(November 18, 2020) – Triad Engineering, Inc. (Triad) is pleased to announce that Raymond (RJ) Strother, II, PE, has been promoted to Regional Manager for the Shenandoah Valley Region, which includes office locations in Winchester and Sterling, Virginia. In a combined role, RJ will continue to lead the Geotechnical Engineering Department. RJ graduated from West Virginia University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering and is a Registered Professional Civil Engineer in Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia. RJ has been with the firm for over 13 years and has worked in many roles with Triad.

R.J. was born and raised in Winchester and has been working in Triad’s Winchester office since graduating from WVU. R.J. began his engineering career as a Staff Engineer, progressed to Senior Engineer and then Geotechnical Practice Leader in 2015. Mr. Strother serves on Triad’s Board of Directors. He is passionate about building and fostering strong client relationships that will continue to contribute to the growth of his community and finds great satisfaction being directly involved with the strategic planning for Triad’s future and mentoring new staff members.

Former Shenandoah Valley Regional Manager, Randy Moulton, PE, will remain with Triad and dedicate his time to his corporate role as Principal Engineer. “RJ has shown tremendous growth as a leader and manager over the past several years, and he has demonstrated outstanding commitment to Triad’s clients. He has embraced this new position, and I would expect him to continue providing excellent services in this region,” said Randy. As Randy will continue to serve in his corporate role, a seamless transition is expected for RJ moving into this new leadership position.

Providing support for our geotechnical engineering and construction monitoring divisions, Triad maintains complete laboratory facilities in each of our office locations. Materials tested include soil, concrete, aggregate, asphalt, rock and sprayed-on fireproofing.

We recently had a unique opportunity to create a mobile concrete laboratory facility to more adequately address the needs of our client and their project. There were many factors that led to the creation of a mobile laboratory. The first consideration was the volume of concrete testing required for this project. The client is constructing an approximately one million square foot industrial facility. They will be placing an average of 1,200 cubic yards of concrete per day. This amount of concrete will require dozens of cylinder samples that need to be tested.

The second consideration was the location of the project site. It is approximately 2 hours from our nearest laboratory. Transporting the high volume of concrete cylinders to our laboratory would have required a special vehicle or trailer to accommodate the weight of the cylinders, and the travel time would have negatively impacted our response time to the contractor. With the mobile laboratory, we can break cylinders on site and immediately notify the contractor verbally if there is an issue with the compressive strength results.

The mobile laboratory is powered by a generator, so it is temperature controlled to meet ACI and AASHTO specifications for storing and breaking concrete cylinders. In the end, this solution was developed to best meet the needs of our client for this project. Setting up a mobile laboratory helps us perform materials testing more efficiently which helps our client stay on time and on budget. All testing procedures are performed by certified and trained laboratory technicians.

“Silly Putty” Clays

bad for foundations, good for containment of environmental contaminants

Environmental scientist Carol Phillips couldn’t believe her eyes retrieving soil samples from a subsurface exploration she was performing to check for metal, volatile organic compounds and other potential environmental contaminants. Pulling the sleeves from the borings, she discovered thick, high plasticity clays of a beautiful array of colors. From a very light lavender color to an almost turquoise color and bright orange sand layer, this was one of the most exciting soil samples she has ever seen.

“Phoning a friend,” Carol reached out to Rhea Sublett, staff geologist who offered some background information on the lacustrine deposits from the glacial Lake Monongahela, the region of her subsurface exploration. Lake Monongahela was formed a few hundred thousand years ago during an ice age where the glaciers dammed river flow to create a lake extending from approximately Pittsburgh, PA south to Clarksburg, WV. Lake Monongahela no longer exists, but after the glacier receded, its waters created what is now the Ohio River.

The unique history of Lake Monongahela has created fascinating and challenging geologic patterns and conditions in and around Morgantown. The fine-grained lacustrine deposits are the consistency of Silly Putty and often extend up to 80 feet below existing grades. The shrinking and swelling clay materials are problematic for building foundations and construction. However, the thick make-up of the clay materials may help slow or prevent the spread of potential environmental contaminants on the property being evaluated in Carol’s study.

Offering geotechnical engineering, environmental consulting and our many other services in house creates amazing opportunities for collaboration and learning. At Triad, we’re grateful for our diverse, complementary service offerings and our talented staff.

Triad’s Safety Employee of the Month:  October

This month we would like to recognize Kevin Benecki, Engineering Technician for the Sterling office. Kevin recognizes that safety is of utmost importance for Triad, and for our industry as a whole. Kevin does a great job promoting Triad’s safety culture to new technicians and we firmly believe that his actions help them be more safety-oriented while working on busy construction sites. Thank you Kevin for helping spread the all-important “Safety First” message for Triad.

Triad’s Safety Employee of the Month: September

This month we would like to recognize Cindy Thurber, office admin for the Hagerstown office. Throughout this pandemic, all of our office admins have been on the front lines ensuring our offices are safe, clean spaces. Cindy has made hand sanitizer, posted reminders in visible public spaces to remind staff of specific regulations Triad has in place related to COVID, like filling out our Daily JHA and Attendance Report Forms. More than our physical safety and well-being concerns, Cindy contributes to a positive work environment and makes everyone feel welcome. Her efforts are noticed and appreciated more than she knows.