expresso 14 - en

expresso 14 | winter 2018

ILLINOIS ROUTE 104 Two miles of new roadway connects Illinois Route 104 to a new 2,500-foot bridge spanning the Illinois River. The bridge was built at a different alignment and required a substantial profile raise. Working in close coordination with town officials, EXP integrated the revised river crossing within the downtown street grid. Sandra’s expertise helped prevent flooding in this small community along the Illinois River where water would get trapped on the land side of the river levee and cause flooding and roadway damage. The project included design and construction of a pump station combined with an underground retention chamber to store stormwater during peak flow periods and pump it into the river, away from downtown.

going with the flow Sandra L. Homola, PE, CFM, LEED AP Department Manager, Water Resources | Chicago, Illinois

As a Water resources specialist, Sandra Homola started her career in an unconventional way. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan and interned with a lab working for the US Department of Defense. Working on a site where a jet fuel spill had occurred, she gained invaluable experience researching micro bacterial solutions to deal with water contamination. She then transitioned to a smaller company in Chicago that gave her a foundation in hydrology, hydraulics and water resources. With EXP, Sandra has been managing the water resources department for almost four years, overseeing multiple concurrent projects, managing staff, and contributing to business development. She is currently handling the full scope of drainage and floodplain work for the master planning of 14 miles along Interstate 294. Sandra is also managing her professional development as a Director for the IL Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers and an active member of the Women in Transportation Seminar. “I’ve found it’s important to network with our clients and other engineers in the same industry. It’s also important to keep up with the latest advancements in software, design techniques, and sustainable practices.

“My vision for the water resources team in Chicago is to start winning more water-resource specific work, such as preparing large scale watershed and floodplain studies, storm water management plans and to continue to help the global EXP practice grow by offering our stormwater expertise wherever it’s needed.” Water: a resource to control The Chicago area is blessed with several large river systems, unfortunately it also gets a lot of storms and rain. The water resources team, under Sandra’s supervision, prepared a hydraulic model for the Illinois Route 173 crossing over the Des Plaines River as part of Phase 1 engineering. The model showed that water overtopped the low point in the roadway during large storm events. The team went out to the site just after a large rainfall and were able to verify that the flooding conditions on site matched their modeling results very closely. “There is a water shortage in much of the world, but in Chicago, we have the opposite problem because we have so much flooding. As we continue to grow and develop as a city, there’s less space for water to flow. We need to find better ways to control where the water goes.”

I’ve found it’s important to network with our clients and other engineers in the same industry.”

women at EXP | 17