Demonstrated ability to scope and undertake engineering design tasks

In my current position as a consulting engineer, I have been involved in several engineering design projects that demonstrate
my ability to scope and undertake engineering design tasks.

The largest of these projects, which lasted for approximately one year, was in assessing the flood risk for Dam X. My employer
was engaged by the client to estimate the change in the probability that flood levels would be exceeded for locations of interest
upstream of the dam. I was responsible for preparing the proposal to undertake the study, carrying out the hydrological and
hydraulic modelling, performing the statistical analysis to assess the change in flood levels, and writing the report.

Upgrading of the dam to improve its safety had a number of environmental effects, including the potential to increase flood
levels upstream of the dam during extreme flood events. The client originally requested that we assess the change in flooding
for the Probable Maximum Precipitation Design Flood event, which has an annual exceedance probability (AEP) of 1 in 107. I
suggested to the client that they should consider the change in flood levels across a range of probabilities (from 1 in 100 to 1 in
107) because this would provide more useful information for decision makers and the upstream community for a range of
floods that are more likely to be experienced. This suggestion was accepted by the client. The approach that I suggested was
also in accordance with the recently revised Book VI of Australian Rainfall and Runoff: Large and Extreme Floods (Nathan
and Weinmann, 1999), which emphasised a risk-based approach to estimating large and extreme floods.
I proposed the use of MIKE-11, a one-dimensional unsteady state hydraulic model, to estimate the flood levels upstream of the
dam for each of the combinations of initial water level and flood magnitude that was to be modelled after consulting with other
hydraulic modellers in my organisation. I proposed the application of Laurenson’s stochastic-deterministic method (Laurenson,
1974), which is recommended in Book VI of Australian Rainfall and Runoff (Nathan and Weinmann, 1999) to incorporate the
joint probability of water level in the dam prior to the flood and the flood magnitude. The advantage of the stochastic-
deterministic method was that it only required about 100 runs of the hydraulic model to estimate the change in flood level
frequency. The alternative Monte Carlo simulation approach would have required tens of thousands of model runs, which
could not have been completed within the project time frame.

I selected the batch run processor in MIKE-11 to perform the model runs, allowing me to more quickly and efficiently set up
the hundreds of model runs, which could then be run overnight. This enabled the modelling to be completed within the
approved budget for the project. I developed a register of input files that I used to document the hydraulic model runs that were
adopted for the final design. I used outputs of the hydraulic modelling in a joint probability framework to estimate changes in
flood levels at locations upstream of the dam. As a check on my design, I used a level pool routing approach to estimate the
change in flood levels for given annual exceedance probabilities.

I presented the results of the study in a meeting with our client and with consultants engaged by our client to undertake
consultation with the community upstream of the dam. The community was very accepting of the outcomes because the safety
of the dam was significantly improved by the upgrade and the increase in flood levels upstream was very small in all but
extremely rare floods.

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