Planning and Engineering by Agency-Consultant Team

The public interest in transportation planning and design requires consulting engineers and public engineers to combine their talents and experiences. They can do so most effectively by learning to work as a team—not as competitors, but as co-contributors. To the team the public agency brings continuity of planning, skills in intergovernmental liaison and a strong sense of public responsibility. Detailed planning and design is perhaps the agencies’ least essential service. The private engineer is best able to contribute flexibility in the use of manpower, technical versatility and his freedom to select the best leadership for each project. All that had gone before in five generations of civil engineers must be repaired, replaced or redoubled by two generations. If engineers do not join together in this task, the task will be assumed by other professions. Examples are cited in the fields of highways, rapid transit systems, air terminals to illustrate how the two groups of engineers can improve both their product and their professional image by working in unions.