Applying Sustainability Principles To Benefit the Overall Project Delivery Cycle of Infrastructure Systems

It has been widely reported that critical and necessary upgrades, operational changes, and expansion of infrastructure systems have fallen behind in meeting society's needs. Desirable or required levels of service and resilience are increasingly compromised because of that lack of investment in the future. Economic losses resulting from traffic congestion, drought impacts to agriculture, cities and businesses, as well as regional impacts from power outages would seem to present a compelling case for government agencies to move expeditiously to deliver reliable and resilient infrastructure systems. Historically, this has generally been the case. However, recent trends including higher levels of environmental protection, wider civic engagement, more expansive regulatory requirements and constrained financial resources, have contributed to decreased performance or extended delivery schedules or shelving of critical infrastructure systems. This paper investigates the potential gains in project delivery that could be realized by applying the triple bottom line principles - namely the social, environmental, and economic elements - of sustainability to the planning, design, construction., and operation of those critical infrastructure systems. Work flow process improvements can assist with the technical definition of infrastructure systems. Sustainability principles can also guide policymakers, interested stakeholders, and community leaders as they promote consensus approaches that are more balanced than the extremes of absolute opposition or with forcing disruptive or damaging infrastructure approaches. The sustainability rubric to project planning has been applied for decades in manufacturing and corporate business settings and more recently in building systems as guided by LEED and Green Globes assessments. Now those principles can be incorporated into public and private infrastructure planning through systems such as Envision as presented by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). A retrospective case study for a municipal water system is presented to describe how a sustainability framework for the planning and design could be applied throughout the project delivery cycle for infrastructure projects.