Engineered Management System for Waterfront Facilities

Deterioration of waterfront structures is an ongoing process. Repairing these structures at the appropriate time and prioritizing the repairs, on a limited budget is the key to the sustainability of the structures. The process of inspection and repair has historically been a subjective process limited to ratings from four to six levels, such as `Good', `Fair', `Poor' and `Bad'. The evaluation process has been dependent on the level of inspection effort and an assessment of the significance of the observed distress. Much of the evaluation has been dependent on the experience and opinion of the inspectors. Prioritization of repairs and use of available funding hinged on the opinions given by inspectors and managers. Since historically, the process has been subjective, there has been a degree of variability in the reported condition, and it is therefore difficult to get the same rating for the same or similar distress. With a small rating scale there is limited granularity in the ratings, therefore the methods used to allocate funding to a particular facility has in many cases been the `squeaky wheel gets the grease'. Because of this, funding has not always gone to the facility in most need of repair. An Engineered Management System (EMS) for waterfront facilities removes much of the subjectivity from the process, add granularity and provides a rational, objective method to compare the significance of distress. Entire facilities are inspected, including the structure, fender system, mechanical and electrical utilities, buildings, pavements, roofs, doors, windows and paint. Degradation data for each of the inspected elements are input into a database and numerically rated. The ratings are rolled up into various levels, as required; i.e. the pier; pier and utilities; pier, utilities and crane; the terminal; or the entire port. This roll-up provides each level of management with the necessary guidance to properly allocate maintenance funds. The EMS process also allows a methodology to track and project future degradation of an asset. The EMS provides facility managers the ability to prioritize the critical elements in their operations. If the crane and crane electrical system are critical to operations, they can be given a higher importance factor. The importance factors for these systems are applied to the ratings. Condition Index (CI) ratings generated by the EMS software provides managers tools to allocate funding to facilities critical to their operations.