George Blaisdell

George Blaisdell is currently a cold regions engineering consultant. He recently completed 43 years as a government employee in the roles of a research engineer at the US Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) and as Operations Manager and then Chief Program Manager for the US Antarctic Program (USAP) as an employee of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs. His efforts have produced advances in Antarctica such as the McMurdo to South Pole heavy cargo traverse (reducing the cost of delivery by more than five times), year-round heavy wheeled aircraft access to McMurdo (snow and ice runways), robust snow foundation for the South Pole 10-m telescope, introduction of integrated (USAP and New Zealand) wind-power into the Ross Island power grid, and an analytics-based approach to icebreaking operations. In the Arctic, his contributions include a foundation design for a new berthing building at Summit Station, design and development of a low-tare traverse cargo sled, design contributions to mobile buildings at Summit Station, engineering analyses of the Summit skiway, and evaluation and design recommendations for Summit Station building lifting systems. In addition to a strong technical skill set, George also has experience with management of projects, schedules, budgets, contracts, equipment and infrastructure life-cycles, energy, operations, and logistics.