Four Directors Join UCA Executive Committee

Edward Dowey, Pamela Moran, Paul Schmall and Mike Vitale are serving their first year as part of the Executive Committee of the Underground Construction Association (UCA) of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration. Their terms run from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2021. Moran was elected for a second, four-year term.

Edward Dowey, PE, has worked on tunnels in every capacity for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection for more than 30 years. He currently serves as acting portfolio manager for the Gilboa Dam projects and bypass tunnel construction. Previously,he was the design manager for the $800 million bypass tunnel directing an in-house design and consultant staff of tunnel design engineers. Dowey started as a construction inspector and geologist and then served as resident engineer and executive construction manager for the construction of subterranean chambers, thousands of feet of shafts and more than 24 km (15 miles) of tunnels for New York City Water Tunnel No. 3. Dowey has a B.A. in geology and an M.S. in mining engineering from Columbia University, and is a professional engineer in New York.

Pamela Moran, PE, is managing director with Wisko America and is responsible for marketing, estimating and bidding all work in the United States and Canada, scheduling work crews, managing materials and invoicing. She prepares waterproofing construction work plans and shop drawings on numerous projects and assists design engineers who are writing flexible membrane specifications, developing details for challenging conditions and updating contractors and engineers about new developments in flexible waterproofing technology. Previously, she was vice president of engineering for Dr. G. Sauer Corp. Moran has been a member of the UCA of SME Executive Committee since 2013. She wrote the waterproofing section in the History of Tunneling in the United States and has served as a member of the Scholarship Committee. She has a B.S. in civil engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, is a professional engineer in nine states and is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

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Paul C. Schmall, PE, is a senior vice president and chief engineer for specialty geotechnical contractor Moretrench. He is responsible for the engineering of the company’s ground improvement services, including dewatering, grouting, ground freezing and artificial recharge for underground construction or tunneling. He has long played an active role in UCA. He was a director upon the inception of the UCA in 2006 and currently leads the student outreach of the UCA. He is also proactive in advancing the state of the practice by sharing his experience and expertise with the engineering community through frequent seminar and conference presentations, the publication of technical papers and texts, and as an instructor for several tunneling-related short courses. Schmall earned a B.S. in civil engineering from Bucknell University and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Nottingham. He is the co-author of Construction Dewatering and Groundwater Control: New Methods and Applications, third edition.

Michael Vitale is senior vice president and North American tunnel practice leader for Mott MacDonald. He has more than 34 years of extensive, diversified experience in underground design and construction for water/wastewater and transportation projects. His areas of expertise encompass geotechnical soil and rock engineering, tunnel and shaft lining systems, braced excavations, conventional tunnels, EPBM/slurry tunnels, geotechnical/tunnel instrumentation, microtunnels and shaft sinking methods. He has served as tunnel design manager for some of the largest combined sewer overflow projects in the world. Two of his recent projects introduced significant innovations and won international awards from NEC/ITA. Vitale is active on many national boards, technical committees and organizations and was one of the primary authors of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Standard Guideline for Microtunneling. He is the primary author of the chapter on wastewater tunnels in the History of Tunneling in the United States. He also lectures regularly on tunneling at the University of Illinois, where he serves on the civil engineering alumni board of directors.

A list of the full Executive Committee is available here.

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