Olson Engineering Inc.
Olson Engineering, Inc. has provided state-of-the-art Structural and Infrastructure NDT Condition Assessment services. The staff of Olson Engineering has been carefully assembled to have world class expertise in the following NDT&E consulting service areas: Nondestructive Evaluation (NDT) of Structures & Infrastructure, structural repair/rehabilitation & forensic engineering, structural health condition monitoring, geophysical engineering, vibration engineering, applied research & development, NDT training / NDT seminar courses.
Company details
Find locations served, office locations
- Business Type:
- Engineering service provider
- Industry Type:
- Environmental
- Market Focus:
- Nationally (across the country)
- Year Founded:
- 1985
About Us
Noteworthy Consulting Projects include the following NDT projects conducted for condition assessment of structures and infrastructure:
- Indiana Toll Road (Interstate 90): Structural Condition Assessment and Repairs Consultation for 8 -50 yr old bridges along the toll road in Gary, Indiana. Investigated the integrity of concrete decks, steel girders, columns and beams, concrete piers and abutments, and timber, concrete, monotube and steel piles.
- Pilot Technology Transfer Project in Joint Venture (JV) with Ultra Technologies in New Delhi, India for the Nondestructive Evaluation of Unknown Bridge Piers and Abutments, presented to personnel from the Northern Railways of Indian National Railways, New Delhi, India.
- Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials historic preservation studies of the concrete substructure and marble of both memorials as well as vibration damage mitigation and corrosion evaluation studies at the Jefferson Memorial.
- Korean High Speed Rail Line construction quality audit with NDE and Geophysical methods of embankments, bridge foundations and tunnel linings from Seoul to Taejon, South Korea.
- Regional Transit District Southwest Corridor structural condition assessment of 10 box girder bridges for concrete placement and consolidation problems in Denver, Colorado.
- Dam Safety Evaluations of Concrete and Masonry Conditions with surface waves, velocity tomographic imaging, impact echo and radar methods nationally.
- Impact Echo testing with a remotely-operated Concrete Thickness Gauge mounted on an iRobot tracked robot to test a stone door in an air shaft in the Cheops Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt as shown in a National Geographic's television special that aired in September of 2002.
Over the years, research activities for Olson Engineering, Inc. have included seven externally funded projects with grants of more than $1.8 million as well as a large number smaller externally funded, jointly funded, and internally funded projects. Dr. Yajai Tinkey, Senior Research Engineer of Olson Engineering, is currently serving as the Principal Investigator (PI) and Mr. Olson as the co-PI on a National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) IDEA grant for stress wave scanning of post-tensioned bridge ducts to check for voided ducts to mitigate corrosion risk of tendons. Mr. Olson was the Principal Investigator on Phases 1 and 2 of NCHRP 21-05 (2) research grant for the Determination of Unknown Bridge Foundations from 1993-2001. We also completed an FHWA study for dynamic evaluation of bridge substructures in 2002. In the 1990's Mr. Olson was the Principal Investigator in a Phase I National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Ultrasonic Tomography study for concrete flaw imaging. He was also the Principal Investigator on a US Dept. of Agriculture Phase I SBIR grant for stress-wave scanning of wood.
Mr. Olson has served as technical consultant on a Phase I research grant by the Maryland Highway Administration to the University of Maryland for NDT of bridges. He has also served as a technical consultant on the SHRP H-104 project that researched and developed the seismic pavement analyzer, a pavement testing device, at the University at Texas at El Paso. He was the Principal Investigator for a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation grant for impact echo scanning of concrete pipes to identify corrosion of pre-stressed wire strand in the mid-1990's
In 1988, he was the Principal Investigator of an NSF SBIR grant to evaluate the feasibility of using the Spectral Analysis for Surface Waves (SASW) methods to determine the extent and thickness of frozen and thawed ground. In 1987, he served as principal technical consultant on a joint venture project funded by the National Science Foundations (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to nondestructively predict concrete strength by Impact Echo, Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity and Rebound Hammer methods.
Our engineers have been continually refining the applications of Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) methods and their engineering evaluation judgment through hundreds of thousands of tests in a wide variety of investigations. As a result, we have experience in condition assessment of a wide array of materials including concrete, masonry, steel and other metals, timber, asphalt, soil, rock, and other materials.
To make NDE practical and viable in the construction industry, Mr. Larry D. Olson, P.E., President and Principal Engineer, and Mr. Dennis A. Sack, Vice President and Associate Engineer, have assembled a multidisciplinary group of dedicated people whose backgrounds include Civil Engineering (structural, geotechnical, pavement and materials engineers), Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, and Geophysical Engineering. Together, we combine strengths that enable us to develop state-of-the-art testing procedures, and to develop instruments and test procedures to meet special project needs.
We have worked all over the United States as well as around the world with consulting projects in Australia, Germany, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
We have branch offices located across the United States covering all regions— New Jersey (greater metropolitan New York City area), New Mexico, and our new location in Manassas, Virginia operated by Olson's President & Principal Engineer, Mr. Larry D. Olson.