Reclamation hosts Review of Operations and Maintenance Workshop for employees to learn to properly inspect and review Reclamation facilities

Written by: Peter Soeth

Instructor and students learn how to inspect a dam at Choke Canyon Dam in Texas.Ensuring that its facilities are safe is essential to the Bureau of Reclamation's mission to manage, develop, and protect water and related resources in an environmentally and economically sound manner in the interest of the American public. One part of this is making sure that its inspectors and engineers are appropriately trained on how to review and inspect high hazard dams, canals, bridges, pumping plants and other features.

To help achieve this, Reclamation recently hosted the 2019 Review of Operations and Maintenance Workshop in San Antonio, Texas. It included presentations on how to inspect facilities, how to write recommendations, case studies, updates to relevant directive and standards and more.

The first two days of the workshop were classroom style training and the third day was a field review at Choke Canyon Dam where participants were able to put what they learned to practice. The City of Corpus Christi is the operating entity at Choke Canyon Dam and partnered with Reclamation to host the field review.

Reclamation's Great Plains Region Oklahoma-Texas Area Office and Policy and Administration Office hosted the training. In addition to those two offices, presenters included regional offices, area offices, Technical Service Center, Safety, Security, and Law Enforcement, and the Research and Development Office.

Reclamation will be hosting the workshop next year in its Lower Colorado Region.

The participants at the 2019 Review of Operations and Maintenance Workshop in San Antonio.

Participants looking at the spillway of Choke Canyon Dam in Texas.

Published on April 24, 2019