March 2007
Volume 32, Issue 3

On January 19 ASCE provided testimony to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Water Resources and the Environment regarding the need for renewed investment in clean water infrastructure. The nation’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure systems each received a grade of D– in ASCE’s 2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. That analysis reported that although the U.S. faces a shortfall of $11 billion annually in the amount needed to replace aging facilities and comply with regulations on safe drinking water, federal funding for drinking water remains at less than 10 percent of the total national requirement. And while aging wastewater management systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated sewage into U.S. surface waters each year, Congress last year cut funding for wastewater management for the first time in eight years. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the nation will need to invest $390 billion over the next 20 years to replace existing systems and build new ones to meet increasing demand. The testimony that ASCE submitted to the committee follows in its entirety:

Madame Chairwoman and Members of the Subcommittee:

The American Society of Civil Engineers is pleased to provide you with this testimony for the record on the parlous state of America’s clean water infrastructure. We commend you for beginning your work in the 110th Congress by focusing on the importance of the need for a continuing federal investment in the nation’s aging sewage treatment systems.

I. ISSUE BACKGROUND:

The federal government has directly invested more than $72 billion in the construction of publicly owned sewage treatment works (POTWS) and their related facilities since passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Nevertheless, the physical condition of many of the nation’s 16,000 wastewater treatment systems is poor, due to a lack of investment in plant, equipment, and other capital improvements over the years.

ASCE reported in its 2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure that many sewage-treatment systems have reached the end of their useful design lives. Older systems are plagued by chronic overflows during major rainstorms and heavy snowmelt and, intentionally or not, are bringing about the discharge of raw sewage into U.S. surface waters. Because of these continued failings, asce gave the nation’s wastewater treatment systems a grade of D– in 2005, down from a grade of D in our 2001 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated in August 2004 that the volume of combined sewer overflows (CSOS) discharged nationwide is 850 billion gallons per year. Sanitary sewer overflows (SSOS), caused by blocked or broken pipes, result in the release of as much as 10 billion gallons of raw sewage yearly, according to the EPA.

In its “Clean Watersheds Needs Survey 2000,” the EPA said that the nation needs to invest an estimated $181 billion (in 2000 dollars) to upgrade its aging sewage treatment plants. That estimate was submitted to Congress in August 2003. We believe that the need is even greater today; unfortunately the agency will not issue its next comprehensive needs report until 2009, based on data collected in 2008.

Meanwhile, federal funding under the Clean Water Act State Revolving Loan Fund (SRF) program has remained flat or declined sharply every year since 1995.

Despite the impressive funding support provided in the 1970s and 1980s, federal assistance simply has not kept pace with the needs. Nevertheless, virtually every authority agrees that funding needs remain very high: the United States must invest an additional $181 billion for all types of sewage treatment projects eligible for funding under the Act, according to the most recent needs survey estimate by the EPA and the states, completed in August 2003.

In September 2002, EPA released a detailed gap analysis, which assessed the difference between current spending for wastewater infrastructure and total funding needs. The EPA Gap Analysis estimated that, over the next two decades, the United States must spend nearly $390 billion to replace existing wastewater infrastructure systems and to build new ones (the total includes money for some projects not currently eligible for federal funds, such as system replacement, which are not reflected in the EPA State Needs Survey).

According to the Gap Analysis, if there is no increase in investment, there will be a roughly $6 billion gap between current annual capital expenditures for waste-water treatment ($13 billion annually) and projected spending needs. Nearly seven years ago, the Water Infrastructure Network (WIN), a consortium of water and wastewater providers, researchers, environmentalists, engineers (including ASCE), and product manufacturers, recognized the problem. win released a study concluding that the annual investment need for all sewer treatment facilities is $12 billion. Little has been done in the interim, and the picture has not improved with the passage of time.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its own gap analysis in 2002, in which it determined that the gap for wastewater ranges from $23 billion to $37 billion annually, depending on various financial and accounting variables.
The chairman of the full committee, Mr. Oberstar, stated the case quite succinctly in an October 2003 report: “Without increased investment in wastewater infrastructure, in less than a generation, the U.S. could lose much of the gains it made thus far in improving water quality and wind up with dirtier water than existed prior to the enactment of the 1972 Clean Water Act.”

II. SHORT-TERM SOLUTIONS:

ASCE supports the reauthorization of the Clean Water Act to allow annual appropriations of $1.5 billion to $2 billion from the federal general fund for the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund (CWSRF) program. asce also supports funding research into wastewater treatment technology, which may reduce capital expenditures, as well as operation and maintenance cost.

In addition, the reauthorization legislation should include a prerequisite that all contracts for the acquisition of professional design services should conform to the “qualifications based selection” (QBS) requirements of the Brooks Architect-Engineers Act of 1972, 40 U.S.C. §§ 1101–1104. This will ensure that all publicly owned treatment works funded under the Clean Water Act are designed by the most highly qualified architects and engineers.

The case for increased federal investment immediately is compelling. Needs are large and unprecedented; in many locations, local sources cannot be expected to meet this challenge alone, and because waters are shared across local and state boundaries, the benefits of federal help will accrue to the entire nation.

III. LONG-TERM SOLUTION:

asce supports enactment of a federal water infrastructure trust fund act that would provide a reliable source of federal assistance for the construction and repair of POTWS to reduce the enormous funding gap.

Without a permanent dedicated source of revenue, our clean water infrastructure remains vulnerable to conflicting federal budget priorities, which can—and do—change from Congress to Congress and administration to administration. (This legislation also should require application of the Brooks A-E Act to the acquisition of all engineering designs funded by the Act.)

Clean and safe water is no less a national priority than national defense, an adequate system of interstate highways, and a safe and efficient aviation system. Many other highly important infrastructure programs enjoy sustainable, long-term sources of federal backing, often through the use of dedicated trust funds; under current policy, water and wastewater infrastructure do not.

Madame Chairwoman, that concludes our statement. If you have additional questions, please contact Michael Charles of our Washington office at (202) 789-7844 or by e-mail at mcharles@asce.org.

David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE, the Society’s president-elect, met recently with Lieutenant General Carl A. Strock, P.E., M.ASCE, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ commander and chief of engineers , to discuss ASCE’s ongoing relationship with the Corps, ASCE’s External Review Panel (established to review the work of the Corps’s Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force), the status of key legislative issues (including levee safety and the Water Resources Development Act), and activities that ASCE and the Corps are undertaking as part of their partnership agreement. It was agreed that the partnership has been fruitful, in particular, the joint endeavors after Hurricane Katrina. Mongan and Strock pledged to look for new opportunities to work together in the future.

On February 27 a representative of ASCE appeared before the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies to discuss the challenges and future needs of America’s wastewater treatment programs under the Clean Water Act. Jeanette A. Brown, P.E., F.ASCE, the executive director of the Water Pollution Control Authority in Stamford, Connecticut, testified on ASCE’s behalf. The subcommittee is now considering the long-term consequences of declining federal investment in publicly owned treatment works.

The ASCE Committee on Critical Infrastructure (CCI) has been working diligently to devise ways of making our infrastructure safer and better able to withstand a variety of threats. One of the committee’s most important endeavors has been the development of a program that will engage ASCE members at the grassroots level and recognize infrastructure “champions.” The CCI launched this program with a virtual meeting on January 12. The program chair, Daniel Martin, P.E., M.ASCE, described the initiative at that meeting and outlined upcoming activities, including a training workshop that will be held at ASCE’s headquarters, in Reston, Virginia, June 22–23. For more information about this program, visit http://ciasce.asce.org/InfrastructureChampions.html.

On January 18 The Infrastructure Security Partnership held a breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C., at the Army and Navy Club at which Jay M. Cohen, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s undersecretary of science and technology, spoke on various initiatives designed to make vital facets of the nation’s infrastructure more resilient. Cohen emphasized that the goals in this area remain consistent with the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and said that three factors would be crucial for success: people, process, and profit. His presentation may be downloaded by visiting www.tisp.org/events/eventdetails.cfm?prmTHREAT=18&eventID=1305 .

I am pleased to announce that ASCE recently finalized its calendar of seminars and Web seminars (“webinars”) for the spring and summer of this year. The Society will hold more than 135 seminars in cities across the country and offer more than 65 webinars. These sessions will cover a wide variety of technical and management topics of interest to ASCE members. Plan to attend these programs and expand your technical and management skills. For additional information or to register, visit www.asce.org/conted/ or call (800) 548-2723.

ASCE’s Career Connections has teamed up with Google Base and Indeed.com to make it even easier for engineering employers to find the right candidates. Positions posted on the Career Connections’ job board will now also appear in the jobs section of Google Base, an online classified repository, as well as in Indeed.com, a search engine exclusively for jobs. With more than 16,000 visitors to Career Connections each month, employers will now be able to tap into a larger pool of the industry’s best and brightest candidates. Please contact Seàn Scully at sscully@asce.org if you are interested in posting a job with ASCE.

Recently I had the privilege of attending the National Academy of Engineering’s awards banquet, which was held in Washington, D.C. I was joined by W.F. Marcuson III, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, our president, and David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE, our president-elect. Among the awards presented was the Grainger Challenge Prize, which is conferred in recognition of achievements in sustainable development. (Actually, there were three prizes, one each in the gold, silver, and bronze categories.) The prizes were established to stimulate innovation for the betterment of mankind and to promote the application of innovative technologies to global problems. This year’s challenge involved the design of water treatment systems in southern Asia for groundwater contaminated by arsenic. I am pleased to report that the prize in the silver category was awarded to a team that included two ASCE members, Arun K. Deb, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, and Arup K. SenGupta, P.E., M.ASCE. This team provided water treatment units for distribution in villages in India. In attending events that showcase the tremendous contributions made by our members, I am constantly reminded of the stellar work undertaken by civil engineers to serve the public. Please join me in applauding these achievements. Why not consider paying tribute to the contributions made by a colleague or mentor of yours by nominating him or her for a Society award? I encourage you to visit www.asce.org/awards for details about the Society’s honors and awards program.

I also urge you to attend the awards gala that forms part of our Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) program. It will be held on April 25 in Washington, D.C., at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. This year we will be honoring five eminent individuals for their lifetime achievements. You can purchase tickets by contacting Patty Montgomery by e-mail at pmontgomery@asce.org or by telephone at (800) 548-2723, extension 6101. Tickets for the gala are $275 each, and tables of eight go for $2,000 (all but $115 of each ticket purchase being tax deductible). The opal laureates this year are Fredric S. Berger, P.E., M.ASCE (management); Thomas R. Draeger, P.E., M.ASCE (construction); John W. Fisher, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE (education); John W. Keys III, P.E., D.WRE, F.ASCE (government); and Loring A. Wyllie, Jr., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE (design). Moreover, four projects have been selected as finalists in the competition for ASCE’s Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award, and the winner will be announced at the gala. The evening will also honor the winners of the Charles Pankow Award for Innovation and the Henry L. Michel Award for Industry Advancement of Research. For more information about OPAL, visit www.asce.org/opal.

—Patrick J. Natale, P.E., F.ASCE
Executive Director

On February 12 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held an award ceremony in Washington, D.C., at its headquarters for the members of ASCE’s External Review Panel (ERP), a team of experts convened by the Society in November 2005 at the behest of Lieutenant General Carl A. Strock, P.E., M.ASCE, the Corps’s commander and chief of engineers. The ERP was charged with peer-reviewing the work of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET)—the body commissioned by the Corps to assess the performance of the hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana.

The ERP members, listed below, were awarded the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal (OCSM), an honor traditionally bestowed by the Corps’s commander and chief of engineers to recognize outstanding service and contributions to society and the nation on the part of civilians. Established by the secretary of the army in 1959, the OCSM is ranked directly below the Distinguished Civilian Service Decoration and above the Patriotic Civilian Service Lapel Button.

“Everyone on the External Review Panel was recognized,” explains Lawrence H. Roth, P.E., G.E., F.ASCE, the Society’s deputy executive director, who also was presented with the OCSM for his leadership in developing the ERP and for facilitating the panel’s interactions with the IPET. “It was a tremendous honor for all involved in the peer-review process and for the Society as a whole.”

The ERP’s work has been comprehensive and rigorous, for it collected data associated with the condition of the hurricane protection systems before and after Hurricane Katrina; reviewed system construction and maintenance; performed numerical modeling to characterize the storm surge; analyzed the performance of floodwalls, pumping stations, and levees; evaluated the ramifications of economic decisions associated with hurricane protection systems; and examined the engineering and operational risk and reliability of the system.

“Your historic work will not only ensure the safety of the people of New Orleans, but many others throughout the country who depend on our nation’s civil works projects for protection of their livelihood,” wrote John Paul Woodley, Jr., the assistant secretary of the army, in a recent letter to the ERP panel. “I appreciate all that you have done and thank you for your patriotism, dedication, and outstanding accomplishments. When the nation asked for your help, you were there.”

On February 12 Lieutenant General Carl A. Strock, P.E., M.ASCE, the commander and chief of engineers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, awarded the members of ASCE’s External Review Panel and ASCE staff members closely associated with the work of the panel the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal. The honorees are as follows:

External Review Panel Members

Christine F. Andersen, P.E., M.ASCE, Director of Public Works, City of Long Beach, California

Jurjen Battjes, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Fluid Mechanics, Delft University of Technology

David E. Daniel, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, President, University of Texas at Dallas, and Panel Chair

Billy L. Edge, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, Head, Coastal and Ocean Division, Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University
William H. Espey, Jr., Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, President, Espey Consultants

Robert B. Gilbert, P.E., M.ASCE, Professor, Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin
 
Thomas L. Jackson, P.E., D.WRE, F.ASCE, President, Southeast Louisiana Floor Protection Authority–East (Jackson’s service on the ERP is now complete.)

David Kennedy, P.E., F.ASCE, Consultant and Director, Retired, California Department of Water Resources

Dennis Mileti, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado at Boulder and Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado at Boulder

James K. Mitchell, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, Hon.m.ASCE, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Peter G. Nicholson, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, Professor, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Clifford A. Pugh, P.E., M.ASCE, Group Manager, Water Resources Research Laboratory, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

George Tamaro, P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, Partner, Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers

Robert G. Traver, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, M.ASCE, Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Villanova University

ASCE Staff Members

John E. Durrant, P.E., M.ASCE, Managing Director of Engineering Programs, ASCE

Lawrence H. Roth, P.E., G.E., F.ASCE, Deputy Executive Director, ASCE

William Nye “Bill” Holway, M.ASCE, died on January 31 at the age of 86. Holway, who practiced engineering in Oklahoma for more than 60 years, is responsible for much of that state’s water and hydroelectric infrastructure. After earning a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1943, he joined his father’s engineering firm, W.R. Holway & Associates (which in 1972 was purchased by the Benham Companies). Holway served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946, and in 1948, his military service behind him, he provided engineering design services for a dam, a 56 mi (90 km) pipeline, and water treatment facilities on Spavinaw Creek, work that more than doubled the water supply capacity of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, region. In 1958 he led a team of experts that designed and built the Markham Ferry Dam for the Grand River Dam Authority. During his subsequent career he led hundreds of civil engineering projects, among them the engineering design of the Muskogee Turnpike in northeastern Oklahoma; the Lawrence Hydroelectric Project, in Massachusetts; and the Gantt Dam, in Alabama. He presided over the merger of the Consulting Engineers Council of the United States and the American Institute of Consulting Engineers, and in 1973 he became the first president of the American Consulting Engineers Council, which in 2001 became the American Council of Engineering Companies. Although he retired from Benham in 1991, he continued to serve as a consultant for the firm on thermal, hydropower, and water-related projects until 1999.

ASCE’s Disaster Resilience Program: Get In on the Action!

You no doubt remember the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks vividly and
robably recall exactly what you were doing when the attacks unfolded. You probably also recall where you were when you first heard about the hurricane disasters in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. Now ask yourself what you have done since these horrific events to help our nation protect itself from the devastation of future attacks or natural disasters.

Maybe you have already become active in asce’s hazard mitigation initiatives and are working to help ensure public security and safety. If so, thank you, and keep at it. If not, there is no time like the present to step forward and get involved!

ASCE has established the Committee on Critical Infrastructure (CCI), a national body charged with bringing vision, guidance, direction, and coordination to activities related to homeland security and with protecting vital aspects of infrastructure from a wide range of hazards. As such, the CCI sponsors disaster management training programs throughout the year that are open to all asce members. The next training session is scheduled for May 16 and will be held in Long Beach, California, in conjunction with the Structural Engineering Institute’s conference Structures 2007. Additional information about the CCI and related training is available at http://ciasce.asce.org/.

As you may know, The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP), which was established in response to the tragic events of September 2001, is a national forum of more than 100 public- and private-sector organizations that seeks to foster the type of collaboration that will make our nation’s infrastructure more resilient (see www.tisp.org). As the secretariat for TISP, asce promotes the work of the partnership to develop and implement measures in planning, design, construction, and operation that will help the country deal with the adverse effects of natural and man-made disasters.

ASCE recognizes that in many ways the response options to natural and man-made disasters are similar. For example, it is of the utmost importance to consider the way in which different facets of infrastructure are linked. If one subsystem within a larger system is directly affected by a disaster, most of the other subsystems will be affected as well. Furthermore, we must look at the phases that follow disasters, phases during which businesses, schools, and agencies need to resume operations. These phases present complex challenges that must be overcome after each disaster to bring the sectors in question back into operation.

The status of our nation’s levees is an example of vulnerable infrastructure. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined that 146 levees around the nation pose an unacceptable risk of failure during a major flood. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Congress directed the Corps and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers federal flood insurance, to determine which levees posed a risk. The Corps inspects about 2,000 levees nationwide, mostly larger ones. The deficiencies, which are mainly the result of poor maintenance, are forcing communities from Connecticut to California to consider investing millions of dollars in repairs.

As your president, I have a simple and urgent message:

• First, take a personal interest in improving the resilience of our nation’s infrastructure and make plans to attend an upcoming training workshop being offered by asce or its CCI.
• Second, contact your state’s homeland security director or emergency management agency and find out how to become involved at the local level. (Complete listings are available at www.dhs.gov/xgovt/editorial_0291.shtm or www.fema.gov/about/contact/statedr.shtm.)

Those who have made plans to attend the 6th Annual TISP Congress (“Achieving Resilience: From Readiness to Restoration”), which will be held in Arlington, Virginia, at the end of this month, will have an  opportunity to hear firsthand from those involved in making critical facets of infrastructure more resilient. They will also be able to participate in technical sessions, network with other professionals from organizations and agencies concerned with security matters, and see products demonstrated by public- and private-sector experts.

TISP has released the publication Regional Disaster Resilience: TISP Guide for Developing an Action Plan. More than 100 practitioners, policy makers, and technical and scientific experts around the nation helped to produce this work, which is designed to help communities prepare for disasters. (The publication may be downloaded free of charge, and hard copies are available for $10. Visit www.tisp.org/publication/.)

Using a simple, how-to approach, the work draws on lessons from previous disasters in highlighting 12 areas that need to be addressed in formulating an effective strategy:

1. Awareness and understanding of interdependencies;
2. Appreciation of cyber threats and incidents;
3. Resilient and interoperable communications and information systems;
4. Risk assessment and mitigation;
5. Cooperation and coordination;
6. Roles and responsibilities;
7. Response challenges;
8. Recovery and restoration;
9. Business continuity and continuity of operations;
10. Logistics and supply chain management;
11. Public information;
12. Exercises, training, and education.

The guidelines recommend short-, medium-, and long-term activities to address these preparedness issues, the aim being to help users develop standardized approaches and take the fullest possible advantage of existing approaches, tools, and technologies.

Another ASCE initiative in this area is the Building Security Council (BSC), which is led by our Architectural Engineering Institute. The BSC is dedicated to enhancing public safety by promoting efforts to make buildings safer and more resilient. Supported by numerous building, design, management, and ownership organizations, it outlines a comprehensive, multidisciplinary training program that can help one become a building security certified professional (BSCP).

I urge you to learn about and take advantage of the grant opportunities available through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Infrastructure Protection Program (IPP). In the current fiscal year roughly $445 million in grants is available for infrastructure protection initiatives at the state and local level. The IPP comprises the Transit Security Grant Program, the Port Security Grant Program, the Intercity Bus Security Grant Program, the Trucking Security Program, and the Buffer Zone Protection Program. These grant opportunities could pay rich dividends in making our infrastructure more resilient and in helping communities rapidly recover from disasters.

Now is the time to step up and take part in preparing for future disasters. They are sure to happen. The question is only where and when. Please let me know if you have questions or comments to share about disaster planning and resilience. Contact me at wmarcuson@asce.org or post your thoughts on my blog at http://live.asce.org/blog/1/president/.

—W.F. Marcuson III, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE

A snapshot of what’s happening in civil engineering practice

Letter from Afghanistan
Colonel Stephen J. Ressler, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, a professor and deputy head of the civil and mechanical engineering department at the United States Military Academy, at West Point, New York, recently wrote ASCE a letter from Afghanistan, where he and two other colleagues from West Point—Christopher H. Conley, Ph.D., P.E., A.M.ASCE, the director of the school’s Civil Engineering Research Center, and Major Bradley J. Cook, an assistant professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department—are working to develop educational programs at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan. Ressler and Conley are on a military assignment to develop and implement a civil engineering program at that academy, and Cook has been charged with establishing a computer science curriculum there. Ressler, who conceived and developed the computer software that forms the basis of the West Point Bridge Design Contest, was named an honorary member of ASCE in 2005 for his efforts in advancing engineering education through programs that help civil engineering faculty members become more effective in the classroom and for the contributions he has made to engineering outreach programs through the innovative use of information technology. The following is an excerpt from that letter, which he wrote on February 20.

The three of us arrived in Kabul on January 27 and got settled into our new digs. Our organization, the Defense Reform Directorate of the Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan, is located at a fortified compound called Camp Eggers, in the middle of Kabul. Our quarters are located in a safe house just outside of Camp Eggers. The safe house, one of many scattered around the city, is an old Afghan residence that has been subdivided into many individual apartments, supplemented by about 50 modular apartment units built into large stackable steel shipping containers. The modular apartments, where Brad and Chris live, are just barely large enough to enclose two single beds and two wall lockers each. I live in a tiny one-person room located in a one-story wing on the back side of the “big house.” This was apparently a servant’s quarters when the house was a private residence. The room is furnished with one steel-frame single bed and is about two feet wider and two feet longer than the bed.

The National Military Academy of Afghanistan [nmaa] has been in existence for about three years and there are currently three classes of cadets enrolled here. The academy compound is located about a 20-minute drive from Camp Eggers, on the outskirts of Kabul, adjacent to the city’s commercial airport. Chris, Brad, and I are temporary additions to a permanent eight-person team with a mission to advise the Afghan leadership of nmaa. Our team consists of two U.S. Army lieutenant colonels (the team chief and his deputy), two army majors (one a reservist and the other a [United States Military Academy] tactical officer serving a full one-year tour of duty here), three army reserve noncommissioned officers, and one air force noncommissioned officer. Although our team has some office space at Camp Eggers, we spend most of our time at the academy and at the Kabul Military Training Center [kmtc], where the cadets receive their military training.

We travel by convoy from Camp Eggers to the nmaa every morning and are required to be back at Eggers every evening before nightfall. We have reasonably well equipped office space in the nmaa headquarters building. Surprisingly, we even have wireless Internet access there, though the service tends to be sporadic and slow. I’m not complaining, though: given the horrible state of infrastructure development throughout Afghanistan, I am thankful to have any Internet access at all.

The Afghan academic calendar is different from our own; the academic year begins in March (immediately after the Islamic new year) and ends in December. Thus we are currently in the break between academic years—“summer vacation,” if you will. The cadets had January off, but the rising sophomore and junior classes are now at the KMTC engaged in military training. The new freshman class reported to the nmaa about two weeks ago. Given that classes are currently out of session, life is relatively quiet at our nmaa offices—and that’s a very good thing, because we have less than five weeks to develop our civil engineering curriculum, hire and train our Afghan faculty, build two civil engineering laboratories, and fully develop the two civil engineering courses that will be taught in the upcoming semester.

In practice, the most important of these tasks—hiring our five spring semester instructors—is essentially complete. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Krajeski, our team chief, oversaw most of the contract coordination and finalized four of the six hires before we arrived. Chris and I needed to interview only the candidates for the remaining two positions and complete these hires. That job is now done, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the result. We are very, very fortunate to have assembled a great team; things could certainly have turned out differently. As I understand it, the academy had been trying to hire engineering faculty for at least a year, with no success. The repeated failures stemmed from the decision of the Afghan Ministry of Defense to hire only military faculty for the nmaa. For the academic departments that teach the freshman and sophomore core courses (math, chemistry, physics, language, et cetera), Afghan army officers with appropriate academic qualifications were identified and hired. But for the engineering department, there proved to be no minimally qualified candidates in the entire Afghan National Army.

Finally, in desperation (and at the urging of Paul Krajeski), the Afghans finally consented to hire civilians as members of the academy faculty. Nonetheless, civil engineers are in such high demand in Afghanistan that we surely would have been unable to find willing candidates, except that Paul managed to negotiate a sweet deal with Kabul University that allows us to hire [their] instructors as nmaa adjunct faculty. The fact that we are paying our part-time adjuncts significantly more than Kabul University pays their full-time professors ensures that we can attract the best of the lot. We are fortunate to have hired an inspiring, talented group of adjunct faculty members.

With our storied and multitalented faculty “on the bus,” we have gotten down to the business of building a civil engineering program. Although the U.S. advisers at the nmaa have their own private offices in the headquarters building, Chris and I decided that we needed to move in with the Afghans in order to build better working relationships. So we relocated our desks in the civil engineering department office, decorated the walls with pages cut out of my copy of ASCE’s “2007 Bridges” calendar, and set up bookshelves to hold our wacky fun noodles, k’nex sets, and several cases of civil engineering textbooks sent from West Point.

Since getting settled into the office, we have been intensely busy, designing and redesigning the 16-course CE curriculum, coordinating the curriculum design with the math and basic science departments, getting the dean’s guidance and approval on changes, developing lesson plans for our first two courses, negotiating intellectual property agreements with textbook publishers, ordering lab equipment and computers, and trying (unsuccessfully) to keep up with all the goings-on back at West Point and within my various ASCE committees.

We recently received a shipment of total station surveying equipment and had a great time unpacking boxes and showing off our cool civil engineering toys to all of our colleagues. We are beginning to acquire a reputation as empire builders, and that’s probably not a bad thing. The dean tells us that civil engineering is the most popular major among the cadets and that half of the corps would leave the nmaa if they didn’t have an opportunity to study some engineering. So we deserve an empire.

We work six and a half days a week here. Our half a day off is on Friday—Juma’ah, the Islamic holy day. Most Afghans don’t work on Juma’ah, and so this is a reduced workday for U.S. units. Friday is also the day of the weekly bazaar at Camp Eggers. Thirty or 40 Afghan vendors set up shop on Front Street, just inside the camp gate, and sell their wares to soldiers. Although I’ve never enjoyed shopping, bargaining with the Afghans has proved to be quite enjoyable. Whether I’m actually any good at it is still a matter of some debate. I do now own an authentic karakul hat and, if you squint your eyes a bit, you might mistake me for Hamid Karzai while I’m wearing it. Well, okay, you actually need to squint your eyes a lot.

The other exciting event of the past week was our completion of driver training and our qualification for driver’s licenses. Driving in Kabul is an amazing, exhilarating, and terrifying experience. Traffic is wild and uncontrolled, with cars, trucks, donkey carts, and pedestrians all intermingled and competing for space on narrow, pothole-ridden roads. Without warning, taxis stop in the middle of the street to drop off passengers. Women wearing burkas walk across four lanes of traffic without even turning their heads to see the oncoming vehicles. Cars routinely drive the wrong way on divided highways. And, worst of all, I’m beginning to get used to it.
Our team is equipped with four white Mitsubishi suvs, which are covered with mud and decorated with pictures of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan guerrilla hero who fought the Russians and was murdered by al-Qaeda two days before September 11, 2001. The idea is to blend into the chaos out on the street, to the greatest extent possible. The few ied [improvised explosive device] attacks that have occurred in Kabul in the past year have been directed against military vehicles.

On the whole, life is good here. I’m eating well and working out every morning (though carrying 36 pounds of body armor around all day ought to be exercise enough). I attend an amazing multilingual Mass at the Italian embassy on Sunday nights. I’ve also asked Farid and Qaium to teach us a “Dari phrase of the day,” and through my mastery of such phrases as “peace be with you,” “may you not be tired,” and “the electricity is off,” I have managed to win the friendship of the Afghan security guards who stand watch over my safe house while I sleep.
That’s all the news that’s fit to print—for now.

Salaam aleikum,
Steve

Nicholson Honored For Community Service
Peter G. Nicholson, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, an associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and chairman of the graduate civil and environmental engineering department there, has been named the recipient of the Robert W. Clopton Award for Distinguished Community Service, an honor that the university bestows on an individual who has played “a socially significant role by applying intellectual leadership and academic expertise to the improvement of the community.”

Nicholson, who has more than 20 years of experience in the design, inspection, and assessment of earth slopes, dams, and levees in Utah, California, and Hawaii, led a team of professional engineers from ASCE’s Geo-Institute who assessed the performance of the hurricane protection system in southeast Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. On November 2, 2005, Nicholson presented the team’s findings in testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. There he recommended ways of preparing the New Orleans levee system for the next hurricane season and urged Congress to enact a national levee inspection and safety program modeled on the successful National Dam Safety Program. The levee program, he said, “should include a national inventory of levees, particularly those that protect large, heavily populated urban areas.” He also encouraged Congress to establish an independent advisory panel that would draw up a blueprint for rebuilding efforts along the Gulf Coast.

Nicholson currently serves on ASCE’s External Review Panel, which was convened in October 2005 at the behest of Lieutenant General Carl A. Strock, P.E., M.ASCE, the commander and chief of engineers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to peer-review the work of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force—the body assembled by the Corps to assess the performance of the hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana. “Over the past fifteen months, Professor Nicholson has unselfishly given hundreds of hours of his own time at great personal sacrifice to assist ASCE and the civil engineering profession to better understand the impacts of Hurricane Katrina so that we are all better prepared to avoid such tragedies in the future,” wrote Lawrence H. Roth, P.E., G.E., F.ASCE, the Society’s deputy executive director, in a letter recommending Nicholson for the award. “Through his service to the local and national community, he is indeed a credit to the University of Hawaii.”

Asian Engineering Group Pays Tribute to Crist
The Asian Civil Engineering Coordinating Council (ACECC) is honoring Robert A. Crist, Jr., Ph.D, P.E., M.ASCE, the vice president of operations for Black & Veatch and the chair of ASCE’s Task Committee on Global Principles for Professional Conduct, with an award recognizing his outstanding achievements. Crist, who has more than 40 years of experience in standards development, research, and investigative engineering, is currently responsible for risk and quality management, litigation management, and project consultation in areas pertaining to structures, shock and vibration, mechanical equipment, and failure analysis. His background in investigative engineering includes a number of years as an officer of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc., an engineering firm in Northbrook, Illinois, where he spearheaded investigative engineering projects having to do with large reservoirs, wastewater treatment, mining operations, and power plants, as well as with a variety of bridge and building structures. Crist served for five years as ASCE’s managing director of publications and technical affairs and in that capacity was responsible for the technical standards and publications operations of the Society. He is currently a member of ASCE’s Committee on Professional Practice and is a former member of the Engineers’ Joint Contract Documents Committee and of a Society committee dealing with quality issues in civil engineering. Crist has authored or coauthored more than 40 publications and has held leadership positions on research and standards committees in numerous professional and industrial organizations. He has had postdoctoral training in management and structural engineering at Harvard University, Purdue University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Crist has been invited to receive the award from the acecc at a ceremony scheduled for June 26 in T’aipei, Taiwan.

Budd and Buckley Receive Moles Awards
On January 31, at an awards dinner held in New York City at the Hilton New York, Theodore H. Budd, P.E., A.M.ASCE, and Robert R. Buckley, P.E., received the Outstanding Achievement in Construction Award from The Moles, an association of prominent individuals working in the heavy construction industry.

Budd, an expert in tunnel construction, earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Marquette University in 1969. He is currently the vice president of the Kenny Construction Company, a firm headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. Budd has spent most of his career constructing tunnels in this country and abroad. He has worked on tunnel construction projects in Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, Saskatchewan, and the United Kingdom. His recent projects include the $257-million East Central Interceptor Sewer Project, in Los Angeles; the $130-million Brightwater (east) project, in Seattle; and several tunnel projects in Chicago. He has also been involved in a number of joint venture projects, including the Deer Island outfall tunnel, in Boston; a subway project in Los Angeles; and several Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority projects. The numerous awards that have recognized his achievements include the 2000 Golden Beaver Award for Supervision and the American Underground Association’s Outstanding Individual in Underground Construction Award.

Buckley, who earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Drexel University in 1958, served as a captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before joining Buckley and Company, the construction firm his father founded. He became the president and chairman of the company after his father died, in 1974. Under his direction, the company has evolved from a foundation contractor to a major highway and heavy contractor. Buckley has led many projects in the Philadelphia area, including work related to the Market and Broad Street subways, sections of Interstate 95, the Schuylkill Expressway, the Passyunk Avenue Bridge, and the Center City Commuter Connection. His company has also participated in projects in New York State, among them the Newtown Creek Water Pollution Control Plant, in New York City; the bridge over the Hudson linking Newburgh and Beacon; and the reconstruction of the Lexington Avenue Subway, also in New York City. His company has also been involved in widening the New Jersey Turnpike; building Walt Disney World’s Epcot, in Florida; expanding San Francisco International Airport; and carrying out a sewer project in Puerto Rico. A former president of The Moles, Buckley has served on Drexel’s board of directors and has been named one of the university’s most outstanding graduates.

Bonaparte Elected To National Academy Of Engineering
Rudolph Bonaparte, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, the president and chief executive officer of Geosyntec Consultants, an engineering firm in Boca Raton, Florida, was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Bonaparte was honored for his contributions to geoengineering with geosynthetics, his design of containment systems for landfills, and his leadership in geotechnical engineering practice. He is the author or coauthor of more than 50 technical papers on topics related to geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering, several book chapters, and six major reports published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Highway Administration, and the U.S. Navy. Bonaparte received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree and a doctorate in geotechnical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. Election to the academy is one of the highest professional distinctions conferred on an engineer. Membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature,” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

Waggoner Included On Elite List
The magazine Building Design & Construction has included Mark C. Waggoner, P.E., M.ASCE, on its select list of 40 highly promising young professionals in the architectural, engineering, and construction industry. The editors chose Waggoner from among 244 entrants for inclusion on its “40 under 40” list A senior associate at Walter P. Moore, an engineering firm based in Austin, Texas, Waggoner has been involved in structural engineering projects dealing with the renovation of four National Football League stadiums. He is also a founding member of the firm’s research and development group. Waggoner holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree in structural engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. The elite list appeared in the magazine’s January issue.

Fellows Elected
The following members were elected fellows of the Society in recent months. ASCE fellows are legally registered professional engineers or land surveyors who have made significant technical or professional contributions and have demonstrated notable achievement in responsible charge of engineering activity for at least 10 years following election to the ASCE grade of member. Fellows occupy the Society’s second-highest membership grade, exceeded only by honorary members.

Chester L. Allen, P.E., F.ASCE, began his career in 1972 at Gannett Fleming, Inc., designing a shield-driven railroad tunnel of cast iron and a cut-and-cover concrete box tunnel for New York City Transit. Today he is a senior vice president of the firm and a member of its board of directors. Since 1992 he has acquired extensive experience with railroad and highway tunnels. In 1992 he led the development of the first U.S. inspection manual for the underground parts of Baltimore’s heavy rail lines and spearheaded efforts to inspect more than 20,000 ft (6,096 m) of underground tunnels. Two years later he was instrumental in developing a maintenance database and a database on structures for the five Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnels, and in 2000 he directed the preparation of an automation study dealing with tunnels for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. As a result of his work with computerized tunnel databases, Allen was selected in 2001 by the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration to lead the development of a management system that could be used by owners of highway and rail tunnels throughout the United States. In addition to a national inventory of highway and rail tunnels, the system features a tunnel inspection manual, a manual covering maintenance and rehabilitation, and an online facility that enables owners to obtain assistance in managing their assets.

Vito A. Guido, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, has practiced civil engineering for nearly 35 years. After obtaining a doctorate in civil engineering from Polytechnic University, Guido worked as a geotechnical engineer. In 1979 he joined the faculty of Cooper Union’s Albert Nerken School of Engineering and in 1991 was named a full professor there. His research has focused on earth reinforcement, Superpave asphalt technology, deep foundations, the use of innovative construction materials, and urban security, and he has served as an adviser to more than 35 students pursuing master’s degrees. Guido has won the Chi Epsilon Excellence in Teaching Award on three occasions and has twice been honored with service awards by asce. His research has been funded by four separate National Science Foundation grants and has received support through projects funded by the New York City Department of Design and Construction and the New York City Department of Transportation.

David L. Miller, P.E., F.ASCE, received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Utah and a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas. Miller began his career focusing on inspection and materials testing with Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory in Texas and in 1985 joined the American Petroleum Institute (API), where he has focused on codes and standards in the oil and chemical processing industries. He currently works in Washington, D.C., as the director of the API’s standards program and has been instrumental in developing codes and standards that have advanced the oil industry’s operations worldwide in the areas of fixed offshore platforms, tension leg platforms, and floating production systems. Miller also chairs a regional committee within the American National Standards Institute concerned with Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and serves on an industry trade committee that advises the U.S. Department of Commerce on standards and trade barriers. The standards documents that Miller has authored at the API garnered an award from the American Society of Association Executives and are cited in the Code of Federal Regulations.

Amir Mirmiran, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, holds a master of science and a doctorate from the University of Maryland. His education also included graduate work in earthquake engineering at Japan’s Nihon University. Mirmiran is a professor at Florida International University, where he is also the chair of the civil and environmental engineering department. He enjoys international renown for his expertise in using fiber-reinforced plastics in bridge infrastructure. In addition to his research and publications, he has organized national and international conferences in his area of expertise and has served as an associate editor for several journals. He has mentored and supervised numerous students pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees. Before entering academia, Mirmiran spent nearly a decade in professional practice with consulting firms in Maryland. He has two U.S. patents, more than 60 refereed journal papers, and more than 100 conference papers to his credit, and his work has been recognized by awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and ASCE’s Construction Institute.

Michael K. Powers, P.E., F.ASCE, is the president and chief executive officer of Symmes Maini & McKee Associates (SMMA), a 170-person architecture, engineering, interior design, and planning firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Active as a leader in the design industry, Powers is a frequent session leader and speaker for educational programs organized by the American Consulting Engineers Council, the Boston Society of Architects, the Associated General Contractors of America, and the Society for Marketing Professional Services. He is well known in the design and construction industry as an exponent of the benefits that strategic planning can confer in achieving business goals. He joined SMMA in 1980 and since then has shaped the company’s direction and led its growth and profitability by serving in a number of key roles. Powers is one of the country’s most respected consultants in the design of facilities embodying advanced technology. He is also a contributing editor to the McGraw-Hill textbook Managing Advanced Technology Facilities. A graduate of Northeastern University, he has been a guest lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Wentworth Institute of Technology.

Galip Sukaya, P.E., F.ASCE, has nearly 30 years of experience in various disciplines of engineering, primarily civil engineering and construction management. Sukaya has extensive project management experience in transportation, public-sector, and environmental projects. He holds a degree in civil engineering from San Diego State University and is a registered professional engineer in California and Washington. A vice president of EarthTech in the San Francisco area, he has worked on facilities engineering for the U.S. Postal Service in numerous locations in California and on construction management for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. He also helped to manage a light-rail project in Bursa, Turkey. Indeed, the project was made possible by a joint venture in I?stanbul that he helped to establish. On its first day of operation, in 2002, the system served more than 180,000 passengers. The joint venture achieved ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 9001 certification in 2005 under Sukaya’s direction and leadership. Sukaya has been mentoring Turkish university students since 1999. He is on the board of directors of the American Business Forum in Turkey and is also a member of the Turkish Society of Civil Engineers.

Narendra Taly, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, has been a professor of civil engineering at California State University at Los Angeles since 1977. After obtaining a bachelor of science in civil engineering in 1959 from the Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi), he worked in design and construction for nine years for agencies at the state and national level in India. In 1971 he obtained a master of science in civil engineering from Bucknell University and from that year until 1973 worked as a bridge design engineer for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. In 1976 he obtained a doctorate in civil engineering from West Virginia University. A registered professional engineer in California and West Virginia, Taly has more than 47 years of professional experience as an academician and a practicing engineer. He has published several technical papers and has been a keynote speaker at several conferences. Taly is the author of four well-known books in civil engineering: Design of Modern Highway Bridges (1998), Design of Reinforced Masonry Structures (2001), Loads and Load Paths in Buildings—Principles of Structural Design (2003), and Loads and Load Paths in Buildings—Problems and Solutions (2005). He is also a coauthor of the book Reinforced Concrete Design with FRP Composites (2006).

Mohamed Tarifi, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE, F. ASCE, has a distinguished career spanning 40 years and encompassing a number of fields and specialties, among them environmental engineering, health and safety, construction management, manufacturing, research and development, and regulatory affairs. Tarifi earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Cairo University, in Egypt, a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Northwestern University, a master’s in business administration from Loyola University Chicago, and a doctorate in environmental engineering from Kennedy-Western University (now Warren National University). A registered professional engineer in Illinois and Connecticut, Tarifi has been a member of ASCE since 1968, when he joined as a student member. He has numerous presentations, speeches, and papers to his credit in the areas of best practices, information management, emergency response procedures, energy management, and sustainable development. Tarifi also helped to develop environmental, health, and safety (EHS) programs at Clairol and Bristol-Myers Squibb that have achieved international recognition.

Daniel L. Thomas, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, F. ASCE, obtained a bachelor of science in 1978 and a master of engineering in agricultural engineering in 1980 from Louisiana State University (LSU) and a doctorate in 1984 from Purdue University. He is currently a professor at LSU, where he heads the biological and agricultural engineering department and the university’s Agricultural Center. Previously he was on the faculty at the University of Georgia. His research has focused on drainage, water quality, irrigation, and precision systems, and he has more than 70 publications and nearly 200 presentations to his credit. The courses he has taught have dealt with irrigation, drainage, engineering graphics, surveying, professionalism and ethics, and the design of small dams. Thomas is a longtime member of ASCE and has held leadership positions within the Society. His work has been recognized by the honor societies Sigma Xi, Alpha Epsilon, and Gamma Sigma Delta. In 2004 and 2005 he managed a panel dealing with watershed processes and water resources in connection with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Research Initiative.

Fellow applications may be obtained from ASCE’s world headquarters, in Reston, Virginia, by calling (800) 548-2723 or, from outside the country, (703) 295-6300 or by e-mailing memapp@asce.org. Applications for fellow status are also available in PDF format at www.asce.org/membership/fellowgrade.cfm. Applicants using the PDF format must request reference forms and return envelopes from ASCE through one of the contact points listed above. Completed applications are considered at the monthly meetings of the Society’s Membership Application Review Committee (MARC), which elects qualified candidates to the fellow grade. Questions regarding the fellow guidelines or application process (including waiver of guideline inquiries) should be directed to Curtis Nunley, the staff liaison to the MARC, at one of the contact points above.

Richard Broadcasts Engineers Week Message
On February 12 Brant B. Richard, P.E., M.ASCE, the president of the Louisiana Section’s Baton Rouge Branch, appeared on local television in Baton Rouge to promote the activities of Engineers Week, an annual outreach event that aims to give the general public a better understanding of the engineering profession and of the benefits that engineers confer on society. Richard, who appeared at 6:15 am on WAFB television, said in a recent e-mail that he wanted “to promote awareness and encourage young people to become our engineers of the future.”

Engineers Week, which this year was held February 18–24, features various activities designed to interest young people in engineering and technology. ASCE has played a major role over the years in supporting and participating in these activities. For example, Design Squad, a pbs series, introduces children and their families to the engineering design process, and the New Faces of Civil Engineering initiative highlights the contributions and triumphs of young engineers, provides incentives for college-level students, and promotes engineering as an attractive and worthwhile career choice. ASCE also organizes Family Day, an annual event in Washington, D.C., at the National Building Museum that features hands-on activities—for example, building models of dams and railroad bridges, constructing cantilevers from drinking straws, and creating paper helicopters—designed to excite young children about engineering concepts.

Founded in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers, Engineers Week now encompasses more than 75 engineering, professional, and technical societies and more than 50 corporations and government agencies.

Awards Bestowed, Recipients Shine at Leadership Conference
This year’s regional leadership conferences were held in January and February and proved to be a tremendous success, bringing together more than 1,000 members from asce’s sections, branches, younger member groups, and student chapters and clubs. Aimed at enhancing and expanding the programs and activities of section and branch leaders, these annual conferences offer an opportunity for participants to exchange ideas and experiences and receive advice and guidance that can make them more effective as leaders. Workshops for section and branch leaders, student chapter leaders, and zone younger member councils encourage collaboration and cover a broad spectrum of civil engineering issues.

The leadership conference for those in Region 4 and Region 5 was held January 12–14 in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel. Awards were bestowed on sections, branches, and individual members in recognition of exemplary activities and performance in 2006.

Administered by the Committee on Geographic Units, the awards program recognizes sections and branches whose programs and activities make outstanding contributions to their communities and to asce. The North Carolina Section won the Outstanding Large Section Award, and the Tennessee Section’s Nashville Branch earned the Outstanding Large Branch Award. In the competition for the Outstanding Section and Branch Website Award, the Georgia Section’s Savannah Branch won in the small-branch category, the Nashville Branch won in the large-branch category, and the Indiana Section won in the large-section category. The Outstanding Newsletter Award went to the Louisiana Section.

The Citizen Engineer Award is presented to a civil engineer who puts his or her expertise at the service of the community. The activities recognized include volunteering in the community, influencing local policy or legislative affairs, and improving the image of civil engineers. Scarlett Kitts, P.E., M.ASCE, of Greensboro, North Carolina, and George Bartuska, P.E., M.ASCE, of Winter Park, Florida, won the award this year. Kitts was selected for mentoring a middle school team that won at the state level in the Engineers Week Future City Competition. She has long been active in the Future Cities Competition in North Carolina, leading fund-raising events and working to involve middle schools across the state. Kitts has also been a leader in teaching the public about what civil engineers do and how they benefit their communities and society as a whole. Bartuska was selected for his outreach efforts to students in the fourth and fifth grades. His presentations explain the fundamentals of engineering in a way that youngsters can understand, and he has done much to give engineers a positive image. The scores of letters he has received from the children and teachers he has visited attest to his influence.

The Public Service Award, which is administered by the Committee on Volunteer Community Service, recognizes outstanding contributions made by an asce group to its community. The Younger Member Forum of the Florida Section’s East Central Branch took the award this year for its impressive list of public service activities. The forum—a group of younger engineers who are anything but stingy with their time, expertise, and resources—solicited contributions of food to feed the hungry during the Thanksgiving season and gathered toys for distribution at Christmas. Its members also took part in such community service events as judging student science and math projects, participating in environmental cleanups, and introducing schoolchildren to the civil engineering profession.

The Florida Section’s Broward County Branch won the Honorable Mention Award for diversity. The branch was signalized for its successful promotion of Girls’ Engineering Day, which acquaints high school girls with a variety of civil engineering disciplines and highlights the role that asce plays in the lives of students and professionals. Established by asce’s Committee on Diversity and Women in Civil Engineering in 2003, the award is presented to a civil engineer or a geographic unit (such as a section, a branch, or a younger member group) for promoting inclusiveness within the civil engineering community. Recipients are recognized for helping to realize diversity within the profession’s workforce.

California Members Convene At State Capitol for Third Straight Year
For the third consecutive year ASCE members in California traveled to the capitol building, in Sacramento, to lobby representatives from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office. On February 6 more than 30 Californians from ASCE’s Region 9 made the case for such civil engineering priorities as securing infrastructure funding, streamlining project delivery, and increasing resources for infrastructure issues. The engineers attended meetings with staff members representing 33 senators and 46 assembly members.

On the previous day Region 9 hosted an infrastructure symposium at the Sheraton Grand Sacramento that examined how California will spend the $43 billion in bonds that were approved in the November elections, in particular, how programs will be established, funded, and implemented. The symposium, which featured presentations by regional leaders of transportation and water agencies, two state legislators, and a representative from the governor’s office, enabled the more than 160 ASCE members in attendance to exchange views with various professionals from industry, government, and academia.

Last June ASCE’s Sacramento Section released the 2006 Report Card for Northern California Infrastructure: Levees/Flood Protection, which conferred an overall grade of D on the system of levees. The report looked at the levees that extend for more than 2,400 mi (3,862 km) along the Sacramento, American, and San Joaquin rivers and also provide protection in the delta formed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Large portions of the Sacramento Valley’s levees were built by farmers or settlers more than 100 years ago and haven’t been modernized or adequately maintained to protect the urban population that sprawls throughout the valley today.
On February 23, 2006, Schwarzenegger held a news conference on top of a levee separating the Sacramento River from a neighborhood a few yards away. “We are literally today one storm or one big earthquake away from a major disaster,” he said that day. “Now we have seen what happened with Katrina; I think that woke everyone up.”

The Society hopes this “report card” will draw attention to the dire condition of the levees in northern California and encourage politicians to allocate more public funds to infrastructure. While Schwarzenegger has proposed a public works bond plan that would spend $2.5 billion in state money over 10 years for levee enhancements and flood control in the Sacramento area, this figure pales in comparison with the $12 billion experts say is needed to ensure that the more than 400,000 residents now seen as being in danger are adequately protected.

As described in last month’s column, in 1972 the U.S. Department of Justice began legal proceedings against ASCE on the charge that the provision in its Code of Ethics pertaining to price competition violated federal antitrust laws. To settle that claim, ASCE signed a consent agreement in which the Society removed the provision in question from its code and formally announced that participating in price bidding for engineering services was not unethical. Unfortunately, ASCE’s brush with federal antitrust laws would not end with that agreement.

BACKGROUND: One year after the consent decree described in last month’s column was signed, asce’s Committee on Professional Conduct (CPC) began an investigation of two ASCE members for violating canon 3 of the Code of Ethics. This canon, adopted in 1914 as part of ASCE’s original code, read as follows: “It shall be considered unprofessional and inconsistent with honorable and dignified conduct and contrary to the public interest for any member . . . [t]o attempt to supplant another engineer in a particular engagement after definite steps have been taken toward his employment.”

The two members were officers of a Boston-based design firm, and the ethics complaint related to actions taken by that firm in securing a five-year water services construction contract in Thailand. Bangkok’s Metropolitan Water Works Authority (MWWA) had received roughly 50 proposals for the project, including one from the Boston firm, but it had selected another U.S. design firm. Some six months into contract negotiations between that U.S. design firm and the mwwa, the Boston firm, in partnership with a Thai engineering firm, submitted a second, unsolicited bid for the project. Subsequently, the MWWA informed the U.S. firm that was initially selected that its bid was too high, and it awarded the contract to the Boston-Thai partnership.

The CPC found that the Boston firm’s “late intrusion” into the negotiating process violated canon 3 of the Code of Ethics. It voted to suspend the two members, who served as the Boston firm’s president and vice president, for respectively two and three years. ASCE’s Board of Direction approved this recommendation, and notice of the suspensions, along with the members’ names, was published in the March 1975 issue of Civil Engineering.

CHALLENGE: In April of that year, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) responded to a complaint that two of ASCE’s members had been disciplined for submitting a price quotation. Upon investigation, the DOJ determined that ASCE’s actions had violated the terms of the consent agreement wherein ASCE had agreed to refrain from “adopting any plan, program, or course of action which prohibits members . . . from at any time submitting price quotations for engineering services.”

The DOJ filed a motion in the U.S. district court in New York asking the court to find the Society in civil contempt for violating the terms of its 1972 consent agreement. ASCE objected to the motion, stating that its revision to canon 3 of its Code of Ethics was not intended to suppress price bidding but rather to prevent interference from another engineer when a client had made its selection and begun the establishment of a professional relationship. Moreover, ASCE noted that the revision had been in place at the time of the 1972 agreement and that the DOJ had raised no objection to it at that time.

The DOJ countered that it did not object to the revision on its face but to the fact that ASCE had used it to punish two members who had done “no more than submit price information while negotiations were being conducted by another member.” Thus, the DOJ argued, ASCE’s interpretation and enforcement of the provision constituted another attempt by the Society to suppress price competition, in violation of the terms of their earlier agreement.

The district court agreed with the DOJ, finding ASCE in contempt and ordering the Society to reinstate the two Boston officers as members in good standing and to publish notice in Civil Engineering that their suspension had been in violation of the 1972 consent agreement. Furthermore, ASCE was ordered to refrain from applying canon 3 of its Code of Ethics in such a manner as to “directly or indirectly inhibit . . . the submission of price quotations or other pricing information.”

DECISION: In September 1976 the Board of Direction voted to remove the revised canon 3 entirely from the Code of Ethics. In its place, it inserted canon 5, which remains in the code to this day and reads as follows: “Engineers shall build their professional reputation on the merit of their services and shall not compete unfairly with others.”

Members who have an ethics question or would like to file a complaint with the CPC may call ASCE’s hotline at (703) 295-6061 or (800) 548-ASCE (2723), extension 6061. The attorneys staffing this line can provide advice on how to handle an ethics issue or file a complaint. Please note that individual facts and circumstances vary from case to case and that the general summary information contained in these case studies is not to be construed as a precedent binding upon the Society.

Hosted by the Civil Engineering Forum for Innovation (CEFI) January 30–31 in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the conference “The Challenges of Change” featured discussions of such topics as innovation, sustainability, partnerships, project financing, public policy advocacy, and risk and reliability. Numerous leaders from government, academia, and industry attended, among them Major General Don Riley, P.E., M.ASCE, the director of civil works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; David E. Daniel, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, the president of the University of Texas at Dallas and the chair of ASCE’s External Review Panel (ERP), which is peer-reviewing the work carried out by the group (Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, or IPET) set up by the Corps to evaluate the performance of the hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana; and John H. Sununu, Ph.D., a former governor of New Hampshire and a White House chief of staff under President George H.W. Bush.

ASCE established CEFI in January 2006 to expand the mission of the body it replaced, the Civil Engineering Research Foundation (CERF). CEFI seeks to advance engineering and to improve productivity, performance, and quality in the construction industry through collaboration and the rapid application of innovations.

“Engineers need to be more involved in public policy,” ASCE’s president, William F. Marcuson III, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, emphasized at the outset of the conference. “ASCE has gotten a fair amount of traction with its [infrastructure] report card, but we are certainly not where we ought to be. Engineers are good at solving problems, but we need to do a better job at identifying them and bridging the gap between what we know and where we want to go.”

Benedict Schwegler, Jr., Ph.D., M.ASCE, a vice president and chief scientist at Walt Disney Imagineering, which is based in Glendale, California, called on the civil engineering community to develop strategies for improving the quality of the nation’s infrastructure and incorporating innovation and the principles of sustainable design into its projects. “The idea of sustainability is compelling, but we don’t yet have a solid basis for what sustainable engineering really means,” he remarked. “We need to bring our engineering sensibility to discussions about ecology, biology, and the environment. Engineers are often the most knowledgeable people on these topics and yet are reluctant sometimes to make sure that their voice is heard and to stand up and be counted in these public debates.”

Schwegler, the recipient of CERF’s Henry L. Michel Award for Industry Advancement of Research in 2002, also underscored the importance of partnerships and project financing. “One of the biggest challenges we face in dealing with our infrastructure is balancing public and private interests,” he observed. “We have to figure out how to bring these interests together with new models of finance and engineering analysis. We need to take a fundamental look at what we can do differently with financial models to integrate short-term business interests and long-term sustainability.”

Riley, who manages the army’s $5-billion annual budget for civil works, discussed the Corps’s “12 Actions for Change,” a plan that was released in August 2006 to improve the safety of the nation’s water resources infrastructure. “We had to look very closely at what happened with Hurricane Katrina—at what went wrong with the engineering system and what got us to that point,” Riley said. “The actions we’ve outlined call for a change in policy and legislation, significant stakeholder participation, procedural change in federal agencies, and funding support to effect this change. We don’t see this strategy for change as merely patchwork. This plan will indeed take time to implement. But if we implement it as desired, it will not only effect some changes within the Corps, but I also really see this as effecting a greater change in national engineering standards.”

Developed through a collaborative effort that included the IPET, ASCE, the National Science Foundation, and Louisiana State University, the Corps of Engineers measures come in response to the need for the Corps to comprehensively design, construct, maintain, and update systems so that they will be sufficiently robust and will benefit from full stakeholder participation. They also reflect the Corps’s resolve to pursue effective and transparent communication with the public and within its own ranks regarding risk and reliability and to advance public service professionalism.

“Our vision is to allow for a safe public and a public that is informed enough to take responsibility for its own safety,” Riley added. “But we also have to have a clear national policy and standards. We have to have a sustainable system. We’ve got to get accurate floodplain information to the public and identify flood hazards posed by our aging infrastructure. We have to improve public awareness of risk and integrate programs across federal, state, and local agencies with private support.”

The steps outlined in the Corps’s plan include adopting an integrated, comprehensive, and systems-based approach; applying risk-based concepts in planning, design, construction, operations, and major maintenance; and continuously reassessing and updating policy as it relates to program development, planning guidance, and design and construction standards. Moreover, the Corps intends to avail itself of the advantages conferred by dynamic independent review; to employ adaptive planning and engineering systems; to focus on sustainability; to review and inspect completed works; to assess and modify its organizational behavior; to effectively communicate risk and develop risk reduction strategies that involve the public; to manage and enhance technical expertise and professionalism; and to invest in research.

Daniel led a panel discussion that explored ways of addressing the nation’s infrastructure challenges in light of the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina. “What went wrong in New Orleans?” he asked. “Unfortunately almost everything at every level. There was a lack of a sound, overall strategy. No amount of good engineering will compensate for poor management. The standard project hurricane, based on the hurricane of record, had no risk basis and no probabilistic foundation and was in our view seriously flawed. Very regrettably, there were some engineering designs and decisions that played it too close to the margins of safety and led to failure. Some of the decisions made, in retrospect, were flawed. The decision not to update the benchmarks for survey data resulted in levees being built too low. Maintenance was not always what it should have been either. Trees were not supposed to grow on levees, but the levee boards didn’t always keep trees off the levees. Land use choices were completely—and still are today—completely unintegrated with risk, levee design, and other things.”

ASCE convened the ERP in October 2005 at the behest of Lieutenant General Carl A. Strock, P.E., M.ASCE, the Corps’s commander and chief of engineers. Since then the panel has endeavored to provide an objective technical review of the IPET’s findings. The work carried out by the IPET has included data collection associated with the condition of the hurricane protection systems before and after Hurricane Katrina; a review of project construction and maintenance; numerical modeling to characterize the storm surge; an analysis of floodwalls, pumping stations, and levee performance; an evaluation of the effects of economic decisions associated with hurricane protection systems; and an examination of the engineering and operational risk and reliability of the system. The work has been painstaking and is not yet complete.

“I really believe that there is a general complacency about extreme events,” added Daniel. “The levees themselves almost provided a false sense of security, and unquestionably there was a low-cost mentality towards their construction. The risk was poorly understood and poorly communicated, perhaps even within the engineering profession. I’m not sure anybody really understood the depth of the catastrophe and the loss of life that would occur, [and] if they did, that knowledge somehow did not factor into the decision making.”

Last August the ERP released Hurricane Katrina: One Year Later. What Must We Do Next?—a 12-page report that advocated 10 measures for addressing and correcting the deficiencies in the hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana. The hurricane protection system, the report said, was poorly planned and managed, as “evidenced by the fact that the system took decades to build and remains incomplete yet today.” Moreover, the city’s system of levees and floodwalls “failed catastrophically at over 50 different locations,” and pump stations “were not designed to function in a major hurricane or mitigate flooding if the levees were overtopped or breached.” The ERP report also called attention to crucial problems with the protection system and emphasized that solutions would require investments on multiple fronts. “There are flaws in the way the hurricane protection system was conceived, budgeted, funded, designed, constructed, managed, and operated,” it explained. “There is no quick fix for the complexity of problems. Overcoming the deficiencies in the New Orleans hurricane protection system—and instituting real change in its governance, management, and engineering—will require leadership, courage, conviction, and funding.”

The steps recommended in the report were seen as necessary to ensure shifts in thought and approach. They included understanding risk and embracing safety, reexamining and repairing the hurricane protection system, revamping its management, and demanding engineering quality. The report also called for keeping safety at the forefront of public priorities; quantifying the risks; communicating the risks to the public and deciding how much risk is acceptable; rethinking the overall system, including land use in New Orleans; correcting the deficiencies; putting someone in charge; improving interagency coordination; upgrading design procedures; bringing in independent experts; and placing safety first.

“We feel that you have to start with a good management structure—someone has to be in charge,” emphasized Daniel after citing the ERP’s report. “The appropriate design hurricane is just a huge issue. How safe do we want to try to make New Orleans? The Corps needs to focus on safety and peer review, and they’re already doing that. The whole system needs to be rethought, and the Corps is already significantly pursuing that. A risk-based approach is the only one that makes sense. But the big question is, do we really have the will to make such dramatic changes in business as usual?” In his keynote address, Sununu shared insights from his work in public office and offered his views on innovation, technology, energy, public policy, and education. “I want to dissuade you as engineers [from believing] that you are living in a period of time when technology is developing quickly, when innovations are coming fast, and when we are making cutting-edge changes,” he said. “I hate to surprise you, but that is not the case. We are evolving; we are improving; we are making things better. But this is not the fastest period of technological change. This is important because we walk around talking to each other about how quickly things are happening, and I have to tell you that we are not making them happen quickly enough.”

Sununu, who in 2004 cochaired a task force on nuclear energy set up by the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, called attention to the nation’s projected expansion of nuclear power capabilities. “Nuclear power is having a revival,” he noted. “The nuclear industry is considering twenty-nine potential new nuclear power plants. But we have to take a look at why as a nation we allowed ourselves to go almost thirty years without a new plant being ordered and . . . twenty-odd years without a new plant being completed. And frankly I believe it’s because we as engineers didn’t have the guts to stand up and fight the irrational arguments made by the opponents to this technology. We have to—as employers, colleagues, and members of society—make it easier for engineers to participate in the process of public policy and comment on issues that may be politically difficult for the corporation as an institution or for us as friends and colleagues to deal with. We’ve got to create a climate, at least among ourselves, that will allow engineers to participate in the process and put whatever pressure we have on the rest of the system to make participation proper and acceptable.”

A visiting professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government during the 2003–04 academic year, Sununu concluded his address with comments on the current state of engineering education. “To me the crisis in engineering education is that we seem to be drawing fewer students from the United States,” he said. “We are drawing a lot of students from overseas, but we are drawing fewer of our own students, and frankly they seem to be less excited about it and significantly fewer of them are going on to graduate degrees. I think that it is our fault. I think our wage scale in engineering has been allowed to be suppressed and I think the differential rewards for master’s degrees and certainly the differential rewards for doctorate degrees are ludicrously low and that our students are making a smart decision and not making a bad bet.”

Through such outreach programs as zoom into Engineering, the Extraordinary Women Engineers Project, and its annual concrete canoe competition, ASCE actively encourages students to pursue careers in engineering. It has also been promoting actions aimed at improving the standards governing engineering education. In October 2004 the Board of Direction adopted Policy 465, which encourages education beyond the baccalaureate and emphasizes the attainment of “a body of knowledge for entry into the practice of civil engineering at the professional level.” This initiative has seen some positive results. Last September the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying voted in favor of a modification to section 130.10 of its model law that will provide guidance to states as they craft legislation pertaining to licensure. The change to the model law, which will take effect in 2015, calls for education beyond a bachelor of science and requires students to earn either a master’s degree in engineering or acquire 30 additional credits by taking upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses.
“We are not rewarding technological innovation in the marketplace,” Sununu added. “There are dozens and dozens of examples out there where the best technology comes into companies after we reward them. So I think that if we want to get our best and brightest students into engineering and keep them in engineering and move them into master’s and doctorate programs, then we have to get the private sector to cooperate and understand that a reward structure has to be out there that makes that a good bet for our best and brightest students.”

—Mark Fitzgerald