Description

Join us for our second Nooner of the 2019-2020 season! Brent Marjerson from WSP will be presenting on the construction of roadway fill over a large water body using geotextiles at Highway 7 near Vanscoy, Saskatchewan.

Our Nooners include the buffet lunch at the Park Town and free parking (just register at the front desk). Lunch starts at 12, with presentation to follow at ~12:30 pm.

We greatly appreciate all ticket orders made three days in advance of the Nooner (including for those using corporate sponsor vouchers), so we can let the venue know how many people we expect. Please take advantage of our early bird pricing, which we offer up until 3 days before the event!

Presentation Summary:

A high strength woven geotextile was used in the construction of a roadway embankment over a large water body as part of control section 7-02 on Highway 7. The geotextile design was required to support the embankment loading and traffic loading while at the same time bridging the soft organic saturated material at the bottom of the water body. The embankment was constructed in the winter months on top of the frozen surface of the water body to prevent disturbance of the water body and to allow for ease of construction through decreased environmental concerns. The construction of the embankment during the winter on the ice significantly reduced construction costs and eliminated the potential requirement for a complete re-route of the embankment around the large water body. The embankment was constructed with sufficient fill to ensure that once the ice had melted in the spring and the embankment settled, the final height would be a minimum of 1.0 metres above the high water level of the water body. This would facilitate the completion of the construction of the grade in the spring with select borrow material working on a stable subgrade passing through the entire length of the water body. The design of the geotextile reinforced embankment consisted of the estimation of the settlement of the underlying soil and the determination of the required width of geotextile to ensure that the entire embankment was underlain by the geotextile including approximately 1.0 metres of extra width as a contingency. To ensure that the geotextile support was consistent for the entire width of the embankment the rolls of woven geotextile had to be sewn together at the factory prior to shipping and the size of the roll needed to be such that the material could be moved on site with standard equipment.

Speaker Biography:

Brent grew up in a small town southeast of Swift Current and earned a diploma in Civil Engineering Technology from the Saskatchewan Technical Institute in 1979. Brent worked as a Civil Engineering Technologist for ten years and then attended the University of Saskatchewan graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering in 1993 and a M.Sc. in Geotechnical and Pavements in 2001. Brent has been employed as a professional engineer in senior positions in consulting, contracting and in the public sector as a Director with the Ministry of Highways and is currently a Senior Engineer with WSP Canada Inc. in Saskatoon. Brent has also served as a sessional lecturer for the Department of Civil Engineering and was the keynote speaker for the graduation ceremonies in 2005. Brent has been a registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Saskatchewan for 25 years and is currently registered in Manitoba, Alberta and the Northwest Territories as well. Brent has also served with other associations such as the Transportation Association of Canada, Transportation Research Board and the Canadian Technical Asphalt Association.