| How do I... | >> Contact the Corps? | >> Get a Lease? | >> Find a local Corps Office? | >> Advanced Search |
| >> Find a Recreation Area? | >> Get a Job with Corps? | >> Find Corps Publications? | ||
| >> Obtain a Permit? | >> Contract with the Corps? | >> Find a Corps Map? |
Sacramento District engineer recognized by National Society of Professional Engineers
By Warren Byrd
Public Affairs Office
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Feb. 25, 2010) – A Sacramento District engineer is making a mark quickly in engineering circles.
Tom Walker, lead structural engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Sacramento District, is one of five relatively new Corps employees recognized by the National Society of Professional Engineers as being rising stars for noted contributions to their career field.
Walker, who began with the District as a student worker in 2004 and began full-time a year later, is the lead structural engineer on a $1.3 billion auxiliary control structure for Folsom Dam outside Sacramento. The control structure, part of the Folsom Dam Joint Federal Project (JFP) partnership between the Corps and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, is a large concrete gravity dam with six submerged tainter gates (large radial steel gates used to regulate releases from a body of water), a 3,000 foot-long spillway, and a stepped chute and stilling basin located in a seismically active area. The purpose of the stepped chute and the stilling basin is to dissipate energy out of the water before it is discharged into the American River.
“Because the location of the project is in a seismically active area, rigorous structural analyses have been completed on the project,” Walker said, “including an advanced 3-dimensional finite element model that has the ability to accurately capture both the foundation-structure interaction as well as the fluid-structure interaction.
“This analysis is unique to other projects,” he said. “It is on the cutting edge, and has never before been done by the Sacramento District. I am one of several engineers that have contributed to this effort.”
Walker, a Sacramento native, is responsible for leading design, evaluation, analysis, and atypical investigations associated with the design. In addition to this work, he is certified to perform and to train others to perform post-disaster structural evaluations.
“There is never a dull moment when working on the JFP,” Walker said. “The project has everything a structural engineer could want from a project: massive concrete placements, huge steel structures, a complex anchorage system… the list is long.”
Because of his expertise, he has been called upon to train Department of Defense engineers worldwide. It is another example of his passion for engineering.
“The trainings I have provided focus primarily on more common structures that are much smaller and simpler than dams (houses, parking lots, apartment buildings, etc.),” Walker said.
“Safety is what's emphasized the most. We are training for safety assessments. We go over various hazards that are likely to be found after a disaster and the appropriate procedures for marking off and recording the hazard. The structural background is critical when we evaluate the lateral and vertical load capacities of the various structures and how the disaster may have compromised these systems.”
Walker participates in the Sacramento District’s “Adopt-a-School” program and periodically visits local middle and high schools to explain how what they are learning is applicable to a future career in engineering. He is also an advisor in the Sacramento District’s rotational engineer intern training program.
Walker holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., and a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from St. Mary’s College of California.