The conference will be held October 16-18, 2009 in Flagstaff, AZ. The EWB-USU chapter has set aside funding for those who would like to attend. Members who hold leadership positions (board or team leads) have first priority to attend.
Here is a description of the agenda:
- Registration will be 3:00 – 6:00 PM on Friday, Oct 16, at the Museum of Northern Arizona. Attendees who register before 6:00 will get passes to tour the Museum exhibits. Welcome and dinner will start at 6:00, with the NAU chapter presenting our Ghana project at 6:45. The key note speaker will follow. Dr. David Munoz is director of the humanitarian engineering program at the Colorado School of Mines.
- On Saturday, Oct 17th, we’ll start with breakfast and late registration. EWB-USA staff will give presentation on working through the EWB project and program process. This will be followed by concurrent breakout sessions, so each chapter should consider dividing up their members. The breakout sessions are:
- How to design a simple system consisting of solar panels, batteries, a charge controller, and a pump. This will be followed by a demonstration on wiring the system together, with solar panels connected in parallel and series.
- Basic hydraulics, part I. How to match system/pump curves, calculate head loss, and determine flow rates for a simple system of a pump, pipeline, and storage tank.
- Construction planning basics, part I. How to organize for construction in the field. What to bring and order.
After lunch, more concurrent sessions:
- Work site and travel health and safety. How to prevent illness/injury, address basic needs for injured/ill person and have an evacuation plan.
- Basic hydraulics, part II. Building the pipeline, adding pressure gauges, measuring flow rates and comparing them to calculated prediction.
- Testing water turbidity using a portable field kit, treating turbid water with a simple gravity filtration system, and testing the final water again.
- Construction planning basics, part II. How to keep organized and schedule construction tasks on-site.
This will be followed by a panel discussion on the importance of understanding the culture that you are working with. A case study will look at a situation where cultural factors must be considered and why the project will likely fail long term if they are ignored.
Dinner will be everyone on their own, with opportunities to network. Meetings will include: chapter presidents, faculty advisors, fundraising officers, Mountain Regional Advisory Committee.
Sunday will start with concurrent sessions:
- Preparing for the TAC presentation by Peter Waugh.
- Running effective meetings by Jenny Starkey.
- Construction planning basics, part III. Hands-on demonstration of mixing concrete, masonry, or something similar.
- Elevation surveying basics.
Finally, Dale Gray of Medical Hands for Healing will present on the integration of medical projects with engineering projects to promote human health in developing areas. A concurrent session on either dealing with culture shock or working with NGOs will also be held.
For those who are left, lunch networking meetings will be scheduled.
