Tag Archives: Civil Engineering

Is the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card Really a Good Idea?

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Wastewater Basin

As a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), I regularly receive information and notices proclaiming their annual "grading" of our nation's infrastructure. There is even a website to promote this effort: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/. My opinion on this might not be popular with my colleagues, but frankly I have never thought this report was valid or a good idea. Finally after reading a LinkedIn thread about how engineers get no respect and a related link criticizing the annual report card, I decided to share my thoughts, as an engineer, on this public relations effort.

First of all, imagine going to the Infrastructure Report Card website as an average citizen – not an engineer. On the site there is a listing of all the different categories of infrastructure we are responsible for designing, building, and maintaining such as water, wastewater, dams, bridges, roads, parks, etc. Not one of them has a grade above a C and the average is a D. Now imagine going to the medical association's website and seeing a listing of items for which they are responsible such as cancer, common cold, fractures, etc. and a related listing of grades. How would you feel about the medical profession if they gave themselves all C and D grades for those? Because on the face of it, that is how it looks to someone who is not involved in the industry – engineers are grading themselves for the work they do and the infrastructure for which they are responsible, and can't manage to get above a D average! Then we wonder why we get no respect!

Now, I realize those responsible for setting up this effort would respond by explaining that no, it's not a grade on our efforts, but a wake up call that government is not giving us enough funds to adequately build and maintain the infrastructure. Because that's what this is really all about, trying to convince legislators they need to funnel more money into infrastructure. But I don't think it's working, and it should be no surprise why not. If I was funding work by a group and the reports kept coming back every year that the work was underperforming, I would start asking some questions such as why is your work failing, what progress is being made with the funds, and what else can be done besides throwing more money at it? 

As an engineer, I am well aware of the need for funding, but as one who has worked in a severely economically depressed city for many years, I also realize that part of my job as an engineer is to figure out how to get the most from the money we have and explain to the elected officials the trade-offs for the different funding levels. Because that is what engineers are supposed to do best – analyze a problem, figure out solutions, attach dollars to them, and let elected officials decide which level of service they want. Then we build the best system we can with the money we receive.

In the last city where I worked, I would have graded our infrastructure efforts as an A because by working together, we were often able to figure out ways to get things done at a very acceptable level with very few dollars. If you drive through that community today, just about every road is in great shape while the neighboring community, whose coffers were always filled with millions more tax dollars than ours, has a proliferation of crumbling roads. This shows that while money is an important component, a successful system also requires people in government working together and making the right choices for the public good with patience and understanding of the goals and the ability to implement creative solutions.

And my past employer is far from unique – the fact is that many cities have systems that are well managed and maintained. I can't imagine anyone traveling across the U.S. coming to any conclusion other than the infrastructure in our country is very good. The true measure of success is demonstrated by the fact that the majority of us make it to work each day without even thinking of the roads we drive on, the water we use to get ready for work, the wastewater system that disposes of all the water we use, the stormwater systems that prevent any rain from keeping us from traveling safely, etc. So the real question is, how are we really measuring this grade?

I get the impression ASCE determines this grade by assuming a life for our assets and assigning a replacement cost then comparing that to funding levels. And because these levels don't match the replacement costs, we must be failing. The flaw in this is that just because something like a water main is more than 50 years old does not mean it is at the verge of imminent failure. But according to ASCE, if politicians don't give us money to rip it out at year 51, that main drops to a D. I've worked in cities where mains were 120 years old and were still delivering water to homes and businesses with no breaks or signs of failure. That's not a D, and it is irresponsible as an engineer to lead people to believe that it should be replaced strictly based on its age. Yesterday an engineer with a national consulting firm told me that in their experience they've noticed the older a main gets, the less chance it actually has of failing. And based on my experience, I agree. We also heard from that engineer and another at a different national firm, that most water main failures are occuring in mains built in the first few years after World War II because there was a decrease in the quality of materials at that time. And I can't understand how anyone can assign a life to PVC water main pipe since we don't have enough experience with it yet to really know how long it will last. Based on all this, it appears age is definitely not the only factor in determining the need for replacement.

So while it is a good idea to have some report of the state of our infrastructure, let's not fabricate the data just to get more business for our profession. And let's not use a grading system that leads people to believe we are all failures at the job with which the public has entrusted us. Instead we should choose to use an accurate and reasonable method of identifying and assessing our assets and reporting the actual projected costs to keep up with the management and maintenance of our system. Because no engineer I know really believes the Infrastructure Report Card is an accurate reflection of our nation's public works systems, it's not achieving the purpose for which ASCE has developed it, and most of us are not too happy that an organization representing our profession is falsely leading people to believe we are failures at our jobs.

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A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 32 and 33

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Day 32 & 33

I decided to combine yesterday's post with today's because wow – have I been busy! On Thursday I tried to finalize a few outstanding items before taking off a few days to attend conferences. I finalized a cost estimate for resurfacing a major roadway in the city. Then sent out the approval letter for the last review on a development. They are now cleared to send in their Letter of Credit for the project. Once we get that, they will receive final engineering approval and can get started on the site work.

Later in the morning, a few of us attended a pre-construction meeting with the Park District and their engineer and contractor. We are all working together to build a community garden. It will be located in the northwest corner of our city on land owned by the Forest Preserve who is also a partner. Our water department will be working with the contractor installing water lines and will later install yard hydrants.

We also had a staff meeting in the afternoon. Because we have so much going on and so many projects, it seems like our staff meetings take longer. It was almost the end of the day when we finished. We also finished out the day by placing a culvert lining project out to bid.

Illinois Association of  Highway Engineers

Then today, I attended the Ilinois Association of Highway Engineers conference in Normal, Illinois. It was a very well run event which is impressive because it's all put together by volunteers who work for IDOT. I felt very fortunate to have the opportunity to give one of the presentations and had a great time. (Technically I wasn't working because I had to take a vacation day to attend – we are only allowed time off to attend two conferences a year.)

Warm Mix Asphalt

One of the other presentations was on warm mix asphalt. It was given by someone who is involved in researching testing of asphalt. I could have predicted what he was going to tell us based on the performance of asphalt we have been seeing in the field. Ever since they cut back on the percentage of asphalt content and increased the amount of RAP (recycled asphalt pavement), we've noticed roads don't last as long as they used to. Sometimes we are seeing failures in the first five years. His testing seemed to indicate that using a warm mix improves the performance. The warm mix asphalt is actually a mix design produced at temperatures below that of a traditional mix. The use of this "colder" mix is possible because of the use of additives. I don't think the speaker mentioned this, but warm mix asphalt is one of the innovation components of Every Day Counts. So you can learn more about it here: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/everydaycounts/technology/asphalt/

Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge

We also listened to an interesting talk by someone involved with the construction of the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. He was either one of the engineers or worked for the contractor. The speaker started at the beginning of the project and walked through how it was constructed using a lot of photos taken at each stage. It was incredible to see how they had to construct a whole cable system in order to just get people and materials out to the areas where they were working. 

My presentation: Social Media and Its Use in Transportation Projects

So here is the presentation I gave – I wish I had the audio because I usually put so little on the slide and then talk to convey the story behind the slide. But I don't think they were taping the presentations.

 

Social Media & Its Use in Transportation Projects

 

 

View more presentations from Pam Broviak
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A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 13

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Day 13

This morning we started out the day with our regular engineering staff meeting. There wasn't too much unusual to report – everyone just gave an update of their recent work. And some even left the meeting early after giving their report because we are so busy and they needed to get back to what they were doing. 

I spent part of the day with one of our project engineers checking on the sealcoating and striping of our parking lots. We also have our major road project going on, and the contractor should finish it this week. So we checked on a few items on that job. 

After lunch a few of us met with a business in town where we are planning to build a new parking lot. We needed to show them the proposed location of the lot and ask them what they thought should go in between the parking lot curb and their building. All of us ended up prefering a mix of landscaping and service walks to doors and a dumpster.

The Bizarre Moment of the Day otherwise known as an "I can't Make This Stuff Up!" Moment

One very bizarre thing that happened was that I got a call from my supervisor from a previous job. He told me a civil engineer who identified himself as a retired engineer who was a resident of our city had called him asking questions about me and my performance on my previous job. This engineer complained to this person that he was helping a friend and that I was requiring them to do something they did not have to do. The engineer described to my former supervisor a previous story I had written about on this blog where I shared how I had told a contractor he would need to provide a bond to drive heavy construction traffic on one of our local roads not designed for that loading. He told my former supervisor he was looking for details about that thinking he could use the information to help his client. Later I found out this engineer had contacted a few others with whom I used to work. One person told me she got the feeling he was trying to "find dirt on me."

From what I could tell this is an engineer from another city in the Chicago area who has represented to us he is working for a resident in our city. The matter has involved the construction of a walkout for a home. We were asked inintially by the builder for the resident if they could build this walkout. The home is located along an overland flood route, and the subdivision plans clearly show the required elevation of the lowest opening for the home. From what we have received to date, which is not much, it appears as if they are proposing a walk out with a lower elevation. So we have not as yet been able to, based on the information we have so far, been able to approve their request. And it appears instead of meeting and working with us, this engineer is instead contacting our elected officials and my previous employees and co-workers.

I would like to share more about it on here, because it is highly unusual for another professional to handle a permit submittal in this manner. But based on this person's behavior I am at this time going to have to refrain from sharing much more until the matter is resolved. But the other reason I did want to mention it is that based on his behavior, it's difficult to know who else he may try to contact or what else he might try to do. So I wanted to share with my colleagues and friends the story in case they too are contacted. 

Wow – I really need to add a "Bizarre" category on this blog! Of course, it is day 13 so perhaps a story like this is appropriate.

 

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A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 5

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Day 5

The main items grabbing my attention today involved the following:

Striping

Today the stripers were in town placing the thermoplastic paint on a few of our newly paved roads. Normally I don't get too involved in the operation because we have a project engineer and technician inspecting and managing the project. But today, we had a resident call because she was concerned that we had planned to stripe a crosswalk at a T-intersection. There had been one leg of a sidewalk connection with a depressed ramp on her side, but no connecting sidewalk on the other side of the road. We've been trying to clean these up and either remove the lone leg or add the other side. In this case we added the receiving ramp. Because the roadway is busy, the engineer had planned on placing a crosswalk at this point. However the resident was worried children would be harmed because the crosswalk might encourage them to cross there rather than further down at the 4-way stop.

Thermoplastic Pavement Markings

I met the resident and her husband at the site along with one of our policemen. Over the years I've found it to be a very valuable experience to work together with the police on traffic-related issues. They bring great insight and ideas. And in the end, they are the ones that have to regulate the traffic. The policeman who met me there is an awesome public safety professional who was able to offer his thoughts from a public safety perspective. He shared that we have crosswalks striped all over town at T-intersections, and the police have had no incidents reported. And I indicated there would be no engineering reason that requires us to stripe or not stripe. After reviewing the situation, we decided that based on the four-way stop being close by, we could skip striping the crosswalk. 

Storm Sewer Project

We regularly receive calls related to stormwater issues throughout the community. Most of the time, they do not meet the criteria required for the city to install additional infrastructure. But occasionally the water nuisance is extensive enough that we decide to construct an improvement. This year, we have plans to install a short segment of storm sewer to alleviate flooding that occurs over multiple properties after even a small amount of rainfall. Our crews will do the work so normally we would not prepare a normal set of plans required for bidding. But because we have some interns who are interested in learning CAD, I decided to set up a drawing for them so they could work on developing the plan for this project. Unfortunately we have a CAD product that based on my experience requires us to spend an enormous amount of time that could be cut significantly if we just changed software. But even though over time the new software would pay for itself in savings from subscription fees, it's that initial purchase price that in this economy is preventing me from changing over. So instead every time we draw something, we spend a lot of time generating the plans. To say it's been frustrating is a total understatement. Anyway, I finally today managed to get the plan set up for them to start. Although I never could get the linestyles to display right. And because I just cannot afford to spend more time with it, I am hoping the interns can figure out what is messed up with that.

Reviewing a Driveway Permit

Normally this would be handled by our building department since they issue driveway replacement permits. But last year we had a company come in–well it was more like a guy with a skidsteer who didn't have a clue what he was doing–and in the process of trying to cut curb completely messed up a newly paved road. Why he waited until we completed the road to cut curb and replace drives is still not evident, but the result was damaged pavement because he didn't properly perform this work. So now we are more cautious about letting anyone cut curb. In this case, the contractor seems to be using a reputable company so I expect they will pick up their permit on Monday after dropping off the necessary certificates of insurance and bond we require to work in the right of way.

School Zones

One of our engineers had noticed that some school zone signs remained in areas where schools had moved out of their buildings. He wondered if we should remove the signs so I had our interns looking into this. Today we checked the city code to determine where the city council had established school zones and discovered there seemed to be some school zones still in existance even though schools are no longer located in those areas. And because we have had so much development in the past several years, there are areas with signed school zones that have not been established through ordinance. So the interns are preparing a report of these areas that can be submitted to administration and perhaps onto the council for consideration.

Some of the miscellaneous tasks that filled the rest of the day included:

  • Meeting with an intern who will start working part time with us later this month. This is an unpaid internship arranged through the high school.
  • Reviewed in the field the site of a proposed development
  • Gave our sign shop the sign design our interns prepared for the school zone area 

 

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Does Civil Engineering Have a “Next Paradigm?”

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"We were no longer able to truly see beyond the horizon of what we had built and to make the necessary leaps in innovation." - Stephan Paternot

Today I read a blog post by Stephan Paternot, the co-founder of theglobe.com, and in it, I saw a glimpse of the point I was trying to make in my last post: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of Engineering Consulting Firms. In addition to some insightful observations about the future, Paternot's article also discusses the rise and fall of the dotcoms and explains why they had to fail. The reason (and link to the post) are embodied in the opening quote above. In talking about the end of theglobe.com and MySpace, he said, "it was time to pass the baton and make room for the next paradigm, and the new generation of innovators who could envision it."

His post makes me wonder, are the technological changes in our society so far-reaching and significant that they could actually change civil engineering as we know it? And if so, how? I see some signs of the change that could be, but have difficulty finding colleagues interested in imagining it or discussing the possibilities. Perhaps it's because our profession still makes use of technology going back to at least the Roman times. Can a profession that uses technology and ideas that are centuries old really be on the brink of transformation? It appears most don't believe so. However, the key seems to be that the change will not necessarily be driven by the advancement in technology we use in our job. Instead our profession will have to transform to meet the changing demands of society caused by advances in technology.  If we don't understand this distinction, it could be us saying "we were no longer able to truly see beyond the horizon of what we had built to the people for whom we built to make the necesssary leaps in innovation."

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The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of Engineering Consulting Firms

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Sewer Design FailureIt's no secret that engineering consultants have been hit hard by the economic downturn. Some firms closed completely while many firms had to lay off technical staff and institute furlough days. I would imagine the annual bonuses received by employees at these firms have also decreased. The dynamics and operations of engineering firms has always intrigued me, first as an engineer, then as an employee of a few firms, and finally as a client/customer. How and why have we gone from a time when firms seemed to pop up on every corner to shuttering of offices and significant lack of work? Did this have to happen? And how can we revive the industry and insulate ourselves from another economic disaster?

History

In the United States, most large infrastructure projects are built by government. And most improvements built prior to World War II were handled by engineers working for government. It seems that after World War II, there was an increase in the number of engineering firms. And the design and construction management of major construction projects shifted from government staff to engineering firms. Not having lived through the period immediately following the war, I’m not sure exactly why this happened. One reason could be the significant increase in building that occurred after the war—perhaps the government did not have the staff needed to generate and manage this volume of projects. So firms were hired to supplement existing staff. What seemed to happen over the next few decades was the shift in many smaller cities from having engineering capabilities in-house to hiring out engineering.

The Hey-Day

So over the next few decades, more and more engineering firms sprung up as suburbia moved out over the US. and more and more small to mid-size cities reduced staff in favor of hiring consultants. Not only were these firms delivering engineering planning, design, and construction management to government, but they were providing these same services to the private development sector. There was so much work generated from the housing boom that many firms ended up specializing just in delivering services to private development.

These were good times for engineering firms. During many of these years, government grant programs paid for the design and construction of treatment plants, housing provided a steady stream of work, and several transportation bills fed the design and construction of infrastructure.

The Fall

We can all imagine what happened when the economy fell. Housing and development came to a grinding halt removing a major source of revenue for many firms. Firms that had come to rely solely on private development closed their doors. Even the federal stimulus program did not help much. ARRA funds were for “shovel-ready” projects so while firms might have been lucky enough to find construction engineering work, there was no money in that program for design.

So while some firms avoided complete closure of their company, many could not avoid having to close satellite offices or laying off staff.

What Went Wrong?

Some people might want to take an easy way out on explaining the current situation and blame it on the economy. But there’s a lot going on behind this quick summary. And ignoring the issues can be detrimental to all of us because it has the potential to undermine our profession.

One reason that seems obvious is that firms were making money doing the same thing over and over. Many firms had taken the position of why change a good thing? We see one example of this in the development of GIS. When GIS rolled out into the mainstream during the 1980s and through the 1990s, few firms jumped on board and incorporated it into their delivery of services. Perhaps the thought was why take time away from billable hours to train people in a technology that clients are not asking for. So professionals in other fields such as planning began working with GIS, and eventually a whole new profession was formed by people who saw the value in learning and using GIS. Only in the last decade did most engineering consultants begin using GIS in their everyday operations. And I would guess there are still some that either still don’t use it or are just starting to train or hire staff now. What would have happened if consulting firms had realized the value early on and embraced GIS as one more deliverable? The lesson here is no one can expect to be successful forever doing the same thing over and over and ignoring new changes and innovations.

And this brings me to the next weak line in the chain. While the first seemed obvious, this one took me a little more time to realize. What I’ve more recently come to see and understand is that our profession has slowly moved away from its original apprentice/mentoring style leadership and structure. I do realize there are still many out there still practicing the “old ways,” but I have seen way too many who are not.

Back when I first started as an engineering technician (many moons ago!). I was very fortunate to work for several supervisors who still looked upon their relationship with staff as a mentor/teacher. As we worked, every one of them explained fully what we were doing and why. Each time they thought through decisions, they did so by speaking out loud to me so I could follow their thoughts and reasoning. This worked so well that when I took my surveyor in training test, all I had to do to find the answer was replay their voices as they explained each problem we had solved. Fortunately after I became an engineer, I again found myself working for engineers who followed this same practice. With all of these people, the mentoring and teaching was part of the work – it was not done aside or separate from what we were accomplishing.

I count myself fortunate to have met and worked with these people, particularly as I have been realizing this no longer seems to take place as a standard practice. The younger engineers I’ve talked with tell me stories of how they were left completely on their own to work on designs with little to no oversight or direction. They were also not encouraged or led to believe they should be asking for help.

Is this why I read posts on LinkedIn written by young engineers who have no respect for older, more experienced engineers? Is the loss of this teacher/apprentice relationship what prevents innovation and new ideas from being accepted, reviewed, refined and incorporated into the company? Have older, more experienced professionals been so busy chasing the next project that they’ve forgotten or neglected to nurture and share their knowledge with the next generation or even be aware of and open to the ideas and innovation new engineers can offer? And has this somehow contributed to the loss of business due to missed opportunities and a lack of skill sets/services and motivation to innovate?

The Fix

If you agree with the main two reasons I’ve identified above, the fix seems easy: be open to and incorporate new ideas and innovation and practice engineering as a mentoring/apprenticeship profession. However implementing these practices is not that easy—investing in new ideas and innovation with no client in sight costs money. I even had experience with a firm many years ago that had us as a client begging for them to implement more innovative designs and yet they resisted. So there’s definitely a need to change the culture and mindset of the leadership in order to allow these changes to take place.

Once firms are on board with trying this approach, they next step is to develop a process of evaluating industry-related innovations to determine if there’s an opportunity to incorporate them into the firm. If a new idea shows promise, there also needs to be a process to evaluate the costs and possible revenue resulting from an expansion of services. Fortunately some firms have already realized they need to switch gears and move in this direction.

The other fix is to return to our roots as a profession that nurtures and teaches younger members in the business. Building a properly trained staff while encouraging respect and trust helps create a motivated work force that not only delivers successful projects, but also encourages the discovery and implementation of the new ideas and innovation.

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