Mse Wall Design Spreadsheet File

By 1:15 AM, she had a complete design: reinforcement spacing, geogrid type (Uniaxial 120 kN/m), facing panel details, granular fill requirements, global stability check (yes, that tab linked to a separate slope stability macro), and a one-page summary for the client.

It was 11:47 PM when the email landed in Maya’s inbox. mse wall design spreadsheet

She pointed to cell on the printout. “Automated. Also ran a sensitivity analysis on backfill compaction pressure—it’s in the hidden sheet, tab 14.” By 1:15 AM, she had a complete design:

Maya opened on her laptop, changed one input parameter, and watched the factor of safety drop from 1.52 to 1.48. “Automated

At layer 7, the spreadsheet threw a warning:

The contractor grumbled. The client approved the change. And Maya’s spreadsheet saved $40,000 in excavation while keeping the wall safe.

She’d built the spreadsheet over four years—through two jobs, three grad school courses, and one humiliating moment when a senior reviewer found a factor-of-safety error in her first solo design. That mistake taught her to color-code every assumption: blue for input, black for calculation, red for warnings, green for code checks.