Excavation Systems Planning, Design, and Safety




Preface
his book represents a culmination of knowledge that I have gained through 10 years of working as a construction engineer for contractors constructing pipelines and water and wastewater

treatment projects and 16 years of developing an engineering firm that provided shoring design to contractors and shoring manufacturers.

During the construction years I estimated excavation projects,


planned
the work, and worked in the trench

with the workers. In the engineering

years I was fortunate to be able to work with hundreds

of

underground contractors, the largest and the smallest, all over the United

States. This wide range of exposure to level of knowledge and approach

to excavation work and safety that these contractors had was priceless. During that entire

period I never worked on the “other side of the street”

for owners and civil design firms, but I was continually

working with them on excavation work issues. Later in my

career I worked with lawyers to help them understand excavation issues.

Throughout this career I accumulated my basic knowledge and

understanding of how all parts of the excavation industry functioned

and interacted. All of us involved in the industry pulled basic

excavation and safety technology information from wherever we could find it.


We searched it out, adapted it to our needs, and used it to construct safer and more

efficient excavations. I saw across the board

that new entrants to the excavation industry faced a huge task in

trying to acquire basic knowledge of the industry.

I saw the construction side looking for better and more

efficient ways to do things and the civil design side looking for ways to accept what they were

proposing to do based on current state-of-the-art technology and accepted practices. At

the end of a career it is easier to look back and see where it all came from

and how it all fits together. It is not so easy to write it down. This book is an effort

to assemble what I learned in one place and add some perspective so that everyone involved can better understand excavation work.


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