It can no longer be in doubt that security, as well as structural integrity, has become part of the resilience debate in local infrastructure. More than this however, there is a need for technical officers to engage and strengthen society itself, as well as its assets.
Presentations and debates at TAG’s annual conference in May addressed these issues and produced powerful insights.
Head of the civil engineering department at UCL, Professor Nick Tyler, told attendees of a town planning philosophy in an unnamed foreign city - once dubbed ‘the murder capital of the world’ - that is changing not just the landscape but also the society around it.
‘Respect’ is not on the list of typical outcomes for an engineering scheme, but in this city it is. In this city every scheme is an ‘integrated urban project’, based around achieving a list of objectives – some social, some practical, including increasing respect and health among residents.
Mr Tyler said: ‘I think we can learn a lot about designing and engineering resilience in our infrastructure from the person out there on the street and how they use it in a social way. Transport is a social place.’
One senior figure in TAG suggested that a silo mentality in the UK puts constraints on such practices.
Mr Tyler agreed: ‘The “sectorisation” of money happens too early. Money is put into health or transport at a very high level and you can never get it out again. How we get the equation to move across the sectors seems to be a challenge that we have not found a solution for.’
He gave one example of more multi-outcome thinking. ‘I am working with footway surfacing that is designed in such a way as to give you some energy back. It is much less tiring to walk on, as it is slightly spongy. We are looking at whether you can prevent injuries from trips and falls that cost the NHS billions.’
He pointed out that the upfront cost is sometimes prohibitive but the savings in the round could justify such schemes.
Graham Pendlebury, director of local transport at the Department for Transport, agreed there were barriers to merging thinking and funding.
‘Some of those are cultural barriers between different departments and sectors, sometimes they are systems barriers – IT or design systems. I really like small-scale examples. I think you have to build out from there because sometimes the scale can overwhelm you,' he said.
‘At the end of the day there are competing priorities. Sometimes a list of too many objectives can be a recipe for doing nothing because you can’t hit them all. There is also an issue about the affordability in the here and now. It’s not just about the value cost ratio it’s about “can we afford this?” It’s a great challenge though and we need to work harder at it.’
On Highways England’s network a balance of competing outcome priorities is constantly in play. The Government-owned company’s Arash Khojinian has revealed that on the A14 for instance, a decision was taken to use low noise surface materials in order to support the environmental elements of the scheme, despite the potential to lower the durability of the road surface.
Chief highways engineer Mike Wilson told TAG attendees that schemes have a set of objectives that take account of ‘the setting of that scheme and the right environment’.
‘In terms of modelling or outcomes, a decision is made setting out what is needed from a scheme. We set out what that scheme needs to provide.’
A powerful message to come out of this flagship conference was that issues around society’s needs are becoming more embedded within infrastructure – whether this be disabled access, housing growth, health or security. However we have some way to go before we have a habitual model that demonstrates this sufficiently in practice.
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