Lots of Water over the Dam: Bakken Wraps up 41-Year Career

The year was 1973, and the U.S. unemployment rate was 4.9% and growing. Newly minted civil engineers like Jim Bakken were working wherever they could; for Jim, a fall 1972 graduate, that meant continuing the job he had his junior and senior years at the University of Minnesota – working as a janitor at 3M in St. Paul.

Late in 1973, Jim pulled a copy of the Minneapolis Tribune out of the trash. Paging through, he found a tiny ad for a company in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, that was looking for entry-level water resources engineers. The company had just received a contract with the Federal Insurance Agency (now Federal Emergency Management Agency) and needed to staff up to meet contract needs.

Jim’s coursework at the University of Minnesota focused on water resources (the University is home to the St. Anthony Falls Hydraulics Lab), so Jim sent in his application.

That company – Ayres Associates – took a chance on a young engineer with no experience, and Jim started work in the Eau Claire office December 26, 1973. On December 31, 2014, Jim retires as vice president for engineering services, the final stop on his 41-year career at Ayres.

Although Jim notes the 3M job paid “pretty good” (he actually took a slight pay cut to join Ayres), becoming an engineer gave him the opportunity to work on projects that have made a difference all over Wisconsin and nationwide. Jim’s most memorable projects include:

• Serving as project engineer from feasibility through construction on the replacement of the Rice Lake Dam in downtown Rice Lake, Wisconsin. This 1984 project for Barron County involved replacing a rock-filled timber crib dam with a concrete structure that had four tainter gates and a roller gate. Jim spent a year in Rice Lake during construction of the dam, which went on to win an Engineering Excellence Award from the Consulting Engineers Council of Wisconsin (now the American Council of Engineering Companies of Wisconsin).
• Being part of the team that in 1987 developed Ayres’ patented design for the hinged floating bulkhead and seeing it put in place for the first time on the Wissota Dam on the Chippewa River near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. The design improved safety and provided a cost savings of more than $1 million for Xcel Energy. The bulkhead (shown at its launch below) is still in use today at the Wissota Dam, and other models are used at dams nationwide.
  
• Serving as project manager for the Grand Forks/East Grand Forks flood control project, completed in 2005. Ayres designed the English Coulee pumping station, which has a capacity of 100,000 gallons per minute and is the largest pumping station in the massive flood control project. The project was part of the overall design efforts of four firms that earned a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chief of Engineers Design and Environmental Honor Award in 2008.

“Jim set a great leadership example for the rest of us to follow,” says Disa Wahlstrand, who is succeeding Jim as engineering services vice president. “He tackled each challenge (sometimes more than one at a time) like the talented professional he is. He sought no self-promotion from these efforts, but only acted in the best interest of the company. Jim’s leadership style is calm and steady – one I hope I absorbed enough of to carry forward in my new role.”

Although retiring from full-time work, Jim will still be working for Ayres – and teaching the next generation of engineers – as an instructor for several Federal Highway Administration National Highway Institute courses: Introduction to Highway Hydraulics, Urban Drainage, Culvert Design, and Highway Stormwater Pump Station Design.

Thanks for making Ayres your employer of choice, Jim! Happy retirement!