My column last week focused on one of the Pitt Senior Design Projects, a proposed roundabout in Bridgeville. This week I want to review the other nine projects and highlight the efforts of this year’s crop of future engineers. A major objective of this program is to introduce the students to “near-real-world” projects; seven of the ten actually have real world clients.
Two of them were requested by officials of the Borough of Carnegie, a direct consequence of successful projects performed on their behalf in the past. Carnegie has an Action Plan that includes consideration of installing solar panel farms with sufficient capacity to provide all the electrical power the municipal government consumes, well over 600,000 kilowatt-hours a year. Working with a supplier of solar panels, the team determined that this would require about 1200 panels, and about 35,000 square feet of area.
After determining that the roofs on the available municipal buildings were inadequate for this application, they decided to investigate the alternative of constructing canopies over two municipal parking lots and installing the panels on them. The resulting design is synergistic and certainly warrants consideration. This concept is being implemented on a large scale in several locations elsewhere.
The other Carnegie project was a request for assistance with their Storm Water Management Plan. To acquire a permit from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection allowing the Borough to discharge storm water into Chartiers Creek, they must submit a plan that documents the implementation of “Best Management Practices” sufficient to reduce the release of sediment by ten percent.
The team studied the storm water system in the community and concluded that the most effective method would be to construct two rain gardens and a bioswale for a cost of about $200,000; theoretically this would remove about 15,000 pounds of sediment annually, increasing the removal by four percent, sufficient to meet the PADEP requirements.
Similarly, Churchill Borough requested help coming up with a preliminary design and location for a new public works garage. The eventual result was an attractive three bay building located adjacent to the existing Borough municipal building. The team chose to design the structure using autoclaved aerated concrete masonry units, faced with brick. The masonry units are particularly attractive because of their light weight and insulating properties.
In the past few years our design teams have worked with the Perennial Project in Brownsville, a non-profit organization committed to renewal in that community. This term they requested advice associated with the construction of docks at the municipal wharf, to take advantage of recreation on the Monongahela River. The specific problem being studied was the dredging of the river and the disposal of the silt that was removed. The team recommended use of a cutter-head dredge to remove about three hundred cubic yards of silt, dewatering of the resulting sludge in geotextile tubes, and disposal at a local agricultural site. The anticipated total cost is about $360,000.
Two other projects dealt with recreational trails in the City of Pittsburgh. Riverlife, the non-profit organization responsible for redevelopment of the city’s river fronts, requested help planning a link between the north end of the West End Bridge and the Three Rivers Heritage Trail. After studying a number of alternatives, the team recommended the construction of a switch-back ramp similar to the one on the Trail on the Monongahela Wharf. This would enable cyclists to “complete the loop” by crossing the Ohio River on the West End Bridge.
One of the newest parks in the City is the Knoxville Incline Greenway. Previously the site of a well-known incline, the area now features a trail leading from the South Side Flats up Mount Washington. In response to a request, a design team compiled a comprehensive plan to upgrade the trail, rehabilitate a bridge on it, and add several sets of permanent steps to tie it into neighborhood streets. This would greatly enhance pedestrian mobility in this area.
Although the other three projects were not specifically associated with “real world” requests, they too are based on the solution of legitimate problems. One team decided to tackle the problem of the lack of grocery stores in Oakland by designing a building to be located on the University campus, housing a 4800 square-foot grocery on its first floor, and an urban hydroponics garden on the second floor. The result is a handsome timber structure that would be an asset to the neighborhood.
A team composed of Construction Management students accepted the challenge of producing independently a comprehensive plan for the replacement of the Turnpike bridges over the Beaver River, a project with a value in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They began with the information in the original bid documents and produced a very credible plan.
The final project studied a very real problem that waste water treatment plants face today, the removal and disposal of Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These are tiny molecules with chains of linked carbon and fluorine atoms, which are deleterious to our health. Recently the Environmental Protection Agency issued regulations limiting the acceptable level of PFAS in bio-solids to four parts per trillion.
Typically, waste water treatment plants generate bio-solids in the form of sludge from clarifiers, which often is converted into fertilizer. Our team studied a hypothetical plant treating one million gallons per day of sewage (10,000 people) with an assumed PFAS contamination of twelve parts per trillion. They examined alternative ways to remove it and ultimately selected the installation of granular activated carbon reactors immediately after primary treatment as the most efficient way to capture the PFAS, followed by disposal in a sealed landfill.
The common denominator of all these projects is the students’ commitment to solving real world problems that are critical to society and the infrastructure. Coupled with this are well demonstrated analytical, design, and communication skills which have produced a generation of young people with whom we can trust our future.