The Federal Highway Administration gave Aquaveo a contract to develop the Windows-based HY-8 7.0 and 7.1 culvert analysis software. HY-8 6.1 and other previous versions of HY-8 were trusted programs that incorporated the methods in FHWA's HDS-5 document into a computer program. HY-8 was used for several years by engineers throughout the United States. But the HY-8 6.1 software was written for a DOS interface which was becoming outdated, as you can see from a screen capture of the program below (click to enlarge).

The FHWA gave Aquaveo the task of converting all the analysis code in HY-8 6.1 to a modern, object-oriented programming language (C++) and writing an updated, windows-based graphical user interface for the analysis code. This effort was led by the world-renown Dr. Rollin Hotchkiss at BYU, with the assistance of long-time HY-8 expert Phil Thompson. Dr. Jim Nelson and Dr. Chris Smemoe led the effort of converting this vast amount of code, and they were assisted by graduate students such as Brian Rowley and Eric Jones. The result was HY-8 7.0, a robust, feature-filled windows-based application for analyzing culverts.

When most of the full-time employees at BYU's EMRL moved off-campus and Aquaveo was started, the people who had their "hands in the HY-8 7.0 code" moved to Aquaveo. By this time, we had a contract to make some improvements to HY-8 7.0. The FHWA wanted tools such as an energy dissipation calculator, a database of shapes in HY-8, and the capability to model embedded culverts. Most of the parts of this new contract have now been completed and will be incorporated into HY-8 7.1, shown below (click to enlarge).