By Craig Wilkins

Out of action but not out of touch

The view from Larry Potter’s hospital room on Feb. 25 revealed only falling snow and a faint outline of the hospital’s helicopter landing pad.  

Potter was flown to North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale Feb.15 after he was struck by a car while working on Hwy 210 near Pillager in Cass County.

Potter was flagging during a crack-sealing operation when a motorist veered into the work zone area.

He is a transportation worker with District 3’s Baxter truck station, but has served with three other districts and as a highway helper in the Twin Cities metro area. Potter’s career with Mn/DOT started in 1975 at the Pipestone truck station in District 8.

Potter suffered multiple fractures of his right leg and injuries to his left knee. Although bed-ridden, he was alert and energetic while following the storm’s progress on television news and weather reports.

“This is the best entertainment I have,” he said.  

Potter was quick to add, however, that he’d much rather be plowing his route on Hwy 371 between Brainerd and Nisswa than thinking about it in his hospital bed.

Potter also expressed gratitude for callers and visits by John Lardy, his former FIRST supervisor; Jeff Miller, his current supervisor, and Bob Busch, District 3 transportation engineer.

Support from them and other Mn/DOT employees, friends and family will help his recovery, he said.

“I know that I’m in for a long rehabilitation program,” Potter said, “but I feel as good as I can emotionally and I’m looking forward to coming back to work.”

‘The storm came in waves’

At Willmar, the storm set the pattern it would follow across the state.

“The storm came in waves, first with freezing rain and sleet followed by successive snowfalls during Saturday and Sunday,” said Dennis Marty, Willmar sub-area supervisor.

“We did well, better than expected,” Marty said. “The storm started as rain and sleet so we had to apply salt to the ice. When it snowed, we had a good layer of chemicals under the snow.”

Moderate temperatures and the chemicals already applied enabled the district to regain bare pavement on most of its highways by Sunday afternoon, Marty said.

However, the melted snow began to refreeze Sunday evening, so crews were called out once again to apply more de-icing chemicals.

That pattern played out in other areas, including the Twin Cities metro area where hundreds of spin-outs, stalled vehicles and crashes came with the storm.

Metro District crews were out in force to blunt the storm’s effects. Crews went out Thursday applying anti-icing chemicals to pre-treat highways, then started 12-hour shifts to keep highways safe and useable.

Two reasons to scramble the plows: twin premature babies

Life doesn’t stop for snowstorms, especially new life very eager to enter the world.

As they often do, Mn/DOT maintenance workers escorted an ambulance through a storm for a woman to give birth at a hospital.

In this case, crew members from the Little Falls and Baxter truck stations led the way through the dark night for a woman about to deliver a premature set of twins.

Jim Anderson, Brainerd, and Mark Berger, Little Falls, cleared a path from St. Cloud to Crosby where the children were delivered by a neonatologist at the Cuyuna Regional Medical Center.  

The twins were born just a few minutes after their arrival.

A nurse at the medical center said the newborns are doing well and have returned to St. Cloud with their parents for continued care.

By Kevin Gutknecht

Mn/DOT received 111 grant proposals for projects that would make walking and biking to school easier for children, according to Kristie Billiar, Mn/DOT’s Safe Routes to School program coordinator.

The department will award $1.55 million in grants in April.

Safe Routes to School is a statewide federally funded program that provides grants of up to $175,000 to qualified groups for projects that enhance the ability for children to walk to school.     

“When walking and biking routes are safer, students are more likely to use them,” Billiar said. “This can reduce traffic congestion and give kids another opportunity for some exercise.”

Under the current solicitation, SRTS will award $1.3 million to infrastructure projects (e.g., sidewalks and intersection improvements) and $250,000 to non-infrastructure projects (e.g., educational programs). Selected proposals will receive grants between $10,000 to $175,000 for infrastructure projects and between $10,000 and $50,000 for non-infrastructure projects.

Minnesota’s SRTS program was created by SAFETEA-LU, the 2005 federal transportation funding bill. Minnesota expects to receive $8 million in funding for the program through 2009.

This is the second round of SRTS grants, Billiar said. Last fall, Mn/DOT awarded $1.7 million to 17 projects selected from a pool of 76 applicants.

More information on Safe Routes to School can be found at www.dot.state.mn.us/saferoutes/.

By Donna Lindberg

Contractors or consultants bidding on Mn/DOT construction projects no longer have to make a trip to the Central Office to purchase all construction plans and special provisions in paper format or on CD.

The department now provides some of these plans—called E-plans—on its bid letting Web site at http://www.dot.state.mn.us/bidlet/. Soon, 100 percent of plans will be available electronically.

“E-plans will be of better quality than paper or CD formats and will help Mn/DOT and potential bidders save time and money,” said Tim Quinn, Pre-Letting Services Section director, Office of Technical Support.

Quinn said that contractors also will be able to view the plans without paying a fee. If they are interested in bidding on a project, they pay a nominal fee to download them. This may increase the amount of potential bidders and lower construction costs.

“With E-plans, Mn/DOT functional units and district staff will no longer have to wait to receive hard copies in the mail to prepare plans and special provisions, review the contract and make timely revisions,” Quinn said. “This, too, will result in greater efficiency and cost savings.”

“The general public can also view construction plans online for free, which can better inform interested parties of future construction impacts,” said Betty Buckley, E-plans project manager, Office of Technical Support.

Mn/DOT will continue to provide plans and specifications in paper and CD formats until the information for all projects is available online.

Questions or comments about E-Plans may be directed to Betty Buckley at 651/366-4615.

Clocks not only will spring ahead one hour when daylight-saving time goes into effect this year, but they’ll be doing it three weeks earlier than in the past.

As part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the U.S. Congress extended daylight-saving time by four weeks, beginning in 2007. Daylight-saving time now starts on the second Sunday of March (March 11 this year) and ends on the first Sunday in November (Nov. 4).

The problem is that this change may affect systems and applications that rely on an internal clock for time transactions, said Mike Barnes, Office of Information Technology director.

Vendors have been evaluating the information technology infrastructure impacts and are finishing their final patches and instructions to help minimize the one-hour time disruptions.

OIT has been working closely with these vendors to see how—or if—the earlier daylight-saving time might affect Mn/DOT’s own information technology.

“Employees should not make any changes to their computers to adjust for the daylight-saving time changes,” Barnes said, adding that OIT will provide instructions to IT support staff on any needed changes.

Additional information will be sent to all employees as soon as it is available, he said.  

By Craig Wilkins

Engineers in Mankato/District 7 thought the time was right to celebrate National Engineers Week (Feb. 19-23) with their co-workers.  

Organizers put forth a top 10 list of reasons to recognize engineers, including:

1. “ENGINEER”—you can’t spell it without “G.E.E.!”
2. To stop people from snickering when we discuss “flocculating” devices.
3. Pocket protectors! Pocket protectors! Pocket protectors!
4. Because 1,800,000 engineers can’t be wrong.

Events for all employees included a design-build competition, a math contest and the “Engineering Olympics.” Participants in the latter event were asked to “dress up like engineers.” Some actually did.

Their approach was light-hearted but served a serious purpose.

“We wanted to recognize the work that all the people in our district have done on major projects such as Hwy 14, give ourselves a break and celebrate a little,” said Mary Dieken, a project engineer at Mankato.

Dieken teamed with Peter Harff, also a project engineer, to engage their fellow employees in the event and share insights about engineering principles, the design-build process and engineering’s role in the nation’s quality of life.

Harff and Dieken set a humorous, self-deprecating tone for the week’s events.

“We’re engineers,” Harff said. “We read about humor somewhere so we thought we’d try it.”

A highlight of the week, he said, was the design-build contest in which participants were given a deck of 100 index cards and 20 minutes to create a four-level, weight-bearing structure that was at least 11 inches high.

The winning team rolled and taped the cards into four layers of cylinders. The structure supported about 22 pounds of heavy textbooks for several seconds before it collapsed.

“We piled on road design manuals, the “Numerical Analysis for the Geological Sciences” and pads of paper before it finally failed,” Harff said.

Peggy Hentges, one of three transportation specialists that made up the winning team, said engineers participating in the contest expressed no resentment over her team’s convincing triumph.

“In fact,” she said, “they cheered.”

Harff said the week addressed the value of math and sciences and engineering as a rewarding career choice as well.

“Our celebration was also an excuse to eat a lot of donuts,” he said.

While consumed in the usual manner, the donuts served an additional purpose.  

“In our mad math contest, one of our events was to determine the volume of the donuts,” Harff said. “It was fun.”

The week’s final event on Feb. 23 was the “Engineering Olympics” in which contestants displayed their skills in drafting, surveying, wearing engineering-appropriate clothing and finding someone to say something nice about engineers.

At the end of what Harff called the “Geekathalon,” grad engineer Krysten Saatela was tied for first place with her boss, Rolin Sinn, district design engineer.

The tie was broken when Sinn’s homemade paper airplane sailed further than Saatela’s entry.

“Rolin’s entry flew further, so he was crowned king of the engineers,” Harff said.