Author: Professor, Dr. Dietrich Stein - TrenchlessOnline

INDUSTRY WATCH
Aging Infrastructure Must Be Fixed Sooner, Not Later
By Katherine Fulton
“In the past 50 years or so, engineering has made great
advances,” says Bill Marcuson, president of the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).“Unfortunately, we often
gain knowledge from our mistakes.”
Sadly, these mistakes can sometimes take the form of fatal
catastrophes. While some of these disasters occur despite
vigilance and the best of intentions, many others are the
result of poor maintenance or other preventable measures.
Recently, two American cities had to contend with infrastructure
failures that resulted not only in major damage to
urban areas, but also to tragic losses of life. A steam pipe
explosion in New York City on July 18, injured 45 and indirectly
killed one (the victim suffered a heart attack while
fleeing the scene). Less than a month later, the collapse of
the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis, killed 13
people when it plunged into the river.As crews pick up the
pieces and investigators look into the causes of both accidents,
many are wondering about the state of infrastructure
in their area — and if leaders and decision-makers at all levels
of government will do what it takes to prevent accidents
like this from happening again.
Though investigations into both the New York City and
Minneapolis incidents are not yet conclusive, many agree that
there could be several contributing factors that led to a “perfect
storm” of sorts, resulting in the failure of these systems.
Fabian Hadipriono Tan, a civil engineering professor at The
Ohio State University,states that systemic failures are the result
of either external causes,such as environmental stresses,pressure/wear
on a structure,and so on,or internal causes,such as
design, construction, material or maintenance errors.
“External events are generally expected by us,” says Tan.
“[In the case of the New York City steam pipe,] we normally
have mechanisms like steam traps to relieve water pressure,
to drain water that could create catastrophic events
and so forth.We would also expect that regular and proper
inspection and maintenance procedures be implemented
on this type of infrastructure. External events are expected.
“However, what we normally do not expect to happen
here is what we call internal flaws, such as design errors,
construction problems,material problems and maintenance
of the pipes.We engineers design it and we assume that it is
properly designed, so if there is an error, we don’t expect
that error to happen. Otherwise, it’s not going to be
installed in the first place.”
While a combination of both external and internal causes
could have easily sped the deterioration of these systems,
the final piece of the puzzle could be issues with infrequent
or improper maintenance at a time when funding for public
systems continues to decrease.While no one will be able
to pinpoint a definitive cause until after the investigations
18 TRENCHLESS TECHNOLOGY September 2007 www.trenchlessonline.com