Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

The Supervising Engineer’s Forum was held on 6 April at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham and proved a great success with around 200 attendees. It was a lively event with a good question and answer session. An article on the event is in this edition.

The Annual General Meeting of the British Dam Society was held on 21 March at the Institution of Civil Engineers, London. The event was well attended. At the AGM Martin Airey was elected as chairman, taking over from Peter Mason. Ian Hope was elected to take over from Martin as vice-chairman. Peter remains on the committee as past chairman and our thanks go to him for steering the Society safely through these difficult economic times, disputes with the ICE and other trials and tribulations. In addition the following new committee members were elected to the BDS committee: Jonathan Butterworth, Peter Down, Daniel Eyob, Craig Goff and John Hopkins.

Committee roles have already been assigned to some of these newly elected members with Craig taking over as events chairman and Daniel working with Malcolm Corlett on schools coordination. In addition Tom Shires joins the committee as a nominated member to work on university liaison.

Standing down from the committee were

Kenny Dempster – Kenny had represented the client’s voice on the BDS Committee as well as providing a Scottish perspective. He also organised the 2010 BDS conference in Strathclyde.

Mark Morris – Mark was instrumental in setting up the BDS website and its ongoing development over many years.

James Penman – James has been active in reservoir publicity.

Chris Scott – Chris has been events chairman for a number of years overseeing a succession of successful meetings and events.

Tracey Williamson – Tracey has been organising competitions for as long as I can remember as well as working on the live meeting feeds and generally being prepared to get her hands dirty organising anything that needs to be organised.

Our thanks go to them for all their hard work over the years.

At the meeting the Bateman prize was also awarded to Malcolm Eddleston John Cyganiewicz and Keith Gardiner for their paper on: ‘The use of the “unified method of risk analysis” on a united utilities Pennine type dam’. The award recognises authors of a paper published within the last 2 years which has made a significant contribution to dam engineering or reservoir development.

Recently there have been improved links between BDS and the other ICE Associated Societies. One initiative arising from this has been the Associated Societies newsletter, which can be accessed at http://www.ice.org.uk/getmedia/9807f27e-9541-4a38-841f-59282ecf0c17/AS-Newsletter---April-2011.aspx.

The newsletter provides information on BDS and other societies to the wider civil engineering community.

On the international scene the following events are coming up in 2011.

Hydro 2011 will be held in Prague in the Czech Republic from 17–19 October this year. The event is organised by Hydropower and Dams with this year’s theme of ‘Practical solutions for a sustainable future’ focussing on the needs, priorities and plans of developing countries. See http://www.hydropower-dams.com for more details.

RCC 2011 will be held from 12–15 September 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia. This is the sixth in a series of RCC seminars starting in 1998. The event programme will focus on the design, construction and quality control on the use of RCC for the construction of new dams and the rehabilitation of existing dams. The seminar portion consists of a structured course on the use of RCC in dams. Also, for the first time, an RCC placing and quality control demonstration is included in the programme. For further information, contact Ken Hansen at (303) 695-6500 or ken@ken-hansen.com.

There is one competition still open at the moment:

Student competition: BDS sponsor students from universities in full-time education and Year in Industry (YINI) students to attend dams-related courses/seminars. In the past, this has included the BDS conference, the Barcelona ICOLD conference and the 10-day training course at Ridracoli, Italy entitled ‘When man meets nature’.

The 2011 competition is now open – we are calling students to prepare an essay on ‘the benefits of dams’. First prize will be an expenses-paid trip to the 2012 BDS conference in Leeds, from 12–15 September 2012. Second and third prizes will be £200 and £100 respectively.

To enter the 2011 BDS student competition, students should send their essay, along with a personal application to Tim Fuller, the Secretary of BDS, by email (Tim.Fuller@ice.org.uk) by 30th November 2011. Full details are provided on the BDS website.

To receive notification of these competitions and other events, register for e-news at http://www.britishdams.org/register.asp.

The BDS offers four levels of membership: corporate, individual, retired and student. Each level attracts a different membership fee. The fee for retired members is about half that for individual members. But what is a retired member? Many members ‘retire’ from their main full-time employer, but are retained as consultants for inspections and hence retain their panel membership. BDS does not consider that these members should claim the retired members’ rate, as that rate is intended for members with no income derived from dam-engineering work. However, BDS cannot police the issue and therefore has to rely on the goodwill of our members who obtain income from dam engineering to consider themselves to be ‘full’ individual members and to pay the appropriate fee.

All subscription income is used to benefit the Society and to promote dam engineering to a wider audience. The considerable effort that BDS committee members contribute for the benefit of the membership is all done on a voluntary basis – no one is paid for any work they put in.

At the Supervising Engineers Forum the question arose about what to do if you believe there is an error in a reservoir inundation map or you want to challenge a map. Liana Hamilton-King of the Environment Agency’s Reservoir Safety Team has kindly clarified what to do. The contact in such cases will be the Flood Risk Mapping and Data Management team for whichever Environment Agency Region a reservoir is in. However, as people may not know who that is, they can contact the Environment Agency’s Reservoir Safety Team at reservoirs@environment-agency.gov.uk with their query and they will make sure it goes to the right person.

There is also some guidance about reservoir flood maps on the Environment Agency website which people may find useful:

http://publications.environment-agency.gov.uk/PDF/GEHO0111BTIZ-E-E.pdf.

The earthquake in Japan earlier in the year was a sad reminder of the power of nature. Its impact on dams in the region seems to have been relatively limited in the context of the disaster as a whole. Cracking has been reported on the crest of 11 embankment dams and the face of two asphalt concrete dams and a small slope failure occurred at a concrete gravity. Unfortunately one dam, outside of Japan’s regulatory system, Fujinuma dam, is reported to have failed. Andy Hughes on behalf of BDS has extended our wishes of support and sympathy to Japan’s ICOLD Committee.