Jul. 28--Join a Kansas City engineering firm and see the world.

In the spirit of the old Navy recruiting slogan, engineers at major local companies have opportunities to do projects around the world and throughout the United States.

Kansas City's larger engineering firms -- Burns & McDonnell, HNTB Corp., Terracon Consultants Inc. and Black & Veatch Corp. -- pursue far-flung challenges. They deal with issues such as delays incurred when endangered California condors perch on their equipment, redesigning a billion-dollar water treatment plant to avoid disturbing the feng shui of a Hong Kong hilltop, or concocting a recipe to firm up a spongy ancient lake bed to support a new freeway in Salt Lake City.

Blowing in the wind

In Southern California, Burns & McDonnell is in the middle of a $2.5 billion project that will transmit power from the 1,000-square-mile Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm on the edge of the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles, 250 miles away. The physical environment is particularly rugged because it requires crossing the San Bernardino Mountains and Angeles National Forest.

"It's restricted construction terrain. No vehicles are allowed," said Gary Pence, vice president of the transmission and distribution global practice at the Kansas City-based company. "All materials and other resources have to be flown in daily by helicopter."

Pence said 25 helicopter sorties are required to bring in the material for one transmission tower, and 300 towers 200 feet tall are being built. This doesn't count the helicopters used to ferry workers to the site.

Because the conditions are so rough -- the mountain construction sites can be buffeted by high winds, and there's the potential of forest fires and accompanying poor visibility -- workers are required to learn survival techniques should they have to spend the night on site.

"It's happened a couple of times," Pence said.

Complicating matters further is the environmental laws covering construction in California. Each day, 25 monitors keep an eye on the job site to make sure no endangered plants or animals are being disturbed.

Should a burrowing owl, Swainson's hawk or other threatened bird build a nest on new tower, a regular occurrence, crews have to wait until the young have left the nest before stringing the high-voltage transmission lines.

"It's just one of the many challenges when working in California," Pence said.

The Tehachapi project is being built in response to a 2007 decision by the California Legislature that requires 20 percent of the state's power from renewable sources by 2010. Since then, that mandate has been expanded to 33 percent by 2020.

When completed in 2013, the Tehachapi Pass project will supply 4,500 megawatts of wind power to Southern California Edison, enough for 2 million homes.

The project will have 1,200 transmission towers. About one-third of the route passes through the mountains and parkland, and the remainder traverses existing and new rights of way.

Burns & McDonnell is working closely with another local company, Par Electric of Gladstone, on the California transmission project.

Tom Shiflett, president of Par Electric, said the firm was founded in 1954. Although still based locally, the company became a subsidiary of Houston-based Quanta Services in 1998.

Building high-voltage transmission lines is a big business these days as the nation strives to improve the reliability of the electrical grid system and build new lines to support renewable energy projects. Pence said more than $7 billion in projects were under way, mostly in California, Texas and the Northeast.

He estimated transmission work in the United States would total $80 billion during the next 10 years.

"We'll get our piece of it," Pence said.