RG part 2

In the United States, designing a hospital often takes multiple years. At my last internship, I worked on a small part of Dallas’ new Parkland Hospital: its central utility plant. Completing just this part of the hospital took more than two years. Certainly, the hospital we set out to design is not nearly the same magnitude as Parkland, but we only had a week to design it. Or at least gather all of the information we needed to design it by the end of the semester.

For the architects, this meant meeting with Dr. Tim and figuring out exactly what he wanted out of the hospital, what it should look like, what designs fit in well with the current buildings, etc. 

The structural engineers investigated the capabilities and limitations of local construction techniques so that they could ensure that whatever the architects designed would, in fact, stand up. Here is a picture of some women making the compressed earth blocks used to build their buildings.

Here's a picture of Victor, the head construction guy on site. He is responsible for getting the buildings built. 

 

Our electrical engineer researched current electricity usage in the complex and power production methods. Here are some of the solar panels they were using to power their water well.

 

The civil engineers (and mechanical engineering intern in my case) needed to determine the capabilities of the wells to produce clean water and the ability of the complex to dispose of wastewater. Here is their main water tower. It holds enough water for 2 days worth of storage for the facility.

After determining a plan of action on the first day, the team was split into groups by discipline and we set to work. I was placed in the civil group and we went outside to meet underneath a small tree. We discussed numerous wastewater disposal methods from simple soak pits to wastewater treatment facilities. Due to the hospital’s proximity to the Nile, wastewater treatment is a very important consideration (while most people would be fine just dumping everything in the Nile, we decided to be good stewards of the land and design appropriate wastewater solutions). Based on previous studies, local expertise, and cost considerations, the group settled on the tried and true technology of a septic tank-leech field combo to deal with the hospital’s wastewater. The hospital’s water needs would be met with the currently operating water wells, but updated distribution systems needed to be designed and well production needed to be verified.

As the intern, I was tasked with the not inconsiderable manual labor that was involved. In order to size the leech fields, we needed to know the percolation rate of the soil where the hospital was to be built. This entailed multiple percolation tests, which include digging a hole a meter or more deep and filling it with water to observe the rate at which the soil will absorb the water. Without hoses on hand, numerous jerry cans were used to supply water to the test pits. This often entailed numerous trips of a hundred yards or more with two jerry cans. Needless to say, I didn’t miss out on my workouts while in Uganda. Here are some photos of the process.

Validating the well production was a bit less scientific, but much less difficult. Basically, we timed how long it took each pump to fill a bucket with a known volume. This gave us a flow rate for the well. We did this about 20 times for each of the two wells to give us a reliable average flow rate.Sorry, I don't have any pictures of this process. It was nice though, because the water coming directly out of the ground was really cold. It was the closest thing I got to air conditioning all week!

We then performed a usage test where we turned off the pumps and measured the drop in water level in the water tanks that supplies the community over a set period of time. This gave us a sense of how much water storage is needed to sustain the community and how much storage will be needed once the hospital comes on line.

Finally, I tested water quality at multiple points along the current distribution line to figure out if there was anything concerning in the water (luckily there was not because we had been drinking it all week!). This tests for things like salinity, pH, chloride, e coli, etc. It is very fortunate for the ministry that the water was clean because treating water can get very expensive very quickly.

Hopefully I haven’t put anyone to sleep with the engineering details. While all of this was happening throughout the week, we made time to eat lunch with the orphans at their homes, attend their staff devotionals in the morning, and even do some devotionals of our own. Here is one of their worship times before devotionals.

 Even though they had a translator, it was very difficult to understand their devotional because of the acoustics in the gym where they were held. 

After dinner, we shared testimonies with the rest of our group before beginning again on our design work. Throughout the week I made sure to spend time with some of the orphans on camp. They loved playing soccer (football) and having fun with just about anything they could find around camp. This included rusty wheelbarrows and even a bamboo pole we found on the last day. Who needs TV when you have a bamboo pole?! It was a blast. Here are some pictures.

The whole week was an awesome blend of technical work, physical work, and play or personal interactions. And everything was done for the Lord. It seemed like a complete picture of the Colossians 3:23 which says “ Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men...”

 Here are some more pictures showing the kind of week we had:

Here is a layout of the outpatient facility that the architects came up with

Here you can see what the completed hospital will hopefully look like.

 My project leaders snoozing while their intern is out doing manual labor

 The kids were really interested in seeing David draw the hospital on his iPad

Me teaching some kids how to calculate flow rates. Or they're just playing with my computer.

 On a different note, as I was writing this, I found out that I was accepted into the masters program at Stanford for the Fall of 2014!! Praise God without whom there's no way this would have happened.