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Two years ago, when Mark Smith sold his renowned engineering firm Vector Engineering to Australia-based Ausenco, he did not want to put the proceeds, as he says, “solely in his back pocket.”
He founded the Smith International Foundation, a not-for-profit group with a mission dedicated to fostering dialogue between resource industries, such as mining companies, and the communities they impact.
It’s a natural extension of the work Smith encouraged and was a part of at Vector.
The Importance of Social Consulting
Smith founded Vector in 1986, and during his time with the company he applied not only his design expertise but an interest in social consulting. Vector even ran a successful social consulting group out of its Peru office–a truly unique engineering firm approach. It brought together technical engineering experts who focused on the projects, such as heap leach pad design and metals recovery, and consultants who focused solely on the larger impact of the work being performed, such as the provision of sustainable housing for those mine workers and the effects they might have on their new community.
“It puts an entirely different spin on it,” he says of that fusion. “Environmental engineers and social specialists see the word through very different eyes than designers…. But if instead of a purely social function working in isolation and a purely engineering function working in isolation, if you’ve got people in the same office working together at the same staff meetings and drinking from the same coffee pot, you really start to see the benefits in the cross-fertilization of expertise.”
Smith spent much of the last 10 years of his time at Vector with a hand in each of these worlds: design engineering and social consulting.
And after spending a year and a half working alongside the new owners of Vector, he left the company to dedicate much of his energy to helping expand that mission for responsibly connecting the resource industry’s engineering community and the communities in which their work is being performed.
Currently, Smith and six regular volunteers are focusing on a few key projects:
- Watershed preservation and habitat restoration work with the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) in California’s former gold mining district near Nevada City
- The re-licensing of a uranium mill tailings facility near Ute Indian land in Utah
- Straw bale housing. This includes both an on-going sustainable housing endeavor with the Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building (PAKSBAB) organization–Smith sits on the advisory board–and an interest in creating similar housing in Haiti and Chile, two countries with resource industry activity and, unfortunately, a need for disaster relief in the wake of major earthquakes.
These endeavors will take up most of the young foundation’s time in 2010, but Smith and his colleagues are open to suggestions and support for 2011 and 2012 initiatives. The last of these three initiatives, in fact, may provide the best opportunity for the geosynthetics industry to get involved.
Stronger Straw Bale Housing
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“Straw bale housing has an interesting connection to the geosynthetics world,” Smith says. “The straw bale technology is pretty well-established in the US and Canada. But here when you build a straw bale house, the structural frame is post-and-beam. Straw bales are infill and insulation. In other countries, such as with PAKSBAB’s work in Pakistan, the bales are the structure as well. No posts or beams.”
To accomplish this, the bales are mechanically compressed with something like a hydraulic jack. Nylon fishnet wrap secures the bales and attaches them to the roof and foundation. Then, earth plaster is added.
Last year, large-scale testing was conducted on straw bale housing at the National Science Foundation’s George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Consortium, Inc. (NEES) laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno.
“These constructions performed wonderfully,” Smith says. The final test on a full size model home was at twice the acceleration of California’s Northridge earthquake and the home survived the shaking.
“The question I raised, then, was: if these things perform so well with something as non-technical as fishing net, imagine how well they would perform with a highly engineered reinforcement grid?”
Though the Foundation has not yet sought funding to investigate fully the beneficial impact that more highly engineering netting and grids would have on straw bale constructions, Smith is keen to find the right partner(s) for that research. He sees that work as a strong possibility for 2011 and invites interested parties to contact the Foundation.
Of course, this approach would not work everywhere, he notes. “For example,” he says, “in northern Pakistan you’ve got fishing net but not a lot of engineered fabrics being used. But in Chile you’ve got a strong consumption of engineered fabrics and an excellent supply network.”
Countries like Chile seem to be ideal places for investigations into even-better straw bale housing, for Chile has high resource industry investment and interest and more readily available engineered fabrics. Resource industry companies could even help aid in the logistics of material supply.
Immediate Needs
Mark Smith is developing his foundation’s work carefully. He certainly does not want to take on more than the group can responsibly and effectively accomplish. And he does not want to get pulled away from the core mission the Foundation to foster better dialogue between resource industries and the communities in which they work. But the Foundation does encourage discussion and welcomes offers of outside expertise, donations, and interest in being part of relevant future studies.
Again, support for research on stronger straw bale housing potential is of high interest and could be of use to a great many communities interacting with the mining and oil and gas industries and, to a lesser extent, the timber industry. For regions that have both natural resources and may be at risk for natural disasters, such as Haiti and Chile have experienced, the impact of this research would be significant. Co
rporations, governments, disaster relief non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and communities could all benefit from the results of such research.
Also in example, the project in Utah involves a 30-year-old, lined, uranium mill tailings facility. An end-of-service life program or similar engineering specialty may very well be welcomed, especially if similar work comes along for the Foundation.
For individuals who would like to get involved through more than donations, there may be opportunities in the coming few months for hands-on work in Haiti or Chile.
For more information on the Smith International Foundation, please see its Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Smith-International-Foundation/109626299056800?v=wall
Chris Kelsey is Geosynthetica’s editorial director. He can be reached at chris@geosynthetica.net.
