Monday, the federal Memorial Day holiday, is the deadline to have a re-submittal in to FEMA’s consultant for the floodplain project I’m currently working on. That means that Tuesday is the day it would have to be turned in. Just today, about 10 AM, I made all corrections to the computer model and had successful runs of the conditions that must be checked.

That’s just the computer model, however, is not the full submittal. We now have to take the computer results and re-map the floodplain, creating a revised work map at a large scale and a revised floodplain map at a smaller scale. For this I will be at the mercy of the CADD people. I have a tech assigned to it, and may have him do some of it this afternoon–or I may wait until Tuesday. For I called FEMA–actually the consulting firm that reviews map change requests turned in to FEMA, and the assigned reviewer said as long as the computer models are turned in on Tuesday, he would consider the deadline met and we would have a few more days to get the paper submittals in.

Hooray for that! In the second half of the morning I spent my time “cleaning-up” the model. As I do one of these, lots of extraneous information is added, as I try out this or that to see how the model can be made more accurate. All of those can be confusing to the reviewer. He just needs to see the files that we actually want him to check, the correct ones. I’m almost done with the clean-up; maybe another 30 minutes or so. I’ll get the e-mail fired off (remembering to attached the files, of course), and that part of the project will be done. I’ll begin printing the paper files, and as I said above maybe get to some of the modeling. Or not. I have another project on my desk for QC review that I really ought to get to today.

So the “I” Street CLOMR is almost done. Hopefully Wednesday it will be. Then I get to work on the Perry Road CLOMR, then the McKisic Creek LOMR (complete with hydrology work), then a re-do of the Crystal Bridges CLOMR (to correct the labyrinth weirs). Then I hear we might have a CLOMR or LOMR in Terrell, Texas. I’m supposed to coach a young engineer in that, rather than do it myself.

At this rate, I might become an expert in floodplain modeling. Which doesn’t really further my writing career, but helps with the job security that I need for another 7 years, 7 months, and 3 days.