Richard E. Migues

Bechtel Corporation

Richard E. Migues received his B.A. degree in geology from the University of California at Santa Barbara then was called to active duty in the Army Corps of Engineers, where he was the site geologist for construction of Mahan and Eisenhower Halls at West Point. He has since been with Bechtel Corporation for the past 30 years. He has worked on the geology for nuclear power plants around the world, on the Faja oil city in Venezuela, on the Camesea oil project in the Peruvian Amazon, on the Setif dam project in the High Atlas Mountains of Algeria, on the Jubail industrial city in Saudi Arabia, on Oklahoma's bid for the Supercollider, on low level radioactive waste facilities in Nebraska and Taiwan and many other projects around the world. He is the Manager for the Los Angeles area of Bechtel's Geotechnical management team.

ABSTRACT

Engineering and environmental geology employment is in a period of change. However, this has been the history of our science at Bechtel for the past fifty years. Fifty years ago Bechtel geologists were mainly working on dams and mining projects, but we haven't had many dam projects for the past decade or two. Now, more than halves of our geologists are working on environmental-related projects yet none were working on environmental jobs twenty years ago. Power plant construction, particularly nuclear-fueled facilities, and the engineering geology associated with it, has since come and gone at Bechtel, but is again re-entering our job mix. The lesson for us and I suspect for many others has been that our geologists need to be versatile. In my opinion, the starting point for this versatility starts with hiring geologists with strong training in field geology. Our industries are extremely competitive and we seldom, if ever, have had the time or the money to teach geologist how to interpret and map geology. I have always preferred geologists with a strong background in field geology training. Instead, our training concentrates on things like discipline specific computer applications, grouting techniques that we have learned, ground water observation hole technology and construction de-watering. Typically, these field skills are taught by experienced geologists on projects large enough to require a number of geologists. Projects requiring mapping skills often are assignments for a single geologist and if they don't arrive at Bechtel with those skills their opportunities are very restricted. This is particularly true on foreign assignments where the only help from the home office is by phone, sometimes satellite phone. In these instances, the geologist in the field must be able to engineers which are dominant component of our company, communicate their observations. Usually, this is an experienced field geologist we know we can trust to get the geology right the first time. Confusion in these types of situations can ripple through a project.