Spicer Group Honored for Two Projects at Recent ACEC Awards Gala
Spicer Group was recently honored by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Michigan at the association’s annual Engineering and Surveying Excellence Awards Gala held in Grand Rapids. The program recognizes outstanding efforts of professional design firms to solve clients’ needs through exceptional projects and offers the opportunity to showcase 2019’s best engineering and surveying achievements to an audience of peers, clients and decision makers at all levels.
This year’s Surveying Eminent Conceptor Award went to Spicer Group for our MDOT Railway Scanning project. Eric Barden, P.S. attended the event to accept that award. Senior Project Manager Larry Protasiewicz, P.E. represented Spicer Group at the event to receive an Engineering Merit Award for the Smith Consolidated Drain project. Congratulations Larry and Eric on your teams’ hard work and accomplishment. Brief descriptions for each project are included below.
MDOT Railroad Survey
In collaboration with the MDOT Survey Support Unit, Spicer Group completed a network-wide data collection project for the MDOT Office of Rail across its 665-mile railroad network in the Lower Peninsula. Various data collection technologies were used including Mobile Terrestrial LiDAR/rail-view imagery, Airborne LiDAR/ortho-imagery, UAV-acquired ortho-imagery, and traditional RTK GNSS surveying. All data was fused together using advanced data fusion techniques to create a network-wide geospatial dataset of all MDOT-owned railroad assets. The data was used to map the centerline of all railroad track owned by MDOT and extract milepost signs, points of switch, and points of frog. All extracted asset data was delivered in a standard file geodatabase to support the development of a railroad linear referencing system and integration into MDOT’s Transportation Asset Management System (TAMS).
Smith Consolidated Drain
A 100-year rain event poured more than four inches of water in less than four hours onto the greater Lansing area, inundating the Smith Consolidated Drain with stormwater. A 540-foot-long pipe carrying stormwater from the drain failed, causing flooding issues for roads, businesses, and residents near the intersection of Jolly Road and Okemos Road in Meridian Charter and Alaiedon Townships. After analyzing the area of the pipe, it was discovered that a system-wide approach was necessary to solve the Smith Consolidated Drain’s larger issues of managing the flow of stormwater and mitigating flooding. Spicer Group conducted an inspection of the 23.1 miles of drain and storm sewer system, assessed the condition of its assets, and designed several different improvement projects at multiple locations along the drain. Improvements included increasing stormwater detention by replacing outdated stormwater pipes and increasing their sizes, improving wetland areas, and building and maximizing inline detention basins.
