GEI Consultants— Denver office awarded five projects

DENVER — GEI Consultants Inc. has been awarded five projects through its Denver office. GEI will provide a range of geotechnical, environmental consulting, and planning services for both federal and municipal clients.

Update to Dam Safety Handbook — GEI is the prime consultant assisting the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Division of Water and Power, Branch of Dam Safety, update its Safety of Dams Program Handbook. The key objectives for this work include integrating a risk-informed decision process to all dam safety program activities and elements following the Department of Interior Public Protection Guidelines; incorporating current industry standards and BIA practices; and defining future roles of BIA and supporting partners in the dam safety program. The handbook contains comprehensive policies and guidelines related to risk management; risk assessments; safety inspections; engineering evaluations; design and construction for risk reductions; permitting; emergency management; monitoring; operation and maintenance; early warning systems; dam security; and training.

Input and information from BIA’s central office in Denver, Bureau of Reclamation and other federal agencies, eight BIA regional dam-safety officers, and tribal personnel will be considered. The project will be led by Ying-Kit Choi, Ph.D., P.E., a senior geotechnical engineer and project manager with GEI’s Denver office. It will also include input from two sub-consultants: Dr. David Bowles, a risk analysis expert, and Mr. Steve Jamieson of W.W. Wheeler and Associates.

Castle Rock Water Resource Planning and Engineering — GEI will provide on-call professional services through a new master services agreement (MSA) with the town of Castle Rock, Colo. The municipal utilities department has selected GEI to provide services in water resource planning and engineering, and water and wastewater engineering.

Water Planning Services — GEI is broadening its longstanding working relationship with Denver Water, a public utility serving 1.3 million people in Denver and many of its surrounding suburbs. GEI has historically performed dam engineering services, raw water transmission, and environmental permitting services for Denver Water. Now, the firm looks to expand its 20-year working relationship through several new General Engineering Services contracts by including environmental planning and water resource planning services for the utility.

Previous assignments have included dam and reservoir design, construction and inspections, raw water pipeline planning and design, and ecological and permitting support services for water project developments.

Hodgson-Harris Dam/Reservoir Rehabilitation Project — GEI is providing design and construction stage engineering for the Hodgson-Harris Dam/Reservoir rehabilitation project near Superior, Colo. Work will focus on restoring the dam to enable the reservoir to store its historic water volume, while addressing identified dam safety concerns. Specific primary improvements include partial replacement of the dam embankment to include a drain/filter zone, emergency spillway replacement, and a new, enlarged primary outlet structure. Work on the project began in September 2012 and is expected to be finished in late December, 2013.

Dam Inundation Map for Tucker Lake — GEI recently completed a Dam Inundation Map for Colorado’s Tucker Lake, located in Arvada, Colo. The lake is adjacent to both the Blunn Reservoir and Ralston Creek and is contained by both a north and south dam. GEI performed dam breach analyses and flood inundation mapping for each of the drainage channels assuming a separate “worst case” scenario for each dam.

Analyses and inundation mapping were performed consistent with the Colorado Office of the State Engineer Dam Safety Branch Guidelines for Dam Breach Analysis. The mapping extends to a point downstream of the lake where a dam breach would no longer pose a hazard.