Charles G. Schroeder
U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories

A National Strategy for Civil Infrastructure Support

Position Paper for NAB^* Workshop
"Toward Human-Centered Systems for Solving National Challenge Problems"

Civil Infrastructures Panel

November 13-14, 1997, Alexandria, VA

A 1993 Civil Engineering Research Foundation (CERF) report on Federal public works infrastructure research and development (R&D) classifies public works infrastructure into five categories¹:

One might also consider two additional civil infrastructure categories: Communications, to account for all public communications assets, and Land to include parks, forest and wildlife reserves and other public land use areas.

America continues to face a broad range of challenges related to the life-cycle management of civil infrastructure. Phases of civil infrastructure life-cycle management include planning, programming and budgeting, design, construction, operations, maintenance, repair and renovation, and disposal. A major challenge for the stewards and caretakers of civil infrastructure is how to best utilize their financial, information, personnel and other resources to efficiently and effectively manage that infrastructure when faced with conflicting goals and objectives, and often, very limited resources.

The exploitation of current and future information technologies in concert with multidisciplinary, human-centered systems research and design can serve as a resource multiplier in helping meet the challenges at every phase of life-cycle management of civil infrastructure.

Human-centered systems research and design can be applied to many domains. It makes sense to commit more public and commercial funds and other resources to human-centered civil infrastructure R&D given the deficiency in national R&D investment in the construction industry compared to other U.S. business sectors. As an illustration of the inequality of R&D investment between the construction industry and other business domains, consider that the electronics, chemicals and automotive industries devote roughly 5.5%, 4.1% and 4.0% of their annual revenues to R&D respectively², while only 0.5% of U.S. annual construction revenues are committed to R&D³.

The U.S. construction industry is essentially fragmented, made up of a few large firms, but dominated by thousands of small firms that are incapable of accepting the financial risk associated with R&D. Recognizing this and the economic benefits associated with public works investment, the Federal government invests in construction R&D to support civil infrastructure. Data from Federal laboratories indicate that, in 1992, the Federal government spent between $1.026 and $1.386 billion on public works infrastructure research and development activities⁴. Investment figures such as these indicate a potential for improvement in civil infrastructure management, but only if the methods, technologies and other products resulting from R&D are infused into the systems that support civil infrastructure and designed well for the end-user.

Perhaps an immediate task for the civil infrastructure R&D community is to develop a national strategy for support of civil infrastructure that would serve many purposes:

• To identify and define major national challenges for civil infrastructure.
• To establish measurable industry goals for meeting these challenges.
• To plan for technology innovation and infusion.
• To help coalesce the U.S. construction industry.
• To emphasize a human-centered approach for design of civil infrastructure systems.
• To act as a vision statement and implementation plan for aligning and focusing existing and future efforts for research and application of human-centered systems related to civil infrastructure.

The nation's civil infrastructure and the U.S. economy may benefit by having Federal agencies involved with the advancement of construction technologies lead the development of such a comprehensive national strategy, working closely with the human-centered systems R&D community to ensure that human-centered system principals are inherent to the strategy.

Many themes associated with civil infrastructure support are candidates for national challenges. Perhaps two subjects that deserve more attention are outsourcing and technology infusion.

The public sector depends heavily on outsourcing, or contracting, of work to accomplish many civil infrastructure support tasks. Deciding what work to contract-out and what work to perform with in-house labor is often a challenge for the public sector. Such decisions are frequently influenced by local or national politics; social and economic factors; the knowledge, skills and abilities of an in-house labor force, etc. Well-written contracts require innovation, education, training, effective communications, continuously updated cost and performance metric information, etc. Can research in human-centered systems provide a scientific basis for the outsourcing decision-making, contract-development, source-selection, and contract management processes to meet the goals of a large-scale, strategic approach to outsourcing?

Technology transfer of R&D products and methodologies remains a challenge for the public and private R&D communities. Technology infusion in the civil infrastructure domain is no exception. Like the outsourcing process, the process of technology infusion into the civil infrastructure domain involves complex social, economic and political systems and is prone to inefficiencies and failure. Yet it is not readily understood why inefficiencies or failures occur, or how the inefficiencies or failures may be prevented. Perhaps human-centered research can provide sound models of such systems that will better support technology infusion.