Design management: changing roles of the professions

This paper sets out to explore how recent changes in procurement in construction have affected the roles that professions play in the design process. It discusses how professions that traditionally took the role of design manager now find themselves participating within previously unforeseen contexts, working in multidisciplinary teams led by contractors and with changed responsibilities at the design stage. Supply chain members who were not previously involved during the early project phases are being engaged at the earliest phases of the project life cycle and even taking leadership roles while designers sometimes work as supply chain partners. A study of design in construction and other sectors shows that in dealing with design management issues it is critical to deepen appreciation for the unique characteristics of design and the design process. The paper argues that contractors and designers taking on design management roles in a dynamic industry seeking to explore best practice and innovative approaches to procurement and in the delivery of projects need to acquire new skills, management education and develop the necessary qualities

Landslide Risk Assessment in Cut Locations Using Artificial Intelligence Based on Right-of-Way Videos and Geophysical Data

69A3551847103Sidehill and through cuts are often used in the construction of new railroad rights-of-way to limit the length, curvature, and grade of the route. However, rights-of-way that utilize cuts are susceptible to damage from falling debris driven by slope failure events such as shallow landslides and rockfalls. At-risk slopes, or geohazards, are traditionally analyzed using intensive field investigations and historical failure events to determine their likelihood of failure and the potential consequences of failure. Anticipating slope failures that may occur due to everyday weather events and other catalysts in the region helps protect railroad assets and employees, ensuring safe operations. Many rights-of-way have a large density of geohazards; thus, performing in-situ measurements to determine their failure likelihood requires extensive resources. In addition, installing infrastructure to detect or inhibit debris flow is expensive and often unrealistic for all geohazards. This study aimed to create a new slope stability risk framework for railroad cut sections by processing digital images of railroad rights-of-way recorded by inspection vehicles and related geophysical data. A geohazard-affected track section along the Harrisburg Line was used as the study area. Computer vision techniques were used to identify and quantify geohazard features that indicated slope instability. An object detection model based on deep learning (DL) was trained to detect these slope instability indicators and generate risk scores from rights-of-way inspection videos. Moreover, a landslide inventory was compiled, and a landslide susceptibility model was developed for the study area based on available geophysical data. The object detection model and the landslide susceptibility model were combined using a relative risk assessment framework to determine which sections were most at-risk of landslide, and results were compared with the railroad identified geohazard sections across the study area

Towards an integrated maturity model of asset management capabilities

Asset service organisations often recognize asset management as a core competence to deliver benefits to their business. But how do organizations know whether their asset management processes are adequate? Asset management maturity models, which combine best practices and competencies, provide a useful approach to test the capacity of organisations to manage their assets. Asset management frameworks are required to meet the dynamic challenges of managing assets in contemporary society. Although existing models are subject to wide variations in their implementation and sophistication, they also display a distinct weakness in that they tend to focus primarily on the operational and technical level and neglect the levels of strategy, policy and governance as well as the social and human resources – the people elements. Moreover, asset management maturity models have to respond to the external environmental factors, including such as climate change and sustainability, stakeholders and community demand management. Drawing on five dimensions of effective asset management – spatial, temporal, organisational, statistical, and evaluation – as identified by Amadi Echendu et al. [1], this paper carries out a comprehensive comparative analysis of six existing maturity models to identify the gaps in key process areas. Results suggest incorporating these into an integrated approach to assess the maturity of asset-intensive organizations. It is contended that the adoption of an integrated asset management maturity model will enhance effective and efficient delivery of services