What makes a driller’s blood boil?
Sure, there are a few things. But one that is sure to frustrate horizontal directional drilling (HDD) crew members is a project designed by an engineer who does not have a good grasp on HDD methods.
Samuel Ariaratnam is trying to help you out.
He’s a professor and the program chair for construction engineering at Arizona State University. Without fail, the young engineers he teaches know very little about horizontal directional drilling prior to taking his construction engineering and management class.
Here are the ways he’s getting the next generation of civil and construction engineers to understand the potential of HDD and preparing them to properly design an HDD project:
- HDD-specific assignments, including readings and writing essays, researching a challenging project and giving a presentation on it, and designing an underground project. That last one does not have to incorporate HDD, but students often pick it as the installation method.
- A class trip to HDD jobsites, arranged by a local Vermeer dealer.
- Making sure his students are aware of the following benefits of directional boring compared with other installation methods:
- It is very efficient from a productivity perspective.
- It can be less disruptive than other underground construction methods.
- It has environmental advantages, including lower carbon emissions.
Ariaratnam estimates that on a scale of 1 to 10, the general knowledge of horizontal directional drilling among civil engineers is a 3 or 4. That can lead to poorly designed projects, or HDD not even being included in bid documents.
Ariaratnam is working to change that.
“I see a huge future in horizontal directional drilling,” he says. “We have a long way to go in raising awareness about HDD, but that’s a positive thing too because we have a huge market to capture.”