Nnamdi Okoye

1. Describe your construction site visits

The first site I visited was an overpass that was a part of a 5 year local highway project. I live in an area that has high volume traffic due to population growth; however the road structure in place is no longer sufficient enough to support the area. The whole project spans for about 7 or 8 miles, and the goal is to alleviate traffic by expanding the road. The overpass expanded the road as well as created a new path, because the old one had two-way traffic with no divider.

The second site was the Caldecott tunnel, which was another expansion project for another highway that connects the Eastbay to Oakland. Currently there are three tunnels and depending on rush hour traffic the middle tunnel is switched back and forth for which ever direction has the most congestion. The goal of the project is to make a fourth tunnel so that traffic can flow better. On my visit to this site I took a tour of the whole tunnel which spanned ¾ of a mile and I saw the engineering behind building the tunnel. One thing that stood out about this site was the amount of precaution taken when entering the site, as well as all the things that can go wrong from an engineering stand point.

2. How did the construction site visits influence your Engineering degree?

Going to these sites gave more purpose to obtaining my engineering degree, because it made everything that I do in class come to life. Every class that I’ve taken only deals with the mathematical modeling of problems. Problems are solved on paper and you don’t get to see the results put into action. But, when you see real life engineering situations you understand why what you have been learning is important.

3. Where were the locations of each construction site visit?

The first site was the Highway 4 bypass in the bay area, particularly the east bay. It runs from Pittsburg, CA to Brentwood, CA.

The second site was at the Caldecott Tunnels, which connect Orinda to Oakland, on highway 24.

4. What types of things were you doing on a daily basis on these visits?

For an engineer, visiting the sites consisted of analyzing the structures to make sure everything is being built according to design and correctly, because the people actually building the structures are not engineers. We discussed potential problems that can occur and tricks in building the structures that I have yet to learn. Problems the worry about on the first site mainly involved over settling, but one trick they used to build the bridge was a process called post-tensile stress. At the tunnel project the tunnel collapsing, sufficient oxygen, and keeping scheduling were the main concerns.  Shotcrete was on thing I found interesting at this site because it is a form of concrete that can be manipulated more than regular concrete.