School works on projects, helps to keep utilities safe

Jeff Lew

By Anna Herkamp
Summer Reporter

The everyday convenience of having running water is something many people take for granted, but one department in the School of Technology is devoted to designing construction projects so that utilities such as water and electricity are not only convenient, but safe.

Building Construction Management Technology has several branches of study, including sub-surface utility engineering.

This branch of technology focuses on safely constructing roads, sewers, bridges and maintaining such structures so that the utility lines are not disturbed.

Most utilities are buried under the roads people drive over every day, said Jeff Lew, professor of Building and Construction Management.

A sight not uncommon on campus during the summer is road construction. The people who specialize in subsurface utility engineering play a direct role in maintaining the safety of not only the utility lines themselves, but also the lives of the workers who maintain the roads.

In order to avoid hitting a gas line, or other utility line when workers are building or expanding a road, utilities engineers locate underground utilities before the work starts and then design the building project around it, so that no lines are hit or destroyed, said Lew.

If utilities are not drawn or located correctly on the blueprints of a project, the whole project is delayed, and it costs more to redesign the contract, he said.

Lew recently obtained a grant from the Federal Highway Administration to evaluate various highway projects in four states including Virginia, North Carolina, Texas and Ohio. For the paper he wrote about his research; Lew studied the records from each of the project's offices and determined that approximately $4.62 was saved for every dollar spent on the projects by using services of utilities engineers.

Nationally, highway construction projects can save about billion dollars a year if they employ subsurface utilities engineering techniques to design projects, Lew said.

Lew has had extensive experience in construction technology since his undergraduate studies. After graduating from Rose-Hulman University in 1963, he enlisted in the Army and worked on the Army Corps of Engineers for over three years while serving in Vietnam. After returning home, he went to Purdue for his master's degree in Civil Engineering. After graduate school, he was the city engineer in Terre Haute for several years and worked for a consulting firm before joining Purdue's staff in 1978.

Lew believes the department of building and construction management has many possibilities for students who choose the field.

"There's work all over the country," he said. "Whether you're building a sports stadium, high rise company building or power plant; this type of work is needed," he said.

This fall, Lew will attend a conference in Barcelona that will cover safety issues of construction. The conference will discuss various hazards including excavation, gas line explosion and other safety issues.

There are a number of people who are injured from pipeline explosions every year, he said. The conference will discuss ways to deal with this type of problem.

The best way to avoid injury is to carefully lie out the design of the project by first locating underground utilities, he said. "You do that no matter what."

Constructing and engineering are disciplines that have taken place since recorded history. However, subsurface utilities engineering is a field that didn't exist when Lew graduated from Rose Hulman, or even 20 years ago, according to David Horne, director of business for So-Deep, Inc. The company specializes in subsurface utilities engineering.

"We work with the engineering and architectural firms and designers who design roads bridges, etc. We give them a comprehensive map of utilities of the project, and they design it accordingly to avoid problems with the utilities," he said.

When the company was founded 20 years ago, no one did the work they did, said Horne. The technology is constantly changing, he said. There is more instrumentation. Satellite positioning systems were something that weren't around three decades ago, he said.

In a field like this one, the technology contributes to the rapidly growing discipline, he said.

Authorities identify body as missing Purdue student

Body found near campus

Building renovation to increase classroom, office space

Students design solar power system, win contest

School works on projects, helps to keep utilities safe

Professor uses virus structure to aid drug development

Robotics competition begins this weekend in Maryland

Police arrest three on charges of theft

CAMPUS DESK PHONE:
(765) 743-1111 ext. 253

To send a letter to the editor, please email opinions@purdueexponent.org