That was the first time I was exposed to the reality of just how many people around the world don’t have access to safe drinking water. It is such a critical resource that we take for granted every day. Without water, we couldn’t wash our hands or dispose of waste. In fact, how we have been able to manage through a global pandemic is largely dependent on having access to clean water.

Since then, I have continued to support communities in developing countries. When I moved to the U.S. in 1991, I joined the Wisconsin Committee for Water for People and went on their first trip to Guatemala. Our assignment was to review and determine how to fix an existing water system that had stopped working only a few weeks after being installed. This demonstrated to me that for a community to have a sustainable water system, not only do they need the support to design and install it, but they also need training and funding for long term operation and maintenance.

ArchTam’s Partnership with Water For People

Water For People is a key partner for ArchTam because their mission aligns with our vision: a world where infrastructure creates opportunity for everyone – uplifting communities, improving access and sustaining our planet. Today, I represent our organization in Water For People’s Leadership Council alongside the world’s leading professional engineering firms. ArchTam and our people have partnered with Water For People for more than 11 years, raising over $1 million through direct contributions, fundraising activities and volunteerism.

Water For People’s approach of “Everyone, forever” speaks to the critical sustainability component of water systems for communities in need. They partner with local governments, businesses and individuals where resources matter most to help maintain water systems. You can see their progress here.

ArchTam provides the opportunity to donate to Water For People through a dedicated website as well as through charitable salary deductions in Canada and the US. It is my hope that for today, as we Imagine a Day Without Water, we take a moment to reflect on how having this critical resource enables us to live and give back to communities in need.

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I had also met two World War II veterans that frequent the post and, over time, developed a bond with them. My friend had an inspiration one day in June that he wanted to take our two veterans, along with other veterans in the Houston area, to New Orleans on an all-expenses-paid vacation to visit the World War II National Museum. He asked if I would be interested in helping him raise funds to make this happen.

I reached out to Sandra Broughton, our global head of Travel, and Travis Boone, our West Region Executive, and asked if ArchTam would consider donating points for the veterans who were interested to stay at the new Hilton Higgins Hotel, which is affiliated with the museum and located directly across the street. Without hesitation, both agreed to reach out to leadership and within a couple of days, I was given the okay.

With the help of a couple additional friends, we began fundraising and were able to support the 12 veterans and their families that would be traveling with us. We raised enough money to add an additional night as well as set up first class transportation on a coach bus, reserve a locally famous restaurant for their celebratory dinner and provide small excursions while we were in town. Necessary precautions were taken in making this trip happen while COVID cases were on the rise, keeping the families informed on all that we were doing to keep our heroes safe.

But despite these efforts, there were circumstances that were out of our control. Our trip was scheduled for August 27 and two days before departure, Ida began her path straight for New Orleans. We ended up traveling with seven veterans since several canceled due to the storm.  One of the veterans who decided to join us was 100 years old and laughed at the idea that he would stay home because of “a little rain.” These men are tough!

As people from the Gulf Coast, we are familiar with storm paths and monitoring the models. We spoke to locals at the museum and decided that with the forecasted Monday afternoon landfall, we would go ahead and make this weekend trip happen for our veterans. We left at six o’clock in the morning on Friday with a full police and military motorcycle escort, who ushered us the entire six-hour drive to New Orleans. As we watched the storm intensify quickly, we had to make changes. We were able to get to the museum a day earlier and get clearance to leave after just one night in The Big Easy, but it was a trip these veterans whole-heartedly appreciated. The road home took 18 hours but they were on a comfortable bus with their families, fully stocked with food and water (and a bar because they LOVE to drink) as well as a bathroom, games, pillows, music and, most importantly, memories. Not only did they not complain once, but they got off the bus and asked when the next trip was leaving.

I was blessed to have this trip supported by ArchTam as well as my colleagues. My family was able to travel along with me and my sons, who are 14 and 16, told me it was an experience they will never forget. We all sat at dinner shedding happy tears, watching these great men who’ve done so much for our country, just enjoying the experience.

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The coronavirus pandemic pushed the digital world forward as we worked collectively to find innovative solutions to keep us connected. However, it exposed and amplified the existing digital divide between areas with established broadband infrastructure and those without. This disparity grew as everything from remote learning, remote working, and telehealth activities required an effective digital connection. Reaching far beyond sheer convenience, an affordable and effective means to connect to data and information is now essential as it drives and influences our access to critical applications, innovation and opportunity.

In most cities across the United States, state, local and private infrastructure are separate or loosely connected, with organizations largely deploying their own broadband infrastructures. To advance our communities, we must collectively ensure quality and accessibility to these broadband networks, which can be achieved by converging what we refer to as public-private broadband stacks.

The Broadband Stack is the combination of physical infrastructures and technologies that public and private sector service providers use to connect to devices, locations, end-users and communities in order to improve quality of life experiences, enhance public safety initiatives, and increase economic development activities.

Image: The Broadband Stack

One part of the stack, or one entity, is not enough to be able to bridge this divide. A single form of implementation will not fix it, either. It requires the total partnership, integration, innovation and convergence of the entire broadband stack to create meaningful impacts on our communities, campuses and cities. This will ensure that everyone can address their most fundamental and critical needs and initiatives.

Moving toward converged stacks increases operational capability and lowers costs by reducing parallel infrastructures. The coalescing of state, local and private broadband networks  explores the potential that exists for these organizations to partner with one another in order to lay the foundation for wireless mobility, applications and transport needed to unlock access to knowledge, improvement and advancement for all.

Image: Convergence

We can strategically plan and design converged networks that meet the increasing needs for true broadband connectivity. By helping with governance and increasing interoperability, we can deliver significant cost savings for our clients while enhancing social equity for unserved and underserved communities. At present, many organizations operate in separate stacks, each having their own infrastructure. The goal is to move in the direction of a converged stack, which coalesces state, local and private networks and optimizes them through innovative and evolving partnerships. These partnerships guide a greater strategy of aggregation and allows meaningful accessibility through integrated and converged broadband infrastructures. Additionally, technology and public initiatives often extend beyond the means and reach of one organization or agency. These converged partnerships can maximize the existing budgets, unlock economic potential, and strengthen connection for those that are impacted by this digital divide.

Image: Planning for Impact

The pandemic has shown us the importance of enabling remote working, learning and living. An evolution in our approach will allow us to achieve the greatest impact in ensuring equity and connectivity for our communities, campuses, and cities. This transformation in partnership demonstrates the importance of integrating and converging broadband stacks to create positive social outcomes and advancing our communities. Getting to the possible is going beyond our self-imposed limits and capacity of our traditional partnerships, infrastructures and approaches so we can realize the full potential of achieving social equity and economic development opportunity, and improving the quality of life for all.

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We’ve all heard the staggering statistics – over half the world’s population will live in urban areas by the middle of the century, the benefits of a global economy are distributed for the fortunate few, and climate change continues to exacerbate existing environmental concerns while creating new ones. The sheer magnitude of these physical, social and moral concerns and the unrelenting pressure that comes with having a small role to play in stemming the tide can overwhelm anyone, from policy makers to urbanists to the general public.

As the need for improved infrastructure increases, it can be tempting to default to new emerging technological solutions, like automated vehicles or artificial intelligence, as the wunderkind solution to all our problems. And who can blame us? As the intellectual and financial momentum of the technology sector pivot from the digital realm to the physical realm, we are seeing rapid improvements in technologies that only a decade ago seemed impossible. Hyperloop technology was a mere whitepaper in 2013, and in 2019 we have a fully automated, electric hyperloop pod zipping through a near vacuum tube at several hundred miles an hour. Instead of the internet acting as the laboratory for many startups, there is a more deliberate emphasis on the city and its people as the test bed for experimentation. This new unexpected inertia has led to rapid shifts in many previously fundamental assumptions about the form of cities and the arrangement of urban space, such as the increased value of curb space and the devaluation of structured parking garages.

With such rapid change upon us, how do we properly plan and design for the future? How do we help cities ensure they are choosing the right solution, at the right time, without exacerbating or reinforcing equity issues?

As overwhelming as these changes may appear, finding the path forward can often be as simple as ensuring that we are asking the right question about the right problem: Are we designing for technology itself, or are we designing for the people using the technology? Rapid change is not new in city building and there are clear examples in the past where we have erred and where we have succeeded in adapting to it. In designing cities around the automobile instead of people, we mistakenly measured success on vehicle throughput instead of our ability to connect people to jobs and housing. In our pursuit of economic growth, we tended to prioritize luxury development projects near transit oriented districts instead of treating them first and foremost as mechanism to solve affordable housing and mobility needs. And in our effort to maximize and protect property values, we segregated communities.

Deliberate human-centered design and planning can help counter our temptation to focus on technology instead of allowing it to adapt to us. In our work with planning hyperloop and high speed rail systems across Texas for six metropolitan planning organizations, we identified potential station locations not by highlighting available developable land or compatibility to technology deployment, but by which locations provided the most public benefit to the communities, such as locations where transit-oriented development could provide affordable housing to transit dependent populations. We then worked backwards to see how emerging technologies, like hyperloop and automated BRT, and corridor alignments could best work for those stations. This approach allowed us to always prioritize people in the decision-making process rather than technology modes or convenient rights-of-ways.

As we move into an era where technological change is defining many of our solutions to city building, despite our uncertainty about potential negative externalities, maintaining a clear perspective with a priority on human centered outcomes rather than technological can better help us navigate the future and build for tomorrow.

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Vehicle crashes consistently rank as one of the leading causes of preventable death in the United States, exacting heavy emotional and financial tolls on individuals, communities and society. Preventing these accidents is a top priority for decision makers around the country. We must recognize that our roadways, as they are, reinforce dangerous tendencies for drivers and pedestrians and that our fatal and severe crashes are a critical and preventable public health issue.

This is where future-looking initiatives like Vision Zero come in and change the way the transportation industry, communities and elected officials handle their roadways.

Vision Zero, already adopted by several major U.S. cities including Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington DC and throughout Europe, is based on a set of principles which declares that all actions should adhere to the following:

• Traffic deaths and serious injuries are preventable
• No loss of life is acceptable
• Human life and health are prioritized
• Human error is inevitable and transportation systems should be forgiving
• People are vulnerable and speed is a fundamental predictor of crash survival
• Focus on systems-level changes above influencing individual behavior

The Citizens of Philadelphia were introduced to the initiative in December 2015 with the first Vision Zero conference and began to consider how it would be applied to their city. Mayor Jim Kenny hired the first Director of Complete Streets in 2016 and Philadelphia’s Vision Zero Action Plan released an overall goal of zero traffic deaths by 2030. The action plan laid out the following priorities, equitable to all citizens:

• Save lives by reducing the number of traffic-related deaths and severe injuries
• Improve overall performance of streets system and prioritize the safety of those using our streets who are most vulnerable
• Reduce Philadelphians’ risk for developing chronic diseases by promoting active transportation
• Shift trips from motorized to active modes of transportation to reduce congestion, improve air quality and improve health safety

This plan kicked off the current movement to make Philadelphia a safe and truly accessible city. In an effort to build for tomorrow, the data-driven approach has allowed the city to focus on its high injury network of roads. The corridors with the highest rates of fatalities and severe injuries cover 50 percent of all major incidents in just 12 percent of Philadelphia streets.1 Paired with focusing on the most dangerous roadways, instituting protected bike lanes, newly designed curbless intersections and aesthetically-pleasing designs have only increased the ability of Philadelphians to get around in a safe, sustainable manner.

In parallel with the City’s initiative, organized by the Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition, ArchTam has been an avid supporter and partner in the Vision Zero conference each year since its inception. In 2018, we were challenged to develop a way to help the different road users to be empathetic to each other’s experiences. We developed a 3D virtual reality experience that invoked emotional reactions from those who tried it. The VR allowed the viewer to experience a busy road as a pedestrian, bicyclist or driver with varying levels of sidewalk and bicycle lanes (protected and unprotected). The immersive experience gave attendees a glimpse into the perspective of other roadway users.

The project’s collaborative nature has allowed all stakeholders to have a say enforcing the notion that we’re all working together for safer streets. Community members from all walks of life are working together and empathizing with one another to better understand how we can transform our current environment and build safer ones in the future – together.

1: Vision Zero Philadelphia Three-Year Action Plan

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The U.S. Department of Defense views improving energy security and resilience as one of its formative challenges of the 21^st Century. To meet that challenge, military bases are exploring new technologies and using all available acquisition authorities. They are partnering with surrounding communities, their serving utilities, and energy industry experts to build facilities that require less energy and that can restore power quickly after disruptions. Every idea is being explored.

With our partners – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Colorado Springs Utilities, Lockheed Martin, Geli, and Main Electric – we worked with Fort Carson to install an 8.5-megawatt-hour battery energy storage system (BESS) that’s designed to save the installation roughly 10 percent on annual demand charges and facilitate energy resilience enhancements. It consists of thousands of lithium storage cells, organized into modules and racks, and is controlled by a highly sophisticated predictive control system. Fort Carson’s leadership throughout the project was crucial to overcoming obstacles and unifying stakeholders.

The new BESS combats the high cost of electricity use during peak demand periods. By reducing energy demand placed on Fort Carson’s power grid—especially during the summer cooling season—the BESS increases grid resiliency. Typically, the BESS charges overnight, when energy costs are lower, and discharges during the late afternoon, when Fort Carson experiences its maximum electrical demand. Since the majority of Fort Carson’s energy bill is based on maximum demand, this action by the BESS directly reduces Fort Carson’s utility bill.

When fully charged, the BESS holds enough energy to power around 3,400 homes and it stores about the same amount of energy as a million iPhones. It is 25 percent more powerful than the newest freight locomotive and can execute a control signal 10 times faster than a hummingbird’s wing beat. Construction of the BESS required 2,865 tons of imported structural fill, 118 yards of concrete, and 8.4 tons of concrete reinforcement steel (rebar).

With the addition of this innovative energy asset, Fort Carson has enhanced its reputation as one of the most forward-thinking and capable energy managers in the U.S. Army.

“The system will reduce our billed peak electric use by an average of nine percent every month,” said Directorate of Public Works Utility Program Manager Vince Guthrie, “The reduction will save Fort Carson approximately $525,000 a year.”

Building this battery project supports the Army’s focus on energy resiliency. This project, with its technology and cost savings, could become a model for cities facing an uncertain energy future.

A “switch-throwing” ceremony for the BESS was held on Wednesday, January 9, 2019 at Minick Substation at Fort Carson, Colorado. This time-lapse video condenses 60 days of construction and only hints at the complexity of the undertaking.

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Natural (i.e., nature-based) infrastructure entails the use of natural systems such as land, forests, and wetlands to advance coastal protection and restoration efforts in a manner that is both cost-effective and ecologically beneficial. Examples include the beneficial re-use of dredged material to rebuild shorelines, the construction of “living shorelines,” and the placement of oyster reefs – all of which can protect coastlines while advancing ecological health.

It’s rare to find a solution in civil engineering so straightforward that the concept immediately starts the mind racing. Even those who have no formal training in the area can conjure up projects worthy of consideration in their community, home state, and home country. As a founding member of the Natural Infrastructure Initiative (NII), a coalition of public, private, and non-governmental groups promoting natural infrastructure, the aforementioned projects are exactly what we had in mind. The group includes The Nature Conservancy, ArchTam, Caterpillar, and Great Lakes Dredge and Dock, with the U.S Army Corps of Engineers as an active and valued partner.

Natural infrastructure solutions are a win–win to assist coastal and riverine jurisdictions as they respond to, and plan for, natural and human-induced disasters. Among others, this includes extreme weather events, storm surges, sea level rise, land subsidence, and coastal flooding. For example, during Hurricane Sandy, coastal wetlands helped prevent an estimated $625 million in damages, based on insurance industry models/tools used to quantify the economic benefits¹.

Natural infrastructure represents a progression in our thinking about coastal protection and restoration. Traditional approaches to “hardening” our shorelines, for example, may have positive economic impacts by protecting vulnerable coastal assets, but they can also have adverse ecological and social impacts by compromising aquatic habitat and separating residents from the resource. For these reasons, it’s important to promote natural infrastructure solutions as options when projects are in the initial planning stages. For many projects in this arena, costs versus benefits are often more short-sighted than the longer-term benefits of natural infrastructure. While it isn’t suggested that natural infrastructure solutions replace traditional approaches to coastal protection and restoration, it’s important to keep in mind that natural infrastructure solutions can and should be equally and objectively considered when project alternatives are examined. Given that more than $69 trillion in economic infrastructure development is projected through 20351, it’s easy to see why promoting the full and objective consideration of natural infrastructure alternatives is important to engage stakeholders, scientists, engineers and communities in the conversation about major investments.

ArchTam and other NII members are advancing natural infrastructure solutions through project design and implementation, promoting pilot programs, advocating for legislative language and removal of regulatory/policy barriers through testimony on Capitol Hill, and pursuing development of consistent evaluation criteria to assess both the feasibility and performance of natural infrastructure solutions.

Stay tuned for a follow-up blog post that will highlight more of our natural infrastructure projects.

¹Dr. Todd S. Bridges, USACE Senior Research Scientist. 2019. Natural Infrastructure: A Smart Investment.

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Our changing climate is placing billions of people and assets throughout the world at risk. The wellbeing of those in harm’s way will be determined by our ability to adapt and build resilient infrastructure.

Resilience speaks to the ability of a community, organization, or system to absorb or quickly recover from acute shocks and chronic stresses. To assess and enhance resilience, we must understand the impact of a risk, how to mitigate it, how and when to transfer the risk, and we need to understand which risks we must accept.

As our climate continues to change, severe storms will become more frequent and powerful, sea levels will continue to rise and the risk associated with flooding will continue to increase. Flooding is the most frequent severe weather threat and the costliest natural disaster facing our nation. As we encounter more intense storms and grapple with rising sea levels, our cities and their infrastructure grow more and more vulnerable. Our infrastructure needs to be strengthened and adapted to meet the increased pressure on our systems.

Unfortunately, in today’s market, resiliency follows recovery when it should be the other way around. The Rebuild By Design process that followed Superstorm Sandy in the Northeast has helped spawn a new way of thinking in the post-disaster recovery process, and while federal funding sources for post-disaster areas allow our clients to rebuild in a smarter, more resilient fashion, we need to find ways to fund resiliency projects ahead of disasters. Grants, stormwater utilities or “rain taxes”, and public, private partnerships can help our clients bridge their funding gaps and assess the costs and benefits of potential resiliency projects using our “triple bottom line” approach. This approach has proven to be an effective, innovative strategy for assessing the social, environmental and financial realities of their resiliency projects.

At ArchTam, we strive to foster safe, secure and resilient infrastructure through collaborative engagement among our public and private sector partners, developing customized solutions to meet our client’s needs. Infrastructure resilience as more than just an operational cost; it is a vital investment that begins as a concept and continues through the lifecycle of the structure or system, following the design and build.

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With increasing power demands and expanding electrification of transportation and other sectors, the amount of power used and produced on various parts of the grid is fluctuating at levels never seen before. Can we adapt and upgrade the grid to include the new capabilities needed to adjust to climate change while continuing to provide the reliable and affordable power we need? There are no easy answers – but there are solutions.

The electric grid was complex when built and it is getting even more complex as we add electrical loads and generation in places not anticipated in the original grid designs. Across the country, homes and businesses that once only consumed electricity are now producing it with the help of solar panels, microturbines, combined heat and power, as well as other sources that now make it possible to reverse the power flow. We can respond to this trend by delivering a series of resources.

To start, implementing a high-speed communications infrastructure that connects advanced sensors will ensure that all data are available and analyzed when needed, providing grid operators with greater visibility and abilities to react. Flexible resources, like smart inverters, can preserve reliability with higher levels of solar photovoltaics, and energy storage can deliver power when clouds are overhead. Grid connected devices like smart thermostats can respond to price signals and microgrids can help maintain the stability of the entire grid.

A smarter electric grid greatly enhances the ability of energy users to be more efficient and/or to shift their use to times that are the most convenient and economically advantageous for them. Grid operators can send users the price signals needed to make that happen.

This brings us to the discussion of how grids are planned. Adapting to these changes requires our grid planners to think in new ways. Managing this future smart grid will necessitate investment in technologies as well as improve coordination between regional transmission organizations, such as Pennsylvania-Maryland-New Jersey Interconnection LLC (PJM), Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), independent system operators, such as NY Independent System Operator (NY ISO) and local electric distribution companies. We will also need additional transmission lines to bring renewably sourced power from resource rich areas and increase renewables penetration, again in cooperation among grid planners at the local, regional and national levels.

Accomplishing this demands a mechanism to recognize the value of these resources and capabilities to develop and design advanced solutions for a smarter, greener energy future. ArchTam is working with grid operators across the country to value the social, economic and environmental benefits of the smarter electric grid.

By the end of the century, global energy generation will have to increase significantly to accommodate universal economic and population growth. Energy generation accounts for around 60 percent of global greenhouse gases emissions and electricity demand alone is expected to triple by 2040. Proactive measures need to be taken today to drive this energy transition while continuing to provide reliable and affordable power required to build for tomorrow.

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