From Transcontinental Railroad to Information Superhighway
New technologies encourage "high-touch"
By Jeff Crooke

The fundamentals of economics, politics, and engineering have changed little over the past century and a half, but the tools with which engineers now work have improved beyond all expectation. Beyond some of the hype naturally surrounding the exponential growth of these technologies, they are stretching the traditional roles of engineers in new directions, as well as saving clients time and money. To demonstrate how such tools have begun to affect those roles, one only needs to look back to one of the major civil engineering feats of a different era.

Transcontinental Railroad Revisited
When the last spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, on 10 May 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was the civil engineering accomplishment of the century. The breadth of the United States could be crossed in 6 days, instead of 6 months.

As early as the 1830s, the notion of a transcontinental railroad had surfaced; in the 1850s Congress had funded survey teams, but the task of surveying a route was truly daunting. Teams had to deal with difficult passes through the Sierra Nevadas and less difficult passes through the Rockies. Political pressures also existed. Three routes had been proposed at one time, each with its own vested economic interests, each with its own merits and faults.

Civil engineer Theodore Judah, one of those credited with pushing the railroad through, framed the problems succinctly in his Practical Plan For Building The Pacific Railroad in 1857: "Why is it, if this vast amount has been raised to build our Railroads, that the same course cannot be adopted to procure the money for construction of the Pacific Railroad? Simply because, as yet, no survey has been made upon which capitalists can base their calculations, they do not know that a line is wholly practicable upon any route.

"When a Boston capitalist is invited to invest in a Railroad project, it is not considered sufficient to tell him that somebody has rode over the ground on horseback and pronounced it practicable. His inquiries are somewhat more to the point. He wishes to know the length of your road. He says, 'let me see your map and profile, that I may judge of it alignment and grades. How many cubic yards of the various kinds of excavation and embankment have you, and upon what sections? Have you any tunnels, and what are their circumstances? How many bridges, river crossings, culverts, and what kind of foundations? Where is the estimate of the cost of your road, and let me see its details? What will be its effect upon travel and trade? What is its business and revenue? All this I require to know, in order to judge if my investment is likely to prove a profitable one.'

"It will be remembered that we start with these grounds assumed: that the Pacific Railroad must be built with private capital. This can only be had by inspiring the capitalist with confidence."

Information Age Engineering
Today, engineers could concurrently analyze the three proposed routes for the Railway using digital mapping, satellite imagery, and automated Earthwork calculation software. Fewer people would be required for the effort, taking far less time for three routes than Judah proposed for his single route. Additionally, simulations of the routes, as well as trade along the routes could be generated and used to inspire confidence in the private investors for whom Judah was searching.

Howard Boggess is the creative services director for Anderson & Associates (A&A), an engineering firm centered in Blacksburg, Virginia. "Because we have taken a digital approach throughout the design process, we produce a single set of design documents that can be used for multiple purposes and in multiple media types," explains Boggess. "The same drawing file can be used for the initial site planning, the site engineering, the landscape design, etc. When the drawing file is created with 3D information, it can also be used for site models and simulations. We can seamlessly include architectural plans into the site drawing. The drawings can be modified concurrently, speeding the work flow, resulting in faster project completion and can reduce costs."

Such an approach also enables engineers to demonstrate preparation for a project before they have even acquired it. Mike Russell, A&A project manager for the Route 58 highway improvement project running along some difficult terrain in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, explains.

"Several computer renderings and even an animation [were developed] for use in our interview with the Virginia Department of Transportation. If nothing else, we hope this indicated to the selection committee our understanding of the issues at hand, what the end result would look like, and also gave them an example of our capabilities in this arena.

"We have developed some tools that are definitely related to GIS for use in these projects. For instance, we have an application that was written to assist the user in the placement of drainage items. The application includes a dialog box that allows the user to pick a specific cell and then keeps track of the item in a database-kind of a mini-GIS."

Increasing efficiency, providing a higher quality product to the client, and helping the public more easily interpret the project define what A&A calls a "high-tech, high touch" approach to engineering. It is necessary for engineers to recognize the mutually beneficial effects a technology such as a GIS can have for both themselves, the industry, and the client. GIS specialties such as installing systems for the use of local governments, as well as private citizenry, benefit everyone involved.

In Montgomery County, Virginia, A&A has worked closely with the local government to install an Internet-based GIS, increasing ease of access to land information. This Internet Parcel Look-up System, called iPLUS, has placed many of Montgomery County's real estate records on the Web since September 1998. The resulting ease of access to data such as parcels, roads, structures, ownership data, USGS quad images, and streams has attracted a wide range of users. The general public, attorneys, real estate agents, surveyors, and county planning staff use the site daily. Web tracking software has shown that the number of 'hits' on the county's iPLUS site has steadily increased. In March alone, there were nearly 1,200 visits to the site located at www.andassoc.com/gismaps/Montgomery/MCPlus.html

Real estate agents use the system to enhance the packet of marketing information they obtain for each of their prospects. Surveyors use it daily to aid in their deed research before beginning new projects. County administrators are particularly excited about the potential uses for iPLUS, as more overlays are added to the system, providing greater and specialized levels of detail.

Joe Powers, head of the Montgomery County Planning Department, anticipates more use by his department when, in the near future, zoning information is a part of the system. "Currently we have to go through a lot of paper to get zoning information or building permit information." He looks forward to having that information a click away.

New Technologies, New Engineers, New Millennium
The current evolution of engineering firms into information brokering is a natural outgrowth of GIS and other technologies. The direction of firms beyond mere brokerage, however, will depend upon incentives for those firms to experiment in some uncharted territories.

Concerns about privacy have already been raised about iPLUS, but because the information was already available to anyone with the will to drive to the county courthouse, the benefits outweighed the risks. Making public information more accessible ensures greater accountability in local governments with the potential to save taxpayers time and money. On more traditional civil engineering projects like Route 58, the general public can have confidence in the direction of a vision they can actually see and share.

"I see GIS becoming the way our clients operate in terms of becoming dependent on having direct and quick access to intelligent mapping," says Brandon Moore, GIS manager for A&A. "GIS will be used as a tool as easily as E-mail and word processors are used, especially for government departments that make decisions based on location such as water and sewer, tax parcels, zoning, planning, and addressing."

As the millennium approaches, it is likely that better civil engineering firms will take advantage of GIS and related technologies, not simply for their own advantage but to educate their clients about the engineering process. In essence, firms are spanning the distance between engineers and their clients, a mental distance which, until recently, had proven almost as vast as the physical distance covered by the Transcontinental Railroad. Empowering clients to make active partners in developing a vision for a county, a town, a region: that may well be the distinction between a bygone era dominated by hands-on and a new era of high tech, high-touch.

Jeff Crooke is a freelance writer living in Blacksburg, Virginia. He can be reached at 540-961-2514, or via E-mail at [email protected] Anderson & Associates, Inc., is a professional design services firm offering civil, transportation, and environmental engineering, surveying, planning, landscape architecture, GIS, simulations, animations, information technology services, and Web-site development. For more information, see their Web-site at www.andassoc.com

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