Leveraging PFMA to Perform SQRA

Mr. Scott received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He started his career with the Bureau of Reclamation in 1976, where he worked for 34 years before joining the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Risk Management Center as Lead Civil Engineer, where he worked through 2018. He has been involved with design, analysis, and construction of dams and dam safety projects, as well as the development and application of potential failure mode analysis and risk analysis for dam safety. He served on several review panels for Bureau of Reclamation and Corps of Engineers dam construction and dam safety projects. He has authored over 35 technical papers in journals and conference proceedings related to dam safety and dam engineering. He is now retired from Federal service, but continues to consult on a limited basis. 

Bill has 42 years’ experience in hydraulic and structural engineering designs for concrete dams and appurtenant structures, with the Bureau of Reclamation. While with Reclamation, he served as a technical specialist and design team leader for numerous water resource projects. In the later part of his career, he served as a member of Reclamation’s three-person Risk Advisory Team, which was responsible for developing additional risk analysis methodologies and providing training for Reclamation.

staff. Bill has particular expertise in concrete dam and spillway modifications, including: project planning and design coordination; analysis and design of structural modifications; review of design drawings and specifications; construction support; and risk analysis methodologies and facilitation. He has written numerous papers focused on dam safety evaluations and dam safety modifications. He was a lead author on a Reclamation manual focused on drains for dams and on a FEMA manual focused on flood overtopping protection for dams. For the past two years, he has worked as a consultant in the role of senior technical advisor.

Mel Schaefer is a Civil Engineer with over 35 years of experience in dam safety engineering specializing in analyzes of extreme storms and floods for assessing the hydrologic adequacy of dams and spillways. He began his career as a staff hydrologist with the Washington State Dam Safety Program and became Head of the State Dam Safety Program in 1990 where he managed a group of hydrologic, geotechnical and structural engineers. During his 7-year tenure as head of the Dam Safety Program, he developed the risk-based design/analysis methods and performance standards and regulations for dam safety that are in-use today. He was involved in the inspection, flood analyses and remediation of over 100 dams while with the Dam Safety Program.

In 1997, he started a private consulting firm, MGS Engineering Consultants Inc. which specializes in surface water hydrology, particularly probabilistic and risk applications of extreme precipitation and floods. Over the 20-years in private practice, he has conducted probabilistic flood analyses for use in risk analyses for over 40-dams for BC Hydro, US Bureau of Reclamation, US Army Corps of Engineers, Southern California Edison, and the Tennessee Valley Authority including notable projects such as Mica Dam on the Upper Columbia River BC, Folsom Dam on the American River CA, and Mammoth Pool Dam on the San Joaquin River CA. He has conducted large-scale regional precipitation-frequency (PF) studies for the province of British Columbia; the states of Washington and Oregon; a seven State area surrounding the Tennessee River valley; the States of Colorado and New Mexico; central Texas and New Brunswick and States in New England. He has pioneered methods for numerous elements for conducting hydrologic risk analysis including regional PF analysis (SWT climate region method); storm transposition by the OTF and ESTP methods; stochastic generation of watershed PF relationships for synoptic scale mid-latitude cyclones, tropical storms, and remnants, and mesoscale convective storms; and uncertainty analysis.
He is the lead developer for the Stochastic Event Flood Model (SEFM) for computing probabilistic flood loadings and hydrologic hazard curves and L-RAP software for conducting regional precipitation frequency analysis. Both SEFM and L-RAP are commercial software products. He routinely serves on the FERC Board of Consultants and Peer Review teams for review of site-specific PMP and PMF studies and for applications of hydrologic risk.

Jennifer Williams is a registered professional engineer out of the Denver AECOM office. She has 20 years of experience with the majority of her professional career focused on dam safety including inspection; risk assessment; field investigations and characterization; seepage, stability and deformation analyses; alternatives studies; final design drawings and contract documents; and construction inspection observation.

Ms. Williams’ design engineering experience includes new dams and rehabilitation design of existing embankment dams for seepage, stability and hydrologic deficiencies. She has been the lead designer on over 10 dams in the last 15 years. Ms. Williams’ experience in risk analysis includes Potential Failure Mode Analyses and risk assessments since 2004 with state, federal and private dam owners and regulators including state dam safety offices, USACE, Reclamation, and FERC.  

Dean B. Durkee, Ph.D., P.E. P.Eng. has over 30 years of engineering experience as a geotechnical and dam safety engineer. He has been responsible for evaluation and design of new dams and for developing rehabilitation and modification designs for existing dams, including earth embankment, roller-compacted concrete, moveable crest, and lined rockfill dams for hydroelectric power generation, flood control, water supply, recreation, and tailings management. Dean is FERC Approved for both Part 12D Independent Consultant and Risk Analysis Facilitator and has recently served as Lead Facilitator for four of FERC’s Risk Informed Decision Making (RIDM) Pilot Projects. Dean has been involved in failure modes analysis and risk analysis for the last 20 years and over the last 10 years has focused his professional career on the application of risk-based dam safety services, both as an Independent Consultant (IC) and as a Facilitator for potential failure modes analyses (PFMA), and risk analyses, both semi-quantitative (SQRA) and quantitative (QRA). He has performed these services for Southern California Edison, California Department of Water Resources, Pacific Gas and Electric, Idaho Power, PacifiCorp, Eugene Water and Electric Board, City of Centralia, WA, Turlock Irrigation District, Freeport McMoRan, Brazos River Authority, City of Tempe, New York Department of Environmental Quality, Flood Control District of Maricopa County, Resolution Copper, and Colorado Springs Utilities.