Yokohama, Japan Topside and Underwater Bridge Inspection

Client: US Army Corps of Engineers

Location: Yokohama, Japan

Services: Marine Engineering

While cool temperatures and clouds held off the hot summer for much of May, three bridge inspectors in KCI’s mid-Atlantic transportation group found themselves working under the sun—the Rising Sun, that is. John S. Dubiel, Bob A. Heyman, PE, and Eric J. Kampert, PE, spent nine days traveling, inspecting bridges and, yes, even sampling a bit of saki in Yokohama, Japan, thanks to a three-year, open-end worldwide inspection contract with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE). The job entailed underwater and topside inspections of two structures—a railroad bridge dating back to the early 1930s and a two-way vehicular bridge built in 1994. Both bridges connect mainland Japan with North Dock, an island in Yokohama Bay that serves as a sea bound cargo transfer point.

As consultants for USACE, KCI was hosted by the Army at Camp Zama, a U.S. military installation situated about an hour by car from both North Dock and Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city. The ten-day trip included five long days of work, four longer days of travel, and a lively Saturday at one of Japan’s largest annual festivals in Tokyo.

“This was a kind of get-your-feet-wet type of assignment,” says Heyman, who oversaw the topside inspections and served as a dive tender during the underwater inspections. “They could see what it was like to have their consultant do overseas work for them; we got to see what it’s like to travel and work in another country. It was a good learning experience for everybody.”

Among the obstacles the inspectors had to deal with were the language barrier and the 13-hour time difference, which hindered their efforts to secure a dive boat and other equipment before departing. It all worked out, though, thanks in part to a Japanese engineer who assisted the team throughout the trip by serving as a translator on the job, and by offering recommendations for sampling Japanese food and culture after hours.

According to Michael K. Rice, PE, assistant division chief of KCI’s structures division, the invitation to travel abroad was somewhat of a surprise. Although his crews inspected a third of the Army’s worldwide inventory of bridges in 2005 and have traveled all over the continental United States to perform inspections for USACE—from upstate New York to Louisiana, from Missouri to Washington state—this was the first time their services had been requested abroad.

“They have Army bases all over the world—Korea, Italy, Germany, even Hawaii and Alaska,” Rice said. “We typically don’t go overseas. Ordinarily, the client takes his own people, but this time they wanted a little more expertise.”

Terry R. Stanton, project manager for the Army’s bridge safety program, says that while it’s more economical to send members of his own team on overseas inspections, he needed a high level of expertise for the ones in Yokohama—especially the railroad bridge, an oddly configured 72-year old riveted-truss structure with a failing paint system, and upon which a second rail line may soon be added.

“We had some of our own people over there inspecting other bridges at the same time, but we chose to supplement our crew with KCI, in particular to perform the underwater inspections,” Stanton said.

Specifically, KCI was tapped for its ability to perform three types of inspection—underwater, fracture-critical, and difficult-access. The underwater inspections required certified divers; the latter two, close examination by an engineer or other highly trained professional. Equally important for this assignment was KCI’s ability to perform all three types of inspection simultaneously while coordinating with multiple equipment vendors and a tight inspection schedule. Taken together, the multiple inspection services comprise a level of service seldom found in one firm. While there’s nothing uncommon about structural engineers providing underwater bridge inspection services, the actual performance of underwater inspections by the engineers themselves is hardly the norm.

“A lot of engineering firms will hire commercial divers to do their underwater inspections, but an engineer will write the report, so there’s a real dichotomy there,” says Kampert, a former member of the U.S. Coast Guard and one of three KCI inspectors who is both a professional engineer and a diver, certified by the Association of Diving Contractors (ADC).

Kampert says it’s one thing to receive a second-hand report on what a diver’s seeing, but quite another to see for yourself.

“When I’m topside talking to John over the communications system, I’m writing down notes, saying ‘Rodger’ and ‘Okay, got that’ while I’m trying to envision the condition of the structure. But then I go down there and see for myself and it hits me, ‘Oh! Okay—now I understand.’”

The fact that KCI has its own engineer-divers on staff sets it apart from most engineering firms. While many have no choice but to hire subcontractors to perform their underwater services, KCI has a staff of engineers and divers who are “one in the same,” says Rice.

“Some of the clients really like that fact. The sticking point is that you’ve got to keep your divers busy. No one’s going to dive all the time, so there’s a tremendous amount of potential for overhead.”

Of course, members of the dive team who are also engineers can readily head off such concerns by performing bridge inspections, writing reports or designing structures—doing what engineers normally do. But what about the divers who aren’t engineers?

As it happens, only one member of KCI’s underwater inspection team falls into this category—Dubiel, an ADC-certified dive supervisor. A “very good commercial diver,” according to Rice, Dubiel has 13 years of experience and a track record that has placed him in waters so cold he’s had to chop his way in through ice to get in, and so surreal that he once found himself face to face with a grouper “the size of a Volkswagen.” Yet for all the hours he’s spent beneath the surface, Dubiel spends much of his time on land, avoiding the overhead trap by climbing railroad trusses, scuttling through storm sewers, crawling through culverts—doing whatever it takes to stay busy inspecting bridges and other structures, whether underwater or on land. “I can inspect a bridge from top to bottom—no matter where the bottom is,” he quips.

Perhaps this is an apt motto for the entire crew. With three PE divers available in-house, an experienced commercial diver on staff, several dive tenders, a host of engineers and, now, some overseas experience, Rice’’s inspection teams can pretty well inspect bridges anywhere and everywhere. And they know good saki, to boot.

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