Hydrosphere Staff
Douglas R. Laiho
Senior Project Engineer
Mr. Laiho has more than 35 years' experience in engineering analysis, design, construction supervision, and project management of water resources projects and water resources aspects of multidiscipline projects. The majority of his projects are designs to solve practical water control problems, a high percentage of which are constructed. Mr. Laiho's expertise is primarily in the area of open channel flow in natural rivers. This includes irrigation diversions, headworks, and flow measuring of all types. He is familiar with the full range of structures and devices used for flow splitting, flow measuring and gates. He has directed and performed field flow measuring using weirs, P-B flumes, long-throated flumes, Parshall flumes, natural channel sections, and hydraulic structures for all types of channel conveyances. Mr. Laiho's extensive experience in construction related engineering includes full-time on-site control over all construction activity on two major mine site reclamation projects. He has also completed design-construct projects for stream restoration and fish passage. Mr. Laiho has directed sub-consultant drilling, laboratory testing, monitoring-well construction, geotechnical evaluations, and geophysical evaluations on many of his projects. These projects emphasized dam investigations, disturbed site reclamation, and urban drainage projects but also included raw water supply investigations.
Prior to joining Hydrosphere, Mr. Laiho was the water resources project manager and regional manager of Ayres Associates. His work has been published in numerous conference proceedings and in the refereed journal, Journal of Hydrology. Mr. Laiho is a registered Professional Engineer in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota. He holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Michigan Tech University, and an MS in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado.