This is the fourth article in the series on U.S. infrastructure, following our bridges article, “A Bridge to Everywhere." The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) assigned the United States’ DAMS infrastructure a grade of “D” on their 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
As discussed in the prior infrastructure article, the average age of a bridge in the United States is now 44 years. The average dam is an older sibling to the typical bridge, at 52 years old. Dams and bridges in the United States share many things in common. Being generous and assuming an average life span in parallel with human years, both these national systems are in the midst of a mid-life crisis.
The most recent article posted on the Operations Channel is titled “A Bridge to Everywhere” and briefly explores some notable facts and figures concerning our nation’s bridges, as part of our ongoing infrastructure series.
One web link embedded in the article, provided by MSNBC, provides each reader the ability to evaluate the bridge status along any route of car travel in the United States. This MSNBC web link has been a favorable feature of our bridges article, and some folks that have read the article suggested I bring that link to light in this Blog section as well.
This is the third article in the series on U.S. infrastructure, following our aviation article, “Three Square Miles of Concrete." The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) assigned the United States’ BRIDGES infrastructure a grade of “C” on their 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
While a “C” denotes just average, the BRIDGES category actually has the highest grade of all fifteen infrastructure categories on the 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
In the United States there are approximately 600,000 bridges which are catalogued and routinely inspected. This is encouraging from the perspective of someone who drives over many bridges during daily life, as most of us do.
I envision that somewhere, in our national array of large facility operators, there must be a seasoned fuel manager, armed with sharp pencils, finely tuned spreadsheets, and two red telephones, each linked to a fuel oil and a natural gas distributor, respectively. I imagine him or her sitting at a dimly lit desk, deep in a warm mechanical room, alongside a huge array of quietly humming dual-fuel boilers. A small computer screen on the desk is scrolling the latest fuel commodity prices.
The traditional concept of “preventive maintenance” applies to maintenance on a piece of machinery based on its quantifiable use, or the passage of a set amount of time. A good common example of preventive maintenance is changing the engine oil in your car every 3,000 miles or 3 months, as many automobile owners’ manuals may suggest. “Predictive maintenance” is an attempt to refine maintenance activities to only those times when they are functionally necessary, based on data collection, analysis, and (negative) trend determination from an established “healthy” base level.
This is the second article in our series on U.S. infrastructure, following the introductory article. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) assigned the United States’ AVIATION infrastructure a grade of “D” on their 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
In today’s news there’s talk of a new federal government jobs stimulation program, with a cost between $75 billion and $125 billion. This new jobs program would be funded in theory from recaptured amounts totaling nearly $200 billion, originally programmed under the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Approximately $50 billion of the new jobs program would be targeted for U.S. infrastructure projects, i.e., roads, bridges, and water projects. As Buildipedia.com’s U.S. infrastructure watchdog, this particular aspect of the news caught my attention Tuesday.
Computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) offer many advantages to a broad group of facilities stakeholders at commercial, industrial, medical, and educational institutions throughout the United States.
Energy savings performance contracts (ESPCs) are an excellent alternative for financing capital improvements to a campus’ mechanical and electrical infrastructure, if certain conditions exist. The contracts are typically awarded to an energy services company (ESCO) that can offer the most efficient new equipment installation within a predetermined payback period.
One of my college friends, Lisa Starling, recently had an audition in Los Angeles for a new role in a daytime soap opera. She had been working in local theater on the East Coast for two years, and was really glad to have this fantastic opportunity in California.
