Fundamentals of Infrastructure Management

Table of Contents

About the Book

The authors believe this free of charge book, Fundamentals of Infrastructure Management, will expand the impact of the material and help improve the practice of infrastructure management. By ‘free of charge,' we mean that the material can be freely obtained, but readers should devote time and effort to mastering the material. We have provided problem assignments for various chapters, and we strongly urge readers to undertake the problems as a learning experience.

This book grew out of a decade of co-teaching a course entitled ‘Infrastructure Management' at Carnegie Mellon University. Our teaching philosophy was to prepare students for work in the field of infrastructure management. We believe that infrastructure management is a professional endeavor and an attractive professional career. The book is co-authored by two accomplished engineers - each representing professional practice, academic research and theoretical evaluation. Their collective strengths are presented throughout the text and serve to support both the practice of infrastructure management and a role for infrastructure management inquiry and search. Importantly, both co-authors have academic research interests (and a number of research publications) on various topics of infrastructure management. That said, the primary audience for this book is expected to be professionals intending to practice infrastructure management, and only secondarily individuals who intend to pursue a career of research in the area.

The text draws examples and discusses a wide variety of infrastructure systems, including roadways, telecommunications, power generation, buildings and systems of infrastructure. We have found that some common fundamentals of asset management, analysis tools and informed decision-making are useful for a variety of such systems. Certainly, many infrastructure managers encounter a variety of infrastructure types during their professional careers. Moreover, due to the functional inter-dependencies of different infrastructure systems, it is certainly advantageous for managers of one infrastructure type to understand other types of infrastructure. For example, roadway managers rely upon the power grid for traffic signal operation.

About the Contributors

Authors

Donald Coffelt serves as the Associate Vice President for Facilities Management and Campus Services at Carnegie Mellon University. His 350-member team provides facility services, infrastructure management, utility operations and auxiliary services required to support the university’s 150-acre Pittsburgh campus. Reporting to the Vice President for Operations, Coffelt is also responsible for coordinating university-wide sustainability practices.

Coffelt holds a concurrent appointment as an Adjunct Professor in Carnegie Mellon’s top ranked Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with an expertise in Infrastructure Management. He passionately promotes student and faculty access to university facilities for education and research – “The University as a Lab".

From 1995 to 2003, Coffelt was an executive for a Pittsburgh area facility services and technology firm with nation-wide program management responsibilities. From 1985 through 2013, he served in a variety of leadership assignments across the United States as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard before completing a 28-year career at the rank of Captain in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.

In addition to his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University, Coffelt is a graduate of the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT and the University of Illinois. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and licensed as a professional engineer in Alaska, and Pennsylvania. His published works include a graduate-level textbook, Fundamentals of Infrastructure Management. Active in community service, Dr. Coffelt also serves several boards including the Andrew Carnegie Society.

Chris Hendrickson is the Hamerschlag University Professor Emeritus, Director of the Traffic 21 Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, member of the National Academy of Engineering and Editor-in-Chief of the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering. His research, teaching and consulting are in the general area of engineering planning and management, including design for the environment, system performance, construction project management, finance and computer applications.

Hendrickson pioneered models of dynamic traffic equilibrium, including time-of-day departure demand models. He was an early contributor to the development of probabilistic network analysis for lifeline planning after seismic events. His work in construction project management emphasized the importance of the owner's viewpoint throughout the project lifecycle. With others at Carnegie Mellon's Engineering Design Research Center, he developed a pioneering, experimental building design system in the early 1990s that spanned initial concept through construction scheduling and animation

Since 1994, he has concentrated on green design, exploring the environmental life cycle consequences of alternative product and process designs. He has contributed software tools and methods for sustainable construction, pollution prevention and environmental management, including life cycle analysis software and a widely cited analysis of the life cycle consequences of lead acid battery powered vehicles.