Bob Glass talks about how he became a project manager overseeing some of TRS’s most complex projects,
including our JBER site, where TRS is thermally desorbing PFAS from a 2,000-cubic yard soil pile.
Position: Project Manager II
Location: Philadelphia
TRS Employee-Owner Year Started: 2016
Specialties: Large/technical projects; financial management; proposals
Education: Bachelor of Arts, Environmental Studies, Temple University
TRS Group: What single thing have you been most proud of during your time at TRS?
Bob Glass: Definitely the successful completion of the Pohatcong Superfund Site.
TRS: What was so rewarding about that project?
Bob: It was our biggest job to date, both operationally and financially, so it touched nearly everyone at TRS. We had over 55,000 man-hours there and it involved managing a multidisciplinary team of up to 40 people. The project was very demanding from a technical perspective and required a higher level of execution than any other project I’ve worked on. And the team knocked it out of the park.
TRS: When you came on to that site, what was your role?
Bob: I came on as a second project manager to handle more of the day-to-day operations with the team and subs. When the other project manager ended up moving off the project, I took up his role as well. Luckily we had a very strong team. I ended up serving as the primary point of contact for the client, oversaw site construction and operations, and made sure we were adhering to rigorous health and safety protocols, as we were executing the job through the COVID years.
TRS: What is the most satisfying aspect of your job?
Bob: Building and working with effective teams. The people at TRS make it worth it. What I like the best is getting our teams together and going out and tackling difficult projects. And kind of hand in hand with that is solving very difficult problems for our clients. TRS’s technology, in situ thermal remediation, is often not the first technology that the client has tried. Usually, they’ve done years of work at the site and are still struggling to reach the goals in
certain areas. We then come in with a highly technical and effective solution and get it done quickly.
TRS: What lessons have you used from Pohatcong on other projects since then?
Bob: Pohatcong was a marquee project for our thermal conduction heating (TCH) solution. There were lessons learned about how to install a complex array of heaters, how best to build them, and how to troubleshoot and fix problems.
Our project at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) in Anchorage, Alaska, is the next evolution in our
applications for TCH, where we are thermally desorbing PFAS from an ex-situ soil pile. Rather than using vertical heaters, we have installed them horizontally. Our goal is to achieve temperatures greater than 400 degrees Celsius. While we completed a small-scale ex-situ pilot study a couple of years ago, this site is far larger and more complex.
Working in Anchorage during the winter during the snowiest year on record, which is official now, was extremely challenging and brought about a whole host of additional factors that our team wasn’t expecting. Being able to work through that was difficult, but rewarding.
TRS: How exactly do you put together a hanger and construct a soil pile in the snow in sub-freezing temperatures?
Bob: With great care and lots of breaks. The weather was a huge factor. Not only was it very cold and snowy, but you also don’t have a lot of daylight that far north in the winter. It’s dark until 10 a.m., and then you get daylight until like 4:30 p.m., and then it’s dark again, reducing your work hours. We spent a lot of time managing snow. The team did a great job on construction. It took a lot of sacrifice to get that build done.
TRS: Who was your daily snowplow driver?
Bob: We bought a snowplow for our company truck. Todd Knepper, Systems Specialist, was our snow removal guy, in addition to his other duties. Dealing with the snow was the first thing the team did every day, which would take a few hours. Once we cleared out the work area, the team was able to do what was needed for the rest of the short day.
TRS: My guess is he didn’t imagine that was going to be so much of his job on site.
Bob: Nobody did. We were expecting to operate the system over the winter, not construct it, but that’s ultimately what happened. It made everything far more challenging.
TRS: What attracted you to the environmental remediation field?
Bob: I don’t know if I was angling for the remediation industry specifically, but I did have an interest in
environmental science. I started off in college in environmental engineering, and then I switched to a policy-focused degree because I thought I might go into environmental law. And then I ended up in an engineering-focused
position. So, shame on me for switching so early. Environmental science is interesting because it’s at the nexus of a lot of different fields, including chemistry, biology, geology, and hydrogeology. At TRS we integrate mechanical and electrical engineering to implement our remedies. It’s a mash up of a lot of things that keep the job interesting.
I came to TRS by way of another environmental technology company, focused on excavation, groundwater
treatment, and emergency response work. I was a subcontractor for TRS on a job in north New Jersey. I got along well the TRS crew and Bob Poulin, a senior TRS operations manager, asked for my resume, which led to me joining TRS.
TRS: What interested you about thermal remediation?
Bob: The effectiveness, the percent reductions, and the speed of the projects are so interesting. Other remedial
solutions can take years or decades. As an example, pump and treat systems often run for 20, 30, or 50 years. We’re typically in and out of a site in under two years from proposal to final report. That’s lightspeed in the environmental industry.
Also, we routinely achieve over 99.9% reductions and often guarantee results.
It’s sort of funny when clients ask me if they think the technology is going to work. I’ve had multiple occasions where we’re already contracted on the job, and we’re getting ready to kick it off and they’re still asking if we think we’re going to be able to do the remediation. My usual response is, “Well yeah, we signed up for it. You’re going to love it.” We have a lot of confidence in the effectiveness of our technologies.
Every site is different and has unique challenges. Sometimes it can be logistics, like the site is in a building, or it can be the lithology, where we run into something we weren’t expecting. Our technical approaches can adapt to
site-specific circumstances. There’s always some sort of change or something challenging about the projects that we need to overcome. It keeps it fresh when you’re constantly having to be flexible.
