The Spokane office of Coffman Engineers Inc. is participating in a $200 million U.S. government effort to bring aid to earthquake-ravaged Pakistan. Pakistan still is recovering from a massive earthquake that killed nearly 75,000 people 18 months ago.


The role of Coffmans office here, like that of its headquarters in Seattle and also its Los Angeles office, is to help supervise the structural-engineering design and construction of new earthquake-resistant schools, hospitals, and clinics that will be built there, says Saif Hussain, managing principal of Coffmans Los Angeles office.


Those structures will be built to replace schools and health-care facilities destroyed beyond repair during the Oct. 8, 2005 earthquake, he says.


Most of our work will be done stateside in Spokane, Seattle, and Los Angeles, where well have the design documents submitted to us for review and quality control, says Hussain, whos coordinating Coffmans effort for the five-year project. The three offices will split the work about evenly.


Coffman will place one employee in Pakistans capital city of Islamabad, and periodically will send other employees to Pakistan to inspect buildings.


The U.S. Agency for International Development is coordinating the project and has hired CDM Constructors Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., as its general contractor, Hussain says.


Well probably end up billing them (CDM) in excess of $1 million, for Coffmans part of the work, he says.


Hussain estimates a total of 300 new schools and health-care facilities, most of them small, will be constructed during the project in north Pakistans Kashmir region, the mostly rural area that was the epicenter of the earthquake. He says the Kashmir region is about half the size of Washington state.


Coffman, which has been working on the project since late last year, has helped establish design criteria for the planned structures and has met with engineers and consultants about the work, says Hussain. He says were still in the mobilization phase, and that Coffmans one employee to be based in Islamabad, whos from Vancouver, Wash., will be there within the next month.


One of the elements of the project is called capacity building, Hussain says. That means that engineers and contractors from Pakistan will be allowed to do much of the work and improve their skills.


Contact Rocky Wilson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at rockyw@spokanejournal.com.