Introduction
During the past 150 years, Americans have achieved phenomenal success on our way to becoming the greatest nation in the history of the world. Notwithstanding the many inventions that we have created, such as the electric light bulb and the telephone and the airplane and the internet, Americans have been responsible for some of the greatest and most beneficial projects in the modern era. This course features a synopsis of one of those great projects: the Hoover Dam. The fact that this project has stood the test of time – for more than eighty years – is a strong testament to the engineers who designed this enormously successful project as well as the project managers and construction companies who made the timely and sometimes very difficult decisions.
The Boulder (later named Hoover) Dam was unique in its size and scope of work, and it was finally approved and designed and constructed during the heart of the worldwide depression. While many Americans may consider this project to be a construction project, an engineer or an architect or a designer would see it with a different perspective. Without the support of individual engineers and without the vision and wisdom of quality project managers, this project could not have achieved the success that it did. This statement is not intended to demean the many manufacturers and other groups of men and women who were involved, but only to emphasize that their foresight and experience was paramount to altering a significant portion of the United States.
Learning Objectives
• Learn from this project how it will benefit modern engineers in particular.
• Understand the obstacles that confronted early engineers, managers, and contractors.
• Understand the role that government engineers had with construction companies.
• Discover how safety and health issues of the workforce as well as the engineers were not a primary concern to some.
• Follow the techniques and strategies of those engineers who achieved outstanding and long-term success.
• Learn how early engineers coped with limited technologies and resources.
• Discover how leadership played such a major factor in such a significant project.
