Projects
Investment Decisions Project
Institutional owners regularly confront the challenge of allocating scarce resources amongst competing objectives while seeking maximum return. While a variety of quantitative methods exist to facilitate this task, available methods generally focus upon prioritizing projects for investment rather than programs of investment. This bias neglects the analysis of system-wide issues, the proverbial problem of “looking at trees and thereby missing the forest.” Investment programs are unquestionably of greater interest to the institutional owner, so decision support systems that would assist in evaluating alternative program scenarios are needed. This project is geared toward providing such tools.
Innovative Project Delivery and Public-Private Partnerships Project
Once institutional owners settle upon an investment program, they must determine how the projects within that program should be delivered. The options for project delivery are increasingly diverse and complex. In particular, public-private partnerships (P3) have emerged as a "popular" delivery strategy, but these arrangements are fraught with challenges. Through case-based research, this project is identifying best practices for innovative delivery and P3 strategies.
Facility Lifecycle Performance and Costs Project
This project is examining methods to understand the lifecycle performance of assets over time. Without such techniques, institutional owners cannot truly grasp what funds will be necessary. Our team's collective perspective is that non-physical factors such as societal and technological changes have a greater influence upon asset performance and lifecycle costs than physical factors. In other words, keeping pace with such change will demand sizable asset improvement investments over time.
Monuments of Infrastructure Project
Using "monuments of infrastructure" such as the Brooklyn Bridge as the backdrop, this project is developing web-based curriculum modules to support middle school math and science education. The modules assist middle school educators in achieving their learning objectives while also familiarizing 7th and 8th graders with the history and challenges of noteworthy civil engineering projects.