Northwest Luncheon – Edmonton, AB

Join us for an educational luncheon on innovative solutions for assessing aging sanitary forcemains in harsh climates.

Assessing the structural integrity and hydraulic performance of buried sanitary conveyance systems is essential for municipalities to prioritize their repairs, prevent costly emergencies, and reduce public and environmental impacts. This work presents a condition assessment program for two forcemains: a 2.3 km long 560 mm pipeline and a 5 km long 600 mm pipeline, both welded steel pipes protected with coal tar epoxy and insulation overlaid with the yellow jacket. The latter is buried under a major river in northwest Canada. The condition assessment program employed a systematic approach that combined forensic engineering with data integration and analysis. It considered factors like material, age, service level, corrosion risks, and operational history to determine the remaining capacity and guide renewal and asset management decisions. The five-stage program included desktop assessment, field planning, leak detection, structural data collection, and evaluation of remaining service life. This presentation discusses challenges, key findings, recommendations, and action plans for extending the forcemains’ service life. It also highlights project limitations and the need for additional assessment technologies. The goal is to provide municipalities and utilities with guidance on utilizing non-destructive technologies for assessing buried pressurized systems, particularly in colder regions.

Presenter: Olubenga Ibikunle, Ph.D.

Dr. Ibikunle is a Managing Principal at Avodahtec and a leader in infrastructure practices, handling projects across North America and beyond. With over 17 years of experience in academia and industry, he has, over the last 8 years, been focusing on the (i) use of trenchless methods in pipeline design and construction, (ii) development and application of new condition assessment methodologies, (iii) unique trenchless rehabilitation solutions for linear infrastructure, and (iv) asset/infrastructure management practices. He is a Certified Reliability Leader and a cross-border certified Asset Management (AM) professional, and has won multiple national and international awards in his areas of expertise. Dr. Ibikunle actively contributes to his fields of expertise by authoring papers and presenting at local and international conferences. Additionally, he is a member and participant in various working committees of professional and charitable organizations. As a dedicated teacher and mentor, outside the technical world, he channels his passion toward empowering junior professionals to achieve remarkable success in the marketplace.

Northwest Luncheon – Edmonton, AB

Join us for an educational luncheon on a practical, risk-informed workflow to estimate pull forces for HDD installations of bundled steel pipes.

This presentation demonstrates a practical, risk-informed workflow to estimate pull forces for HDD installations of bundled steel pipes. The bundle is represented as an equivalent single pipe (ESP) and analyzed with unit-consistent PRCI pullback mechanics along the as-designed profile; uncertainty in key drivers—static/kinetic soil friction, drilling-fluid shear stress and density, enlargement ratio, curvature tolerance, and low-side cuttings effects—is propagated via Monte Carlo with rank-correlated inputs, while geometry remains deterministic. On a set of representative Alberta crossings, the method delivers section-wise P50–P95 envelopes and a rig-entry exceedance curve (PRCI P50, P95), providing a transparent percentile-based margin to the available rig rating. Results are contrasted with a NEN-3650 computation to show how methodology affects central tendency and tail risk; a compact sensitivity analysis (tornado/Sobol) highlights the dominant levers (μ_k, τ_mud, enlargement), directly informing field controls for drilling fluid and reaming/cleaning strategy.

Presenter: Fredy A. Díaz-Durán, Ph.D.

Fredy A. Díaz-Durán, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta. He earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Geotechnics) from the University of Waterloo and has directed industry-partnered projects, led research initiatives, and taught and supervised student teams in dynamic soil characterization, slope and excavation stability, and sustainability/LCA for subsurface works. His current work advances computational geomechanics, geohazard assessment, and risk analysis for resilient underground and geotechnical infrastructure—integrating field and laboratory characterization with numerical modelling and statistical/probabilistic methods to enable risk-informed decision-making under uncertainty. He translates ground–structure interaction into clear performance ranges and design margins for a wide spectrum of systems and contexts, including linear corridors and utilities, trenchless works (e.g., HDD), tunnels, foundations, and geohazard-prone sites in municipal, energy, and transportation settings.

Northwest Luncheon – Edmonton, AB

Join us for an educational luncheon on an introduction to the ASCE 38, the backbone of Utility Design for open-cut and trenchless.

Solving Design Utility Conflicts issues Proactively for Open Cut and Trenchless on Projects: This will be an introduction to the ASCE 38. It is the backbone of Utility Design for Open cut and trenchless and will guide how to collect and depict existing infrastructure as per ASCE 38 and the how to document the validated utilities information to a point that they can be exchanged and used with a baseline of the accuracy go forward to a common point that can set a risk mitigated future design projects from facts and not assumptions. 

Presenter: Mohab

Mohab is a professional engineer with 8 years of multi discipline civil engineering experience. He has considerable experience in project management field coordination, construction and land surveying. Mohab has the discipline and knowledge to prioritize tasks and meet client deadlines and is currently employed as Edmonton Branch Manager with T2 Utility Engineers Inc. in the Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) department. He is responsible for overseeing Subsurface Utility Engineering investigations for the purposes of identifying the location of utilities and depicting all infrastructure during the design and planning phase of projects. He is responsible for proposal development, financial management, project management and engineering reviews for SUE services for Western Canada.

Northwest Luncheon – Edmonton, AB

Join us for an educational luncheon on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Applications in Condition Assessment and Asset Management of Collection Systems.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are transforming water and wastewater utilities by enhancing efficiency, sustainability, and resilience. This presentation explores how AI technologies can improve condition assessment activities, enable proactive maintenance, and reduce costs. AI-driven commercially available applications will be presented and illustrated using case studies.

Presenter: Erez Allouche, Ph.D., P.Eng. | Trenchless Technology and Innovation Leader | Stantec  

Dr. Erez Allouche has devoted much of the past three decades to research and practice in the field of underground infrastructure. His work focuses on the development of new condition assessment technologies and the design and analysis models for underground construction using trenchless methods. He specializes in the design of complex Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) and microtunneling crossings, and to date, has completed the design and/or construction oversight of more than 160 such crossings around the world. These installations have included crossing of major highways, railways and rivers. His design experience also covers crossings utilizing other trenchless methods such as Direct Pipe™, pipe jacking, auger boring, pipe ramming, down-the-hole hammer and horizontal direct bores.  Prior to joining Stantec, Erez was a Professor of Civil Engineering at Louisiana Tech University and the Director of the Trenchless Technology Center. He is the inventor/co-inventor of 17 patents in the area of trenchless technologies, and the author/co-author of more than 260 publications in the areas of buried infrastructure management and pipeline installation using trenchless techniques. Erez is a former member of NASTT’s Board of Directors.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION – If you are an active member of NASTT, you will be asked to pay the deferred $20 attendance fee at the door of this event using cash or check. If you are NOT an active member of NASTT, you will be asked to pay the deferred $40 attendance fee at the door of this event using cash or check. Checkout will show a $0 balance, but this is simply because the payment is deferred.