Leadership and Management in Engineering

Engineers hold the keys needed to inform the public about the seriousness of an impending crisis. The monumental effort that will be required to rebuild the constructed fabric of the United States is about to be forced on us and will be painful. While the wheels of government start to turn slowly in response to the increasingly obvious neglect, some elements of our infrastructure are dangerously deteriorated and need immediate action to protect lives. The community of engineers—practicing and retired—are a logical and informed resource. This is a privileged group endowed with a unique understanding of Mother Nature’s behavior by virtue of a special education and experience. It is proposed in this article that individuals and/or groups in the community of engineers identify obvious examples of infrastructure that are dangerous, and then explain their condition to the public. The engineering code of ethics demands no less. Monitoring and regulating functions are normally entrusted to government. Long-term neglect caused by misguided priorities, however, has resulted in a breakdown of the insurance of safety society takes for granted. Government agencies and corporate entities are failing in their responsibilities. This article documents my personal effort to uncover the true dangerous condition of two bridges in my community. Both bridges are owned by CSX Railroad: one is a road bridge over CSX tracks; the other is a CSX rail bridge with a road below. As a result of this effort, the road bridge has been closed but not replaced. Both, however, still pose a danger to the public and the environment. Suggestions are presented to facilitate quick action by the engineering community on other structures in danger of imminent collapse, and thereby seize an important leadership opportunity.

In some advanced countries, when the time is right, civil engineers can reduce failures and other disappointments in urban and infrastructure developments by taking the lead in establishing a formative, multi-sector design process I call “development engineering.” Based on a wide range of experience in thirty countries and with engineering firms and the World Bank, I advocate establishing “Regional and National Design Centers” within three countries (Chile, Mexico, and Turkey) to provide stable settings for design teams, which can be responsive and responsible to the country and people they serve. I describe a proposed comprehensive process for doing pre-investment work that should produce efficient, sustainable development by applying basic engineering design principles.

In 1995 the city of Palo Alto passed a $143 million bond initiative to upgrade sixteen elementary and secondary schools. At that time this was the largest school bond ever passed by a California municipality. I outline the process used to arrive at the final design (contract documents) phase of four elementary schools. I also address the trend toward greater collaboration between design professionals and stakeholders.

The tiny village of Lyons, Michigan, (population 715) owns the dilapidated remnant of a former hydroelectric dam on the Grand River, Michigan’s largest river. Various engineering consultants and state agencies have been working with Lyons for almost fifteen years—without success—to identify sources of funding needed to repair critical structural issues at the dam. Spurred by Lyons’ frustrating attempts to obtain funding assistance, a group of professionals approached the problem by raising the awareness of Michigan legislators and establishing a goal to create a statewide fund earmarked for dam repairs and removals.

Although many of the practices and procedures that guide the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Civil Works Program are well established and proven, there are too many other practices within Congress, the executive branch, and the USACE that are archaic and counterproductive. These practices do a disservice to the taxpayer without enhancing the built environment or the natural environment. If there ever was any doubt about the risk posed to the public by inferior water resources infrastructure, and the importance of the program to our economic and environmental well-being, I believe that Hurricane Katrina dispelled it. I provide recommendations to improve our twenty-first century water resources infrastructure through the development of a national water policy, revision of the Principles and Guidelines, improvements to funding mechanisms, and better management of the Civil Works Program and the USACE. I also incorporate some of the infrastructure planning lessons from Hurricane Katrina.

America’s aging infrastructure is in dire need of upgrading, and with federal and state funding stretched to the breaking point, the private sector has stepped into the breach. Public-private partnerships are creating new infrastructure projects to move traffic more efficiently and help relieve the traffic congestion that is choking many of our major metropolitan areas. The trucking industry and railroad associations are sponsoring innovative initiatives to increase the flow of commercial traffic and become more energy efficient in the process. These public-private partnerships allow dedicated public officials to tap the innovations and capital sources for which the private sector is famous. Coupled with the growing concern over global warming and America’s expanding carbon footprint, refocusing on alternative people-moving options and more energy efficient freight operations, local, state, and the federal governments have a new impetus to embrace public-private partnerships.

When engineers think of risk management, it’s often in the context of events directly related to specific program elements—adequately addressing all design criteria, identifying and securing commitments for the necessary program resources, or executing the program plan within budget and schedule constraints. While risks specific to the engineering effort must be addressed and managed to support a successful program outcome, our increasingly complex and interdependent operating environments do not allow the luxury of assuming events beyond the scope of the program plan are either unlikely to happen, or if they do, will result in only minimal inconvenience. As recent catastrophic events associated with large public projects have shown—ceiling panel collapses in the Boston Big Dig tunnel, levee breaches in New Orleans—events beyond the direct control of the designer and contractor can greatly affect not only the successful implementation of the overall infrastructure program, but adversely impact professional reputations and raise questions of institutional bias and complacency. Such externally generated risks may be realized due to errors by an intermediate supplier, perhaps a subcontractor’s subcontractor, or lack of action or oversight by a customer or governmental representative, indirect risks that are easily overlooked when planning and executing in a complex, multifaceted environment.

When public and private stakeholders gather to address a shared concern, they implicitly or explicitly bound the problem in geographic space. Implicit bounding involves identifying the problem and then considering the spatial ramifications. Explicit bounding may be invoked by governing agencies of a metropolitan region. These implicit or explicit boundaries of concern are evident in recent discourse about the post-Katrina impact on communities in the New Orleans area. Analysis of such discourse reveals differences of understanding that result from individual experience as well as social influences. Individual affiliations with social institutions such as nonprofits, local governments, industry, and agriculture implicitly shape the boundaries of concern for shared land and water resources allocated in regional infrastructure decisions.

This article presents personal observations regarding some of the benefits to the public and some of the challenges faced when a professional engineer in services as a local elected official. This is not a scholarly paper. Rather, it is a series of personal observations of one engineer serving in a specific local elected role, with some conclusions drawn that may be of interest to other engineers who may consider serving the public in political office.

In 1986 public transit in the United States was facing numerous challenges. As always, most systems were strapped for both operating and capital funds, most had not changed their operations since the late 1950s, and all were losing their share of commuters to the car. Transit systems throughout the United States needed an injection of new management techniques and an improved sense of meeting the needs of their emerging markets.

Public-private partnerships (PPP) have been actively implemented around the world since the 1980s, including projects in both developed and developing countries. Among the reasons for the growing use of this project delivery system are the deterioration of the basic infrastructure systems, the lack of public funding, and the interest of private investors for discovering attractive investment opportunities. Because of public-private partnerships as a project delivery system, civil engineers have been exposed to knowledge areas such as finance, risk analysis, public policy, and conflict resolution, which traditionally have not been taught in civil engineering curricula. Therefore, civil engineers now have opportunities to play a major role in PPP projects as master planners of infrastructure development. This paper analyzes the basic skills that a civil engineer must have in order to be an active participant in the development and implementation of PPP projects. We gathered input from industry practitioners in order to understand their role in these transactions and to inquire about the essential skills that civil engineers ought to have to facilitate successful PPPs. Finally, we describe the opportunities for civil engineers within the different phases of PPP. As a result, a new set of skills are proposed for civil engineers who would be involved in PPP projects.

Engineering leadership must consider macroethics; those issues important to society at large. The downstream effects of design decisions must be considered a priori to ensure that future infrastructures are sustainable. Decision-making tools are available to help ensure that designs are ethical and responsible and to support a systematic perspective of the life cycle impacts of infrastructures. This perspective is crucial as the engineering profession continues to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public. Therefore, social responsibility is at the heart of engineering leadership.

In past times of critical national need, presidents have used major, once-in-a-generation types of initiatives to marshal the assets of the country and overcome whatever crisis may have been impacting the nation. It has been decades since such a presidential initiative has been announced, and the situation the country is in begs for such presidential leadership. The renewal of the nation’s infrastructure is certainly a significant national need and must be part of such an initiative; infrastructure renewal must be part of a broader approach that encompasses two of the nation’s most critical issues: energy independence and climate change. Addressing these two issues will require the mobilization and improvement of all of the country’s assets, both physical and intellectual. The renewal of the nation’s infrastructure will have to be part of this mobilization and improvement. Without a rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure, from schools to highways to water treatment plants, the goals of energy independence and reduced greenhouse gas production will never be met.

The archaic infrastructure and disjointed drainage policies in place in the six-county Denver metropolitan area during the 1960s left the growing area in a public health and safety predicament. In 1968, city, county, state, and federal engineers; lawyers; and politicians united to address and solve the core problems. Through the development of a comprehensive manual and the formation of a governmental entity responsible for drainage and flood control oversight of a five-county area, the seeds of a solution were sown. This endeavor required the cooperation and input of many experts, state legislation, public funding, and the genuine desire of all involved to work for “the common good.”