September 2009

A Day in the Life of an Infrastructure Engineer: Braving Alaska
by Jeff Rowe, PE
Vice President, Infrastructure Engineers, Inc.

A day in the life of an Infrastructure Engineer is seldom what would be considered traditional engineering - and so it was for the Infrastructure Engineers' underwater inspection team in Alaska. Performing work under a contract that the firm has held for six years, the underwater inspection team, led by a professional engineer-commercial diver, was tasked with conducting the underwater inspection of 19 ferry terminals and bridges for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (AKDOT&PF) in July and August of 2009. These structures were located along the Aleutian Chain of islands and in the Arctic Circle in western Alaska.

The team was presented daily challenges to overcome. A 53-foot live-aboard charter boat was hired to transport the divers from facility to facility along the Aleutian Chain. The Aleutians are located at the intersection of the North Pacific and Bering Seas, which produce some of the most severe weather in the world. One of the inspection locations, Dutch Harbor, is known to have only 6 to 10 clear, calm days a year. True to its reputation, the weather conditions that the team had to overcome was literally horrendous. The team experienced gale force winds with gusts up to 90mph, heavy bone chilling rain, extremely dense fog and clouds, and sea swells up to 20 feet high. Several times during the "adventure" the team had to hold up in a protected cove for several days until the wind and waves calmed. However, this weather did not deter the Infrastructure Engineers inspection team. They were able to overcome each of the challenges presented to them and perform all of the required underwater inspections in this wild and scenic corner of America. Although the team was not bringing in the million-dollar crab catches that the popular Discovery Channel show "The Deadliest Catch" does on a regular basis, the team was traversing some of the same waters in order to keep the traveling public safe, once again demonstrating that everyday at Infrastructure Engineers is a new challenge and not your average traditional engineering day.