2026 USSD RCC Dam Workshop

Del Shannon has more than 30 years of experience and holds degrees in both Journalism and Civil Engineering. He is the Senior Principal Geotechnical Engineer for Knight Piesold, a Past President of USSD, chair of the USSD Committee on Concrete Dams, President of Hydropower Foundation, a lead author of the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card, and serves in leadership roles for several professional organization. He is a geotechnical engineer by background and specializes in the design and construction of both earthen and concrete dams and similar hydraulic structures. For the last 20 years he has been promoting the benefits of involving contractors earlier in the project delivery process, and has been involved in the first design/build dam projects in five states. Three of his dam projects have received national awards from the USSD and ASDSO. In his free time Del loves playing soccer and attended the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar where he saw Argentina beat France. He also enjoys creative writing and has published several creative fiction stories and novels.

Scott Jones is the Principal Structural Engineer for the Hydropower, Dams, and Hydraulic Structures Department at Kiewit Infrastructure Engineers.  He has over 20 years of experience working primarily on the design and evaluation of concrete dams and appurtenant structures, such as spillways, radial gates, intake towers, and outlet structures.  Scott served as the Engineer of Record for the design and engineering support during construction of Lake Conestee Replacement Dam in Greenville, SC.

With over 40 years of experience working almost exclusively on dams and hydropower within the Technical Department of the Dragados Construction Company, Rafael is currently semi-retired.

He has participated in the construction, and in several cases also in the design, of more than 40 large hydraulic projects in Europe, Africa and North, Central and South America, 10 of which have been RCC dams.

He has published and presented more than 50 papers, a significant portion of them in the field of RCC dam design and construction, and was the lead author of Chapter 5, Construction, of ICOLD Bulletin 177 (2020) on RCC dams.

He is a member of the SPANCOLD and ICOLD Committees on Concrete Dams and past member of the USSD Committee on Concrete Dams.

Rafael currently chairs the Organizing Committee of the 29th Congress and 96th Annual Meeting of ICOLD, to be held in Madrid, Spain, in June 2028.

Tim Dolen is a Professional Engineer and president of Dolen and Associates in Fort Collins, CO, specializing in mass and RCC mixture design, materials properties, and on-site construction. He is the past chairman of ACI Committee 207 on Mass Concrete and the Report on Roller Compacted Mass Concrete. Tim worked for 33 years with the US Bureau of Reclamation on mass concrete design, construction quality control, and on seven major RCC dams and spillways. He led the task group to develop the first ASTM standardized test procedures for RCC. He led the development of several RCC innovations including high paste, super-retarded RCC mixtures, methods of bonding RCC lift lines, and air-entrained RCC. For the past 15 years, Tim has worked as the onsite technical representative for major RCC dams including the Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia, the Trung Son Dam in Vietnam, and was the RCC construction engineer for the Muskrat Falls RCC Dam in Canada from 2017 to 2018. He was on site for the successful application of sloping layer method (SLM) and immersion vibrated RCC (IVRCC) placing on three dams in North America. He has been evaluating the performance of all types of mass and RCC dams and is the co-author of ICOLD Bulletin 177, Chapter 7 Performance of RCC Dams. Tim has worked on site to solve RCC construction placing challenges in virtually any type of climate from equatorial, monsoonal, to sub-arctic conditions.

Randy Bass is a professional engineer and a graduate of Georgia Tech with a BCE (1972) and a MCE degree (1977). His career with dam engineering started in 1978 when he worked for seven years with the Georgia Safe Dams Program managing the Program from 1980 till 1985. He worked for Dames and Moore where he developed a construction unit which constructed the first two RCC gravity dams in Georgia. He then worked as the water resources engineer specializing in soil cement and RCC for the Portland Cement Association for six years prior to joining Schnabel Engineering in 2004. Randy is a senior consultant with Schnabel in the Alpharetta Georgia office.

Jack Howard-Stratton is a senior geotechnical engineer with BGC Engineering in Smithers, BC. He co-led the engineering team for the Cheekeye Debris-Flow Barrier that was completed in 2026. The barrier is a 24 m-tall by 100 m-long open check dam constructed primarily of roller-compacted concrete in Squamish, BC. His typical projects focus on geohazard management for the communities, railway, highway, pipeline, and mining sectors that include operational planning for worker safety, hazard and risk characterization, physical mitigation design, and engineering review during construction. Jack spends his free time running up mountains and exploring BC with his wife and kids.

As a civil engineer and senior project manager, Mike brings nearly 30 years of industry experience to the role of global practice leader for Dams. He is a recognized technical expert in dam engineering, with a focus on safety, design, and construction. His ability to manage multidisciplinary teams directly assists in cost monitoring, technical scope direction, and oversight review.

Mike’s expertise and leadership skills have played a significant role in some of our most noteworthy and award-winning dam projects, namely the Big Bear Valley Dam Rehabilitation project for the Big Bear Municipal Water District, and the San Vicente Dam Raise as part of the San Diego County Water Authority’s Emergency Water Storage project.

Mike has served in a variety of leadership roles within industry-related organizations, including his time spent as president of the US Society of Dams (USSD) and, most recently, as the vice president of the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD). He is also the chairman of the USSD and ICOLD technical committees on concrete dams. 

In 2017, Mike was named to International Water Power & Dam Construction magazine’s Power List.