Elyse O'C: life after MKE: Vol. 3 – PANAMA! Pa na ma-ah

Yikes! This one really got away from me – the event itself was so jam packed with wonderful people, places, and learning experiences that it was all-consuming, which in turn meant my communication with the rest of the world ceased. Suffice it to say I’m still chin-deep in a well of emails and such…

SO por fin here are my thoughts on Panama!

For some background, check out the course schedule here, but in short:

Part 1

3 days
Exclusively with EWB-USA folks focused on course material
This consisted of long morning lectures from BernardAmadei (founder of EWB-USA and prof at CU-Boulder), snacks, lectures from various professionals on their work in the engineering field, lunch, then afternoons in our pathway sections

Pathways were our focus area for our case studies – I wrote a case study on the MU micro-hydro, PV electrical system here in Guate and was therefore part of the energy pathway

We stayed about 15-20 min outside of the city center in a place called the “City of Knowledge” which is right next to the Pacific locks, used to be the main US military base, but when the US handed ownership over to the Panamanians (this only just happened in 1999 by the way – add this to the list of things I should have known but found shocking!), the Panamanians turned it into an incubator for development – it now consists of a few universities, UN offices, office space/living space for other start-ups and NGOs, and a hotel w/ conference center

Part 2

5 days
ASCE/EWB-USA conference and end of course
This part consisted of various conference lectures/activities, local project site visits, and a visit to the CANAL – Bernard also gave a closing lecture for the course
The conference was held at the fancy-schmancy Riu Panama and was lovely and expensive, so EWB set us up with blocks of rooms at a Double Tree that was about a 10-15min walk from the Riu

This effectively meant that the EWB love-fest/bonding time/exclusivity didn’t change much; we just had better access to the city and all of its awesome attractions such as Casco Viejo

Generally speaking, this week was AMAZING for many many reasons, including (but not limited to):

The people – holy cow! What an INCREDIBLE group of awesome, passionate, interesting, motivated, wonderful folks!

There were about 120-130 individuals taking the class (mostly junior and senior engineering students but also a large contingent of professionals) plus 15-20 EWB-USA staff and the pathway leaders
From my conversations, while most of us agreed that the course would have likely been more impactful for younger chapter members (freshmen/sophomores) and an excellent introduction to the theory and practice of development engineering, I must admit that I tremendously enjoyed having a group of juniors and seniors who had appreciable experience in the field. This meant that much of the lecture material felt a bit like preaching to the choir; however the choir was a melting pot of people who had thought about these concepts in great depth and with tremendous passion, therefore the questions asked and the conversations during “down-time” were incredibly enriching.
Also, speaking a bit more selfishly, this group dynamic allowed me to straddle the student and professional realm very easily; since I’m only a year or two older than the vast majority of the students, I had no problem connecting. Having the opportunity to re-connect with the world of being an undergrad with a group of incredibly interesting peers, if only for a week, was absolutely wonderful. At the same time, I also had the freedom of a professional taking the class for personal reasons, not for credit, which meant I was able to allot more time to networking and being fully present in conversations rather than scrambling to complete homework
I tried my darndest to get to know as many of the amazing folks present, but fuieron BASTANTES, so all distractions (email and blog…) from the present moment were neglected almost completely and I simply did my best to spend time with people at all times… this meant awesome conversations on a wide wide WIDE range of topics and the development of some pretty solid friendships. ALSO this meant extremely minimal sleep – adrenaline and lots of coffee made this acceptable for a week, but my body and email inbox were very displeased after my return to Guate…

The conversations – speaking of the people, here were some of the take-aways I had from a variety of conversations with students and professionals. DISCLAIMER – These are sound bites of much larger, often week-long discussions and each deserves full-fledged posts to truly capture them, so please take them for what they’re worth…

Balance – we need to be involved in organizations and volunteer work that is personally enriching rather than all-consuming

This conversation with a professional who is new to EWB-USA work was very intriguing and reminded me tremendously of Pedro Arrupe’s thoughts on the matter
Essentially, we came to the conclusion that we’re involved in EWB because we receive spiritual and emotional enrichment (from the other volunteers as well as communities) in exchange for our time and energy
While the idea of “getting something in return” for service work might sound incorrect or selfish, we had a great conversation about how service work isn’t meant to be martyrdom (and if anything, that type of service only feeds our egos and leads to excess pride and chips on our shoulders) – we need to receive some form of joy and enrichment otherwise we burn out

Morality in relation to development engineering

After a week of immersion in the topic of development engineering, some folks raised interesting moral questions related to our work that all seemed to be based out of the basic question - is it moral to take on projects that have so many inherent and unmanageable risks that failure seems more probable than success? Given that the world of engineering is one of managing risk, the consensus generally came to this:
We cannot avoid all development work because there is risk, but instead must do our best to operate within frameworks that are known to work and be extra vigilant to recognize and mitigate risks – we need to do everything in our power to make success more formulaic rather than “magical”

Incentivized training for members

Along the lines of mitigating risk and operating morally within the context of development engineering, many conversations came to the need for more education and training
Back to balance, most volunteers are already stretched too thin by project demands within EWB to spend a ton of time on training purely for the sake of EWB (clearly the training enhances the project work, however that is not always clear to volunteers)
Given this, we discussed many ideas such as finding ways to incorporate training modules into engineering course work at interested universities, providing PDH (professional development hours required in many states to maintain a professional engineering license) opportunities, or providing some type of certification that holds value outside of EWB
Ultimately, all of these ideas call for greater educational resources or at least the re-purposing of existing educational resources within EWB to make them more widely utilized

The content

Like I said, some aspects felt like preaching to the choir, however it was fascinating to learn development theories in the specific context of engineering, particularly taught by Bernard (one of the premier minds in development engineering theory)
Further, hearing from the various industry professionals about their work outside of EWB (and within EWB) was fascinating – it was effectively a collection of amazing speakers talking about their work and passion. We also had a chance before lunch and before closing each day during Part 1 to ask the day’s speakers and pathway leaders various questions – this led to awesome conversations over lunch and dinner/evening drinks
The Pathway sessions were also very enjoyable – I’ve been meaning to collect and present all info about the NP electrical project for a long time, and this setting gave me both ganas to actually tackle it (having deadlines is big for me) and an opportunity to have it reviewed and enriched by some outstanding professionals as well as the insights of other students in the pathway
To be perfectly honest, I was a bit stir crazy and very mentally exhausted after 3 days straight of lectures, so I spent most of the conference in side conversations outside of lectures, though I certainly attended a few (below) that were exceptional! FAIR WARNING – I got a little excited and nerded out on this portion of the post… its super interesting I swear, but sorry for the length!

“Evolving Models of Partnerships with USAID Programs” presented by Morris Israel, Ph.D., P.E. Senior Assoc. with Tetra Tech

Really interesting technology applications (such as Watertracker and ePORT) for monitoring, evaluation, and maintenance of infrastructure projects in the developing world
He also had a lot to say about local capacity building and how USAID requires work with local contractors, banks, and universities throughout the project life

“Leaving a Community” Bernard Amadei’s closing statements

He presented on his new model for development engineering that will be out soon when his new book is published, but it essentially took his earlier models and altered them to view development engineering projects as closed-loop systems with a circular causality – hard to describe without the model as a visual, but I’m looking forward to the new book
Lots of talk about the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the importance of studying and implementing their models within the development context
Chapters need to be prepared to recognize and manage the difference between “scaling up” projects and “scope creep” within projects and also need to understand that the definition of a “finished project” depends heavily on the context and owner’s (aka community’s) understanding of the project

“Industry Leaders Forum” a Q&A session with Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, P.E. Chief of Engineers and Commanding General for the US Army Corps of Engineers

This came right after our closing session with the EWB crew, so I was fairly late due to the conversations, networking, and group photos that followed Bernard’s talk, however I caught the tail end
It was interesting to hear about the scope of the ACE (in 130 countries w/ 40 separate offices) where they’re working to help build capacity
Other countries are eager (apparently) to establish Army Corps of Engineers because they see how ACEs can

Stabilize their country by meeting basic infrastructure needs and raising their citizens’ quality of life
Help the image of the military (in my travels I’m constantly reminded that having pride and respect for your country’s military is not common in many countries outside of the US, particularly in developing nations – again, another can of worms that I will not get into here, but just an interesting observation)

Distinguished Lecture Series – Masters International Work with James R. Mihelcic, Ph.D., BCEEM and director of environmental engineering Masters International programs at USF

Very interesting guy who gave a wealth of resources during his talk (hard to keep track of it all!) including a major focus on appropriate technology – inappropriate technology will always equate to project failure in some capacity
He defined inappropriate technology as a solution that doesn’t meet geographical and/or cultural specifications, is economically unsustainable, or that does not have adequate local capacity to support it (though he noted that capacity can be developed, but must be within reason and scope)
He and some of his students also developed a field guide for “Environmental Engineering for Development Workers” which is AWESOME and should be done for other aspects of infrastructure development…

“Transforming Vision to Reality” a panel of 4 professionals including MG John Peabody, Deputy Commanding General for Civil Works and Emergency Operations in the US Army Corps of Engineers

All four panel members gave interesting presentations on a variety of different scopes and focuses related to project delivery for infrastructure systems, however MG Peabody’s talk stood out
MG Peabody focused on geo-politics in relation to US natural resources and defined “infrastructure development” as the civil engineer’s job to satisfy human needs, but increasingly in the modern era, to satisfy/stabilize environmental needs based on previous attempts to satisfy human needs and “vision” as a dream based on reality paired with a plan to realize that dream
He talked about the concept of “coasts” in the US, referring to coasts as anything touching a waterway that can be navigated to meet economic demand, making the Great Lakes region the “north coast” and the states touching the Mississippi river the “central coast”
Given this, the US has more navigable waterways than all other nations combined (WOAH mind blown) making it an “Inevitable Empire” from a geo-political standpoint
However, since we have so many coasts, this means we have a massive percentage of our population occupying flat coastline, which poses a massive threat to our infrastructure (ergo economy) as oceans rise
Disaster relief is expensive work, so working on building resilience into our Public Works projects is critical to help lessen the cost of relief as more and more is required with water rising left-right-and-center
He also noted that “armoring coastlines” was completely unsustainable and that we should instead focus on beach nourishment and wetlands restoration – he referred directly to the loss of wetlands surrounding New Orleans and how massively critical it is to work to restore them and I almost stood up and shouted “AMEN”
He closed with the note that it’s all well and good to be an inevitable empire by geo-political standards, but that establishing such an empire is the easy part – once achieved, it must be sustained and must avoid becoming self-absorbed
As you might have guessed given my air time for this one (and you’re probably reading this blog because you know me already…), I cannot possibly express how AMAZING it was to hear someone so high up in the ACE speak on these issues with such passion – he’s clearly fighting an uphill battle, but it’s fantastic to know that he is in a position to potentially make a difference
During Q&A, when asked how engineers can have a greater voice in the vision of public works projects, he said we need to

Spend more time/effort working on/through public policy
Provide more solutions than problems as a way of establishing more trust and respect in Congress
Engineering education also needs to place more emphasis on social/cultural education so engineers have the capacity to express ourselves better to the general public

In a similar vein, there was a question of how do we change public perception of public works/civil engineering so we can get the funding we need to complete critical projects to which he responded

First, they need to believe us (thus establishing trust is first and foremost)
With trust, then we can get them to invest by showing how our work impacts their bottom line (it’s cheaper to be resilient)

That being said, when I had the pleasure to chat with him after the presentation, we talked extensively about how such insights are often ignored completely by politicians and others in power because they only believe engineers are trying to push public works projects for the sake of job security – I wanted to know how he handles this and how he keeps himself motivated when people (politicians) refuse to listen to him. He basically said that all we can do is maintain our integrity and keep putting the information out there in as many ways and as clearly as possible, but we must recognize that we can’t make people change their minds – we only have control over ourselves and our own actions

The place – suffice it to say, Panama City is incredible, but you all know by now that I’m long-winded, so here goes:

As mentioned above, the City of Knowledge was way cool and a brilliant use of space (in my opinion) – it was awesome being able to spend time there, even if we were entirely cloistered and in our own, special EWB world (which was pretty awesome in-and-of-itself)
Panama City is, as one of the local engineers put it, a civil engineer’s playground – the Canal brings in a staggering amount of money, and given that the city/country is essentially the crossroads of the world, the city sees a lot of activity

Like anywhere, there’s also tremendous poverty present that I would be remiss to ignore, but my oh my is there some intense development happening!

THE CANAL – we visited the Miraflores Locks which had a nice 3D movie to explain the history and function of the locks as well as a really well-done museum. Sadly, we only stopped briefly with a large group from the conference and missed the big big ships heading down the canal, but it was pretty incredible just to be there. We also visited the expansion construction site – again, we didn’t get to go down into the hole, but we had a nice orientation from the PM and the viewing area was pretty excellent given that the locks have yet to be flooded
Casco Viejo (the old city) is also incredible – I was fortunate to visit Casco both informally as well as for my site visit on the final day. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and therefore incredibly beautiful and rich with history

OK so much info – this is only a glimpse of the week as a whole and time cannot possibly allow me to describe every aspect of how amazing this experience was. My biggest take-aways were:

Engineering education needs a facelift and I’m more excited than ever to pursue a career as a professor of engineering to help shake this up!
Lots and lots of ideas to improve EWB-USA in relation to educational offerings, but also a tremendous appreciation for the base of incredible and passionate individuals who comprise the organization
Amazing new contacts and friends – it truly was an amazing group and I look forward to maintaining and building on these relationships!

And now, PICTURES! Probably should note at this point that my amazing mother (with the help of my very patient and helpful boss) sent an awesome care package that included Jimmy’s Flat Stanley, so Panama also served as the first stop in the adventures of Flat Stanley!