Firms engineer their way out of everyday problems

Whether they are working with electrical power outages or attempting to improve bridge construction on Texas highways, San Antonio engineering firms say their latest projects came with design and functionality challenges that pushed them to use and develop their innovation and creativity. Here are few of the problems they encountered and how the they addressed them:

UTHSCSA Electrical Model

When the staff at Goetting and Associates were contacted by officials from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) to find a long-term solution to a recent series of power outages, the Alamo City firm knew they were facing a tough challenge.

“We were dealing with electrical power issues on a campus that covers roughly 2 million square feet of space and has a service capacity of 10 megawatts of electricity,” says Louis Rowe, president of the firm. “Right away we knew that this project was going to need more than just an immediate solution.”

After isolating and replacing a series of surge arrestors earlier this year that were the immediate cause of the recent outages, Rowe says he and his staff rolled up their sleeves and began to look for a means of preventing future power disruptions before they affected the overall mission of UTHSCSA.

“We ended up stepping outside of the traditional engineering box and began to look at the big picture in regards to electricity use on the campus,” says John Mills, a project manager for the firm who worked with Rowe on the project. “Today that search has evolved into a computerized model that will be used to manage the entire campus electrical system.”

Once it is completed in six to eight months, the pair say the model will help on-site managers at UTHSCSA avoid most electrical disruptions and better cope with those that do occur.

“The model we are working with will allow officials at the Health Science Center to look at the entire system when they are trying to decide what equipment can be used to isolate overloads and faults at the lowest level of the system,” Mills adds. “In addition, it will help the campus isolate equipment that needs to be replaced as they continue to upgrade their electrical infrastructure.”

Rowe credits the development and implementation of such a plan to the leadership of UTHSCSA.

“They knew what power outages meant to their mission of education and medical research and set a goal of developing an approach that would protect that mission from future electrical outages and blackouts,” he explains.

John F. Waldron is a San Antonio-based free-lance writers.