Summary Notes of Civil Engineering Practice in the Twenty-First Century: Knowledge and Skills for Design and Management, by N. S. Grigg, M. E. Criswell, D. G. Fontane, and T. J. Siller, ASCE Press, 2001, 264 pages.

Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 7/26/01

"… civil engineers … plan, design, construct, operate, maintain, and rebuild infrastructure and environmental systems that are critical to the survival of the human race and vital ecologic systems. Yet at the beginning of the twenty-first century, … their technical skills must be supplemented more than ever by other skills such as critical thinking, communications, and management. … Civil engineers work on infrastructure and environmental problems in both public and private endeavors, including consulting firms; local, state, and federal government; construction; environmental organizations; and other organizations. Civil engineers must assume such diverse roles as project planner and advocate, regulator, analyst and designer, and builder. … The dictionary definition of infrastructure is 'the basic facilities, equipment, and installations needed for the functioning of a system'… The usual systems included in the definition are those that provide transportation, communications, water, energy, waste management, and the built environment. … These facilities are needed by people regardless of their income levels. …"

"… The history and heritage of civil engineering are vast but can be sampled by tracing how civil engineering structures and services have evolved during certain epochs. … Part of our heritage includes failures, disasters, and catastrophes in engineered systems. … Civil engineers play lead roles in protecting against all forms of disaster, including those from floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, mudslides, volcanoes, and terrorism. …"

"… When ASCE was organized, a code of ethics was deemed unnecessary; ethics were thought to be a matter of personal honor. It was not until 1914 that a code of ethics was adopted. It had six articles …: Do not take bribes, do not speak poorly of colleagues, do not steal work, do not underbid a colleague, do not embarrass a colleague, and do not advertise. … In 1972 the Department of Justice filed a suit claiming the code violated antitrust laws by restraining competition. … In 1976, … the ASCE abandoned its original code and adopted the Engineer's Council for Professional Development (ECPD) code, which emphasizes public health, safety, and welfare. …"

"… People need homes to protect them from weather, floods, earthquakes, and other threats. … The development of building codes leads to higher-quality design of all types of housing units and structures to keep people safe and secure. … Survival involves preparing for and recover from disasters. … Public health is an area that significantly impacts humanity. Among the most prominent members of the public health community, civil engineers have contributed a great deal to clean water, …"

"The goal of sustainable development is to maintain the positive consequences of a project while minimizing the negative, unintended consequences. This requires long-term planning that often extends beyond traditional engineering. … Civil engineers have made significant contributions to the health of people by providing clean water. Food production has also been greatly enhanced as a result of irrigation projects throughout the world. The world has become a more accessible place because of many transportation projects. Today, civil engineers are reaching into space … working with other engineers and scientists. … Civil engineers must understand and use the concept of sustainable development to plan, design, build, and maintain the infrastructure for the future. … The World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainable development as a process that 'meets the needs of the present without compromising our ability to meet those of the future.' …"

"Civil engineers work more in the public sector than do other engineers. Civil engineers work with public officials, politicians, laws and regulations, and public involvement programs. … Their focus on work in the public arena makes civil engineers more reliant on topics related to government and public involvement than are workers in other disciplines and makes them ready for the CAVE (citizens against virtually everything) phenomenon. … Civil engineers … must have a good knowledge about political science. … The basic concepts of political science … include voting; the role of citizens; legislative process; and roles of public officials such as mayors, political officers, and judges. … Civil engineers cannot completely avoid all politics… Some aspects of politics must be avoided, however, such as seeking work in improper or unethical ways. …"

"The distribution of civil engineering employment does not change rapidly. … Most consultants can be found in firms that belong to the ACEC, which lists approximately 5,700 independent members firms employing over 250,000 people in all occupations. Of the member firms, 75% have fewer than 25 employees. …"

"… Master's degrees are very useful to civil engineers. After obtaining a graduate degree, engineers must still engage in lifelong learning. Increasingly, state registration boards are requiring certification of continuing education credits to renew registration. …"

"Maintenance-related functions are condition assessment, inventory, preventive maintenance, and corrective maintenance. … The condition assessment activity is a link between operation and maintenance functions and illustrates why the two functions must be unified. … The sequence of activities that leads to a decision about minor or major corrective actions also explains the differences among repair, rehabilitation, and replacement. … This is an important distinction for management because the operating budget should have enough funds for routine and important repairs, and there should be sufficient funds in the capital budget for major rehabilitation without excessive deferral. … The rehabilitation and replacement process is one of the most challenging and exciting for today's engineering students. … It is the same with infrastructure, much of which was not designed with either rehabilitation or replacement in mind. … Questions to answer include the following:

·        What are the critical factors that determine whether a project should continue to be rehabilitated or whether it should be replaced?

·        What are the critical factors that determine which of several potential rehabilitation strategies might be the most effective?

The decommissioning and demolition process is the final phase of the infrastructure life cycle. Similar to the rehabilitation and replacement phase, this phase has not traditionally been considered in the design process. …"

"Over the past two decades, tremendous advances have been made in computing. … General purpose software such as spreadsheets and databases make it fairly easy to perform engineering calculations and develop engineering models. … Engineers are held accountable for the safety and functionality of their final product and are expected to ensure that all the resources they use, including models, provide reasonable and accurate results. …"

"The engineer should consider risk and uncertainty during the design process. … This risk can be defined as the probability that an engineering project will not meet its demands over a specified time period, and a factor of safety can be defined as the ratio of the capacity to the demand for a project… Defining failure is not a simple task because of the various consequences of failure and the impacts of those consequences. … During the design process, engineers attempt to identify possible sources of failure and to quantify the probability associated with those sources. … Simulation models are used to evaluate the consequences of failure. These models can be run with many input data sets and the results statistically analyzed to develop exceedance and non-exceedance probabilities of various kinds of failures. Modern computing capabilities are enhancing the ability of engineers to more effectively consider risk analysis in the design process."

"Regardless of their relationships, each member of the project team must accept responsibility; strive for economy and efficiency; cooperate and coordinate; and adhere to budget, schedule, program, and high-quality standards. Selection of the design professional is a key ingredient to success in the project. … Quality in the constructed project is a term used to integrate the many aspects of the construction process that lead to success in meeting the owner's requirements. Quality is very broad term. … responsibilities during the construction process begin with the owner, whose responsibilities … include activity coordination, contract enforcement, and stopping work. The design professional is responsible for design changes and interpretation of construction documents. The constructor is responsible for construction methods, direction of labor, and job safety."

"… The primary concern of civil engineering education is design, but their primary activity is management. It is important to remember, however, that it is primarily engineering activities that are being managed. The term manage means to direct or control the use of something using authority, discipline, or persuasion … Management is distinctly different than design, analysis, reporting, and other tasks that civil engineers are trained to do and requires a different skill set. Management involves decision-making activities surrounding goal selection and attainment. … The difference between management and leadership often arises as a discussion topic. … Leadership is an essential quality in all endeavors; without it, not much happens. … The difference between leadership and management is that leaders inspire followers to achieve objectives, whereas managers allocate resources and carry out other management functions without necessarily getting people to follow…"

"Planning is an important management-related activity for civil engineers. Every phase of management must be planned, including construction and development of facilities, development of management systems, and operation of facilities. … The planning process consists of defining goals, developing alternative solutions, selecting the best solution, and putting it into action. … Policy analysis is concerned with finding the right policies and is the aspect of planning concerned with appropriately steering big decisions. …"

"Risk management is a skill required by civil engineers. Risk management skills are needed in assessing the risk of a particular flood, drought, or wind damage scenario; in assessing the risk of a  particular type of failure; or in assigning a probability to any type of outcome, such as being used for nonperformance or some other scenario. … Whatever the risk, it is the job of engineers to temper it by margins of safety, design factors, insurance programs, performance bonds, and other instruments for risk management. … Civil engineers often find themselves working with insurance companies, bond houses, or other providers of risk management instruments. …"

"Because civil engineers working as consultants are working in private practice, they need the same kinds of management skills that a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or other business owner would need. … If the firm is successful, it might encounter more advanced issues, such as offers for mergers and acquisitions. …"

"… If communications in an organization are healthy, workers and managers produce better. If not, there is potential for trouble. …Communication within organizations … can take many forms, including electronic, but they cannot all be subsumed in an electronic office. Written and spoken communications should also be incorporated into organizations. Spoken communications often save time and can be interpreted more clearly with the ability to question, interpret, and clarity. …"

"Managers must be able to make effective and timely decisions. … The decision-making process is actually about the same as the problem-solving process. Professional decision making involves both making decisions (cognitive process) and caring about them (effective process). … The decision process has five elements: clear realization…; definition of the specifications of the solution …; derivation of a solution that is right…; building into the decision of the action to carry it out; and feedback that tests the validity and effectiveness of the decision against the actual course of events. … Decision can be classified by level (executive, management, worker), stage of management (planning, organizing, controlling), and function (water supply/distribution, transportation/traffic control, energy/distribution). … Decision processes connect parts of organizations because decisions affect levels and parts of organizations with dissimilar functions but with needs for the same information. …"

"… 'critical thinking is skillful, responsible thinking that facilitates good judgment because it relies upon criteria, is self-correcting, and is sensitive to context.' … Civil engineers must function as analysts… and as synthesizers… They must use synthesis and analysis to find solutions, and critical thinking is a tool for both systems thinking and taking the systems view mean to take different perspectives and apply knowledge correctly through mental models and process modeling. … Civil engineers must continue to grow in their professional knowledge and anticipate how critical thinking skills are needed. … Engineers must also use other avenues to continue their education, such as short courses, conferences, graduate courses and degrees, journals and other professional publications, and on-the-job training. In addition to knowledge per se, continuing education should promote improvements in critical thinking."

"… Civil engineers must often explain a situation or position. … Persuasion goes beyond informing and explaining and requires that the reader (or listener) be convinced about something. … To do this, one must first list all the arguments against the thesis from as many perspectives as possible… Then each of these issues must be addressed. … Engineers often evaluate a situation… The communication must convince the audience that the engineer has taken an objective view in conducting a thorough and exhaustive study to determine whether the action being evaluated meets goals. … One of the most critical and challenging audiences with which civil engineers must communicate effectively is the public. … Communicating risk to the public is also a concern of civil engineers. … A common theme is that civil engineers must keep the public properly informed about the risk without causing undue panic or a negative reaction. …"

"The ability of engineers to write well is important early in their careers and the importance grows as technical and management communications become more complex. … All written documents should be prepared with a few rules in mind. State the purpose, explain the situation, and have a good conclusion. Do not make the documents more complex than they should be, and use language concisely and economically. … Most everyday communication is, of course, verbal. … The average listener understands about 50% of what is said immediately after it is said. Retention drops to 25% within 48 hours and to 10% after one week. … Everyone occasionally misspeaks, mishears, and misunderstands. … Another venue for verbal communication is the public presentation or speech. … If the communication is confusing, vague, and not to the point, then the thinking will also be considered confusing, unclear, and off-target. The ability to communicate well requires hard work and continual practice. …"

"… Both finance and economics use monetary values: Finance deals with how to pay for things, and economics deals with decisions about allocating society's resources. In addition, economics is a tool for analysis, forecasting, education, and decision making, whereas finance has more focused management uses. … Civil engineers use economics a great deal, and it can be an extremely useful subject for study. … As civil engineers encounter business-related economic issues, …, indicators such as the GNP will be noticed. … A few of the critical indicators are the GNP and gross domestic products (GDP), inflation, interest and discount rate, Federal Reserve actions, stock markets and indices, bond market, deficit, and debt."

"… Civil engineers encounter construction costs, operating and maintenance costs, and other costs such as for regulatory programs and planning. Cost analysis may involve techniques such as value engineering and others that study how to cut waste in the system. Cost analysis is also important when the financing study determines the components of cost that can be assigned to different users. … Subsidies cannot always be avoided… The use of subsidies for transit is common, for example, because the fares paid by bus or tram riders do not pay the full cost of operating the systems. …"

"Law can be classified in many ways, such as by civil or criminal law, by levels of government, and by types of legal instrument (constitution, statute, regulation, executive order, and case). In addition, international law is becoming increasingly important in the global business environment. … Lawyers are also known as attorneys, counselors, or solicitors. … Engineers often work with attorneys on projects and problems related to policy, potential or ongoing litigation, and contract issues. … Much of the legal process in the United States takes place within the judicial system, which consists of trial and appellate courts at the local, state, and federal levels, culminating with the US Supreme Court. … Civil engineers encounter administrative law more than other kinds. This is the set of rules developed by administrative agencies, such as the EPA, to carry out their statutory authorities. … Attorneys can often be used productively before a problem arises, and it can be advantageous not to wait until it is too late to consult an attorney. … When conflicts arise, it is always advisable to try mediation or alternative dispute resolution first, if possible."

"Civil engineers are subject to the ethics of society. … What does it mean to be a professional? The literature on sociology and labor economics shed light on this question and can help us interpret trends. … Phases of professionalization are recruitment, training, socialization, membership, improvement, and advancement. Such phases (or professional steps) are similar to the novice, journeyman, and master rankings in guilds. An engineer can progress through the steps of new graduate - passing the Fundamentals of Engineering examination; becoming registered; and taking on the status of a senior, experienced engineer with many years of accomplishment. … Engineers often lack shared values, resulting in the profession sometimes being referred to as profession without community. … If the civil engineering profession is to add significantly to solutions to these issues, it will have to emphasize professionalism more in education. … Civil engineers need to focus on decision making in the public area. Technical education must continue, but other components must be added, especially management topics. Civil engineering's heritage includes great structures, complex transportation systems, environmental controls to restore the balance of nature, and complex components and systems of infrastructure. …"

[Readers who are interested in this book are encouraged to read the original version in its entirety. Other summary notes on civil engineering education are available on the Internet at http://lohman.tamu.edu under the heading "Summaries of Papers ..."]