San Jose Villanueva, El Salvador

During the winter 2008 trip to San Jose Villanueva, El Salvador, Tufts Engineers Without Borders learned of the need for a bridge in an area of town where the road is prone to flooding and impassable by pedestrians and vehicles during the rainy season. Mike Jenkins, head of the NGO with which Tufts EWB partners in El Salvador, alerted the EWB January travel team to the situation and brought the team to visit the site. Among local community members, there was widespread desire to construct a bridge, but insufficient funds with which to pay for the bridge design. After returning from the trip, Prof. John Durant presented the bridge design project to a Spring 2008 Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE-81) class. Antoine Debiais, Allison McCarthy, Courtland Hemphill, and Jason Varney accepted the project and with it, the responsibility of generating a feasible preliminary bridge design for the site under the supervision of Salim Ayas, P.E. The students wrote proposals for the Dean's Grant and the Undergraduate Research Fund and received enough financial support to take an exploratory trip to the bridge site. The trip allowed them to conduct a site survey, familiarize themselves with common building practices, and acquire copies of local codes and a hydraulic and geotechnical report for the site. After returning from El Salvador, they conducted a bridge type study. They are currently finalizing designs in preparation for a final recommendation and preliminary design package that can be used by the community of El Matazano to raise funds for the construction of the bridge.