Professional Staff

“I am passionate about finding creative solutions to complex hydraulic modeling problems. I love the challenge of building a model from scratch into a useable, workable tool for answering difficult design or analysis questions. I am currently most interested in designing probabilistic modeling methods to describe flood risk.”

With more than 30 years of experience in water resource hydraulic engineering, Chris is considered an expert in the field. He has a background serving clients in both hydraulic design and river engineering projects. His expertise includes hydraulic modeling, dam break studies, sediment transport, bridge and culvert design, inundation mapping, and software development/design.

Chris is an internationally known leader in HEC-RAS modeling with a particular interest in risk-based solutions for hydraulic modeling. He has taught over 100 professional education courses on HEC-RAS around the United States and on 5 continents. Chris is the developer and primary author of “The RAS Solution”, a HEC-RAS blog and author of the book “Breaking the HEC-RAS Code”. He also developed McBreach, a software program that runs HEC-RAS dam breach models in a probabilistic framework. McBreach was released to the public in 2019 and is currently being used across the globe. He has been extensively published and presented technical articles at numerous industry conferences. He was a contributing author for the HEC-RAS Hydraulic Reference Manual and the HEC-RAS User’s Manual.  Chris currently co-hosts “Full Momentum”, a HEC-RAS themed podcast.

Some of his most recent assignments with Kleinschmidt include dam breach modeling, canal and levee breach modeling, hydraulic modeling for stream restoration, flood mitigation and ecosystem restoration planning, risk-based dam breach modeling, expert peer reviews, inundation mapping, hydrologic and hydraulic analyses and planning, floodplain mapping, and fishway analysis and design.

Chris holds an M.Eng. in Hydraulic Engineering from IHE Delft in The Netherlands, as well as a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Oregon State University. He is a member of United States Society on Dams (USSD), Association of Dam Safety Officals (ASDSO), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).  Chris is a registered professional engineer in the states of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Texas, and Tennessee and is a Board Certified Water Resources Engineer with the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers (AAWRE)