Two engineers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Huntington District, Bryan Bledsoe and Todd Newman, traveled to Antarctica to perform structural assessments at the request of National Science Foundation (NSF).
NSF maintains three permanent research bases (stations) on Antarctica – McMurdo, Palmer, and South Pole. USACE has been providing multi-discipline engineering services to NSF for several years through an interagency agreement, so another piece of this trip was becoming acquainted with the sites in Antarctica and the unique challenges the environment presents.
McMurdo Station is located on Ross Island at the edge of the continent. It is the largest with about 80 structures and a population which tops out at over 1000 in the summer. McMurdo supports field science in the area around the station and is a staging point for material and personnel going to South Pole. Bledsoe did assessments for 15 structures that NSF was most concerned about, many of these structures are 40 to 50 years old. An additional 3 are currently in various stages of construction. Bledsoe and Newman were tasked with doing some quality assurance on the construction and evaluating how well we thought the contractor was performing.
The members of the Huntington District Team also worked closely with Chandler Engel from CRREL. CRREL has a good relationship with NSF that goes back decades. Three Reserve Soldiers from the 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power) Delta Company were also on-ice at the same time assessing the power distribution system at McMurdo. They even did a little hands-on work to get some power restored.