The following letter is in response to Cathy Bazán-Arias, Ph.D., P.E.’s Insider’s View column, "Vote for sound infrastructure!" in the Sept. 2, 2008, issue of Civil Connection e-newsletter. Read her column online.

Nice article. You continue to listen for the heart of the matter and then make the effort to address it. To me, the main thing we need to do first is determine the level of sustainable improvement we can make. We are great at producing the herculean efforts to rescue survivors of Katrina or to build a mighty building or an incredible national highway system, but do we have the backbone and the wallet to sustain these efforts?

The frenzy of rescuing survivors of Katrina has subsided into the typical post-climatic response of seeing dramatic plans of infrastructure improvement and social change decline into a simply adequate fix that left the Corps of Engineers holding their breath as Gustav bore down on the region. Our buildings show significant signs of aging and our transportation system is a sporadic effort categorized by making do and competing for continually dwindling funds.

To counter this continual saga of bad or depressing news, we need to think seriously about what we have the heart to keep and the will or need to sustain. Before we embark on an ambitious project, we need to sit back and discuss the short-term and long-term costs of the project. Would we build it if we had to provide the funding vehicle for 100 years of maintenance? Can we learn how to provide a funding vehicle for long-term use? There are only a pitiful few states that have demonstrated the courage to make politically devastating decisions to not tap into earmarked funds to provide for the shortfalls in the general funds. These states are a pleasure to drive through. It is so apparent when you take a road trip to notice the states with a real highway fund and the ones whose highway funds are just a temporary account that monies are "borrowed" from to supplement the state’s general spending. But do we have the political will to change this behavior? I sure do like my special projects that benefit my town.

I look around my town and I see many dead buildings and abandoned spaces, yet we are continually spreading out into the green areas at the outskirts of town. I can buy a parcel of land on the outskirts of town for pennies on the dollar compared with the cost of buying something in a deteriorated downtown area. A typical abandoned warehouse in the downtown area is usually assessed in the millions of dollars and comes with neighbor and old infrastructure problems such as rats nests of wiring for power and undersized water and wastewater systems. So the decision about where to locate new commercial property is pretty straightforward: Nice open space with the opportunity to get new, up-to-date support infrastructure or cramped, expensive space with the burden of being the bad guy causing outages to neighbors while the support structures are updated. I don’t even need the "Easy Button" for that one.

So how does a municipality counter these problems? I don’t have a solution. It will take fortitude and education. It takes the strength of many people making difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions. It will take guts for people to stand up to accusations that we are taking away the livelihood or dipping into the profits of developers and builders and land owners. It will take people like you, continuing to keep the issues in front of people who are more than tired of hearing about it and just wish it were fixed or would just go away.

It will take folks like us to think outside the box and develop analysis tools and financial tools that make the brownfield sites more palatable. In short, it is an issue that is begging for leadership from people like you who will be willing to do more than is being done.
Max Broome, P.E.


Who are your clients?
Recently, in flipping back through the June 2007 issue [of CE News], I found myself re-reading the letters. Most dealt with the status of engineers and society’s perception of our function.

Now, at 40 years into civil engineering, and the various derivatives thereof, when I look back I am reminded of the single-most decisive circumstance that determined my career choice. While I was growing up, my father, a mechanically gifted, but not formally educated construction industry tradesman, was constantly lambasting "damn engineers this and damn engineers that." I concluded that if the profession were so rife with incompetence, then certainly my choosing it as a career would bring plenty of opportunity for what I expected to be my superior abilities compared with what my father was constantly criticizing. My experiences during the last 40 years completely confirm my father’s observations. But, [fewer] opportunities emerged to employ what I hope have been my superior abilities compared with the typical offerings of my colleagues so deserving of the ire of my father.

A portion of the explanation for what I have perceived to be a less-than-expected demand for my professional services may lie in the fact that a couple of decades ago, I began pointing out to clients on almost any project for which my services were sought that I actually had four clients: 1) he or she who signs my fee check; 2) the government regulator whose charge was to enforce the proper (in the regulator’s opinion) performance of my services; 3) all subsequent owners of the manifestation of my work products; 4) all who used or experienced the manifestation of my work products with a reasonable expectation of the character and serviceability of my work products. As you might expect, the extent to which Client 1 was willing or unwilling to accommodate the interests of the other three greatly determined the future of my business relationship with Client 1, occasionally more so than the amount of my fee or any other aspect of my service.
Robert R. Bullard, P. E.