplain?”
So, I think there was probably a lot of that, just information sharing. So that it’s clear if someone makes a minor change in the structure, that it’s going to impact whatever we’re doing for the floodplain permitting.
Defining & finding success on projects
9:02 [Skip to this chapter]
David: So many of these projects are for our local municipalities to where they’re intended to be used.
And so going out and seeing people using it, enjoying it, and noticing some of the details that we put in, something that probably could’ve had lots of conversation, lots of work to get it in there, and seeing people notice it or talk about it… is, and yeah, appreciate it, is very satisfying.
Tracy: Just thinking about projects that have been rewarding and that there’s a moment that you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this was so great,” right?
I’ve told this story before because I feel like it’s so iconic for, well, me and how I look at projects and how I look at the success of the projects; but we did a diversion replacement on South Platte years ago, and it was for fish passage and for resiliency, for operations, all the things, and we worked with David’s team on this as well.
During construction, they constructed the diversion, they constructed this fish passage channel, right? So the channel where the fish are going to be able to move up and down. And after the sections were constructed, the water was released into that area. And I went out there the next day and was walking it just to see how it was functioning, and there was a fish in part of the little section of the channel.
And it just, for me, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this fish may have never been in this part of the river,” right? I think it was just meaningful because I think it was immediate that there was a success point of, yes, it’s a fish, but that’s kind of our client in a way, too, in some of these projects. So it was kind of a fun aha, like, “Yay, we’re doing good stuff.”
Kevin: Yeah, similarly, I can think of a project example of Kaufman Street in Longmont that we did. And there was a lot of effort into reconstructing and redesigning seven blocks in an urban corridor, taking a historic older roadway that had on-street angled and parallel parking, and very small sidewalks, and fronting everything from businesses to public entity buildings and private property, single family.
There’s just everything in seven blocks that you could imagine. So all that effort that we put into it and the plans and the details, I think it makes it worth it, going that extra mile during the design to make sure things are really going to work themselves out in the field, and then have it come to life on the ground, and seeing people use it, and I think it’s great.
Tracy: I had ice cream sitting on the side of the street there, at Sweet Cow. Just this weekend. We sat there and I was like, “Wait, I think this is our project.”
Kevin: Yeah. This is our project.
Tracy: And it looks very nice. It looks very nice. Yeah.
