Bridging the Knowledge Gap: Partnering with Sponsors to Gain Hands-On Experience

Over the past year, the enterprise has bid farewell to hundreds of highly experienced employees—veterans of countless federal projects. Within the Kansas City District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers more than 30 engineering professionals recently departed through the Deferred Resignation Program.

These departing experts took with them invaluable first-hand knowledge gained during major Missouri River floods. Most notable was the historic 2019 flood, triggered by record snowfall and a bomb cyclone, which devastated the basin and persisted for 279 days.

During that flood event, the district deployed multiple mobile liaison teams to monitor levees from the ground and from the air as well as advise levee sponsors on levee performance and failures. These critical teams comprise multidisciplinary engineers spanning hydrology and hydraulics, structural, geotechnical, mechanical and electrical fields.

“We have a lot of new people on board, and a few that we’ve brought on that have mid-level experience but are still new to the Corps,” said Jennifer Wood, geotechnical program section chief for the district.

Wood, who was the previous levee safety program manager at the district, believes the team is generally eager to work with sponsors. However, apprehension is normal for new engineers when they are expected to perform in an advisory role.

“It could be they don’t know what to tell our sponsors to focus on repairing,” Wood said. “This training Zack put together will help our team work those types of things out, and having those relationships established ahead of time is helpful.”

The solution to bridging this knowledge gap and familiarizing new engineers with the USACE levee safety program is straightforward: targeted, hands-on training.

Zackary Young is the district’s levee safety program manager. He wanted to build that much-needed experience and confidence for the newer members of the team. To that end, he partnered with the local sponsor for the Argentine Levee System and Pump Station, the Kaw Valley Drainage District, and coordinated formal inspection training for the various disciplines of engineers who would administer those inspections and serve on future MLTs during a flood fight.

Young understands the mindset of new engineers who have never participated in levee inspections or a flood event and how alarming it can be to “drink from the firehose” during a real-life crisis with millions of dollars of infrastructure at stake.

“We want to get our engineers trained up. The main goal of the formal inspection training is to create familiarity of the process among our team and get them hands-on experience with the technical aspects of levees—help them understand what they should be looking for and paying attention to. We also want them to meet the sponsors and build relationships with them. Often times these deficiencies observed during formal inspections can be fixed prior to highwater,” Young said.

Crucially, the elements evaluated during routine inspections are the exact same components MLT members must assess during an active flood fight.

The training kicked off inside the Kaw Valley Drainage District maintenance bay. A classroom session reinforced the critical nature of levee assessments, clarified MLT responsibilities during a flood response, and walked participants through common deficiencies using real-world examples observed over the years.

Once the classroom portion was concluded, the participants worked with the sponsor on what could be considered the most valuable portion of the training: The hands-on fieldwork. This was an opportunity for participants to look at actual aspects of a pump station and levee and look for potential deficiencies and understand how to read the 18 critical item inspection checklist.

Each engineering discipline had an experienced mentor at various stations to point things out and answer questions, which was an important aspect of the training.

“For example, if you’re a mechanical engineer, you’re not going to be able to ask me, a geotechnical engineer, your questions,” Young said. “We had a senior structural engineer located at the flood wall to discuss structures. We had geotechnical engineers and a geologist on the embankment and the relief wells. A H&H engineer was at the outlet, and mechanical and electrical engineers were inside the pump station. Rotating stations gave an opportunity so every discipline could see what other disciplines were doing and inspect in collaboration with them. More importantly, every mentor described how they rate based off the inspection checklist.”

“Formal inspections occur every five years for levees that participate in the P.L. 84-99 program,” said Young. “It’s basically an opportunity for us to assess our sponsor’s levees and advise them of the expected performance of their levee if we were to experience a flood event. After the inspection occurs, we owe the sponsor a report within 90 days.”

For Young, the profound importance of these routine and formal inspections was cemented during the 2019 floods.

“I remember doing a ton of inspections before the flood. I would see animal burrows and think, ‘oh, it’s just a burrow. Throw some dirt in it,’” Young said. “Well, the flood of 2019 showed me the importance of preventing or eliminating burrows because I saw how those burrows could ultimately lead to levee failures.”

At the end of the day, it was a good experience for those that participated. There remains many opportunities for the team to gain real-life experience, as there are two formal inspections still planned for this fiscal year, and 11 inspections planned for the next fiscal year.

“We have done about 15 formal inspections over the past three years, but by completing this training, my hope is this process becomes smoother for those who are involved, and we can complete many more in a shorter timeframe and build back our experience,” said Young.