CS39A - Concurrent Session 39A: The Engineer-of-Record’s Role in Risk Informed Decision Making in Levee Design

Risk Informed Decision Making (RIDM) is becoming more common in standard levee design practice. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is actively updating their guidance documents to highlight the use of RIDM in levee design. Historically, levee design has been primarily criteria- and regulation-based, leaving little room for deviations. This has allowed the Engineer-of-Record (EOR) to confidently stamp levee designs as they are protected by the regulations and guidelines they adhere to.

In dam design, RIDM has often led to increasing design criteria to lower or meet tolerable risk as well as designing to mitigate risks not necessarily covered by criteria or regulations. When using RIDM in levee designs, it may offer a unique opportunity to change the required criteria to allow for more affordable flood control infrastructure under certain circumstances.

In these situations, a Risk Assessment is conducted by an independent panel of experts, separate from the EOR and their design team. The Risk Assessment is not a product that is signed or sealed by a professional engineer; though, the EOR will need to rely on the information contained in the Risk Assessment to inform the design. In the event the Risk Assessment recommends changing the criteria for the levee design, the EOR, responsible for the standard of care for the design, may have concerns about incorporating decisions they were not involved with. This could lead to a potential unwillingness to incorporate the Risk Assessment recommendations without the professional assurance that they will not be held liable for the Risk Assessment’s team decisions.

With RIDM still relatively new to levee design, this is a dynamic and changing topic. In this presentation, we will be discussing several instances where certain design criteria were reduced based on the recommendations following a Risk Assessment, and the rationale behind the EOR’s inclination to accommodate the lowered criteria. We will also offer best practices for EORs who will be sealing designs that incorporate RIDM.