MTC News: 2001

Major Accomplishments During Year Two (2001)

Education and Human Capital Development

• Transportation Faculty Expands at UMC
• Expanding Educational Opportunities for Students

Outreach and Technology Transfer Activities

• Organizing and Sponsoring the Fourth Annual National Asset Management Workshop
• Organizing the First Ever National Bridge Live Load Testing and Rating Workshop
• Planning GASB 34 Short Courses for Local Officials
• Improving Access to Transportation Technology Information
• Building a National Reputation in Transportation Asset Management Through Outreach

Research Projects

Education and Human Capital Development

Transportation Faculty Expands at UMC

The University of Missouri–Columbia added two new faculty members in transportation beginning with the 2001 fall semester. They are Dr. Cindy Wilson Orndoff (asset management) and Dr. Carlos Sun (ITS/traffic). At the same time, UMC’s Dr. Kristen Sanford Bernhardt, who was very active in MTC programs and asset management research, accepted a faculty position in transportation at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Faculty from three other colleges at UMC, as well as the Truman School of Public Affairs, are now involved in transportation research and studies. The MTC’s visibility and funding resources served as a catalyst for this expansion.

A similar broadening of transportation-involved faculty is now occurring at both Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. Structural and construction engineering faculty and students at Iowa State are becoming much more active in MTC programs, as are faculty, staff, and students from the business school at UNI.

Expanding Educational Opportunities for Students

One major emphasis area of the the MTC is developing the human capital needed by transportation organizations located in and around Region 7. As such, MTC continues to stress improving educational opportunities for its students including work opportunities on research projects, job placement efforts, and travel to national conferences. In terms of travel, a large contingent of more than 20 students from three MTC member universities (ISU, UNI, and UMC) was able to attend the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in Washington, D.C., in January 2001.

Plans are being made to once again have a large number of students from at least two of the MTC member schools (ISU and UMC) attend the TRB Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., in January 2002. Iowa State is planning to send over 15 students, and UMC plans on six, giving the MTC schools and their students tremendous exposure and learning opportunities. In addition, Iowa State will be making an effort to send a much larger contingent of faculty members to the TRB Annual Meeting than in previous years.

Outreach and Technology Transfer Activities

Organizing and Sponsoring the Fourth Annual National Asset Management Workshop

The MTC worked with the Midwestern Regional University Transportation Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to co-host the Fourth Annual National Asset Management Workshop held in Madison on September 23–25, 2001. Attendance at the workshop was high, even though it was held two weeks after the tragic events of September 11. About 250 persons from around the United States and Canada participated in the workshop, which was aimed at helping organizations take the next steps toward implementing asset management. Both David Plazak from ISU and Charlie Nemmers from UMC served on the planning committee for the conference and moderated sessions. Faculty, staff, and students from four of the MTC schools (ISU, UMC, UMKC, and UNI) attended or presented at the conference. MTC participants played important and visible roles throughout the three-day workshop.

Some of the MTC faculty, staff, and student presentations and duties at the workshop included

• Moderator for GASB 34 and Valuation Issues Session, David Plazak, ISU
• Moderator for Planning and Implementing an Asset Management Program Session, Charles Nemmers, UMC
• Moderator for Integrating and Using Data Session, Cynthia Wilson Orndorf, UMC
• “Evaluating Remotely-Sensed Images for Use in Inventorying Roadway Features”, Shauna Hallmark, ISU
• “Building an Asset Management Mindset”, Charles Nemmers, UMC
• “Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining to Expand the Use of Pavement Management Data”, poster by Vanessa Amado Gonzalez, UMC
• “Automated Asset Data Collection and Integration”, Omar Smadi, ISU
• “Jackson County Asset Management: A Success Story”, Ali Roohanirad, UMKC
• “Educating Students to Manage Civil Infrastructure Assets”, Kristen Sanford-Bernhardt, formerly with UMC, now with Lafayette College

Other sponsors of the workshop included the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the American Public Transit Association, the American Public Works Association, the Federal Highway Administration, the National Association of County Engineers, the Transportation Research Board, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Organizing the First Ever National Bridge Live Load Testing and Rating Workshop

The Midwest Transportation Consortium, under the leadership of Associate Director Charles Nemmers, developed and hosted this workshop for bridge owners and managers at all levels of government. The Federal Highway Administration partially funded the workshop. The FHWA approached the MTC and asked for assistance in developing a workshop to bring together practitioners who were looking to improve the management of their bridge assets by using live load testing as part of the condition evaluation process. A videoconference involving FHWA, MTC-affiliated faculty, and state DOT engineers was held to set the objectives, time frame and location for the workshop. The University of Missouri-Columbia took the lead and arranged for the speakers, advertisement, registration, and the administrative details. E-mail was used to keep everyone in the loop. The workshop was held on March 20 and 21, 2001, in Kansas City, Missouri. About 90 people attended and actively participated. The University of Missouri-Columbia brought its field bridge load testing vehicle to the workshop and showcased its start of the art technology. Presenters were from:

• Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center in Washington, D.C.
• FHWA Midwest Recourse Center in Olympia Fields, Illinois
• state DOTs from Alabama, Iowa, Missouri, New York, and Wisconsin
• universities, including Missouri-Columbia, Iowa State and Wyoming
• BDI consulting group from Colorado.

Participants shared information about state of the art technology, and everyone came away from the workshop with a better sense of how they could utilize live load testing as a regular part of a bridge asset management system.

Planning GASB 34 Short Courses for Local Officials

Lincoln University and the University of Missouri-Columbia joined to respond to a request from the Missouri Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) center and the Missouri Division of FHWA to develop a one-day course centered on getting started with GASB 34. Following preliminary meetings and discussions, Dr. Sharon Koechling-Andrae from Lincoln University has taken the lead in developing the program. Dr. Cindy Wilson Orndoff , Charles Nemmers, and Dr. Dana Baker from UMC have joined her in developing and teaching the course. Five presentations are being planned across Missouri. This course will be the first major transportation-related event sponsored by Lincoln University as a result of their involvement in the MTC. Funding for the course comes from FHWA, the Missouri Department of Transportation, the Missouri LTAP Center, and the MTC.

Improving Access to Transportation Technology Information

The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) desired assistance in improving the management of the documents in their transportation library to be of better service to users both internally and externally. As part of the MTC’s mission to extend the transportation umbrella to cover many related disciplines, the engineering school at UMC joined with the school of information science to develop a research proposal for MoDOT that would integrate digital and library technology. The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics has expressed an interest in this initiative. (ISU/CTRE has a smaller version of this concept in place to serve their LTAP clients.) In this case UMC/MTC is treating information as an institutional asset and is looking to improve the management of this asset using a multi-disciplined approach. Graduate students in the College of Information Science are becoming Transportation Scholars through the MTC as a result of this initiative.

Building a National Reputation in Transportation Asset Management Through Outreach

Over the past 12 months, MTC-affiliated faculty and staff have become more and more involved in national-level and regional-level asset management outreach activities. For instance, the University of Missouri–Columbia has been invited to make presentations on asset management and GASB 34 to a wide range of audiences across the country. These included:

• A feature article by MTC Associate Director Charles Nemmers on GASB 34 in the National Association of County Engineers newsletter
• A presentation by Nemmers on asset management to Southeastern Public Works Officials at their annual workshop in Athens, Georgia.
• A presentation on asset management and GASB 34 by Dr. Cindy Wilson Orndoff at the annual meeting of the Missouri Chapter of the American Public Works Association (APWA)
• A presentation by Charles Nemmers on asset management to the annual meeting of the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers.
• A presentation on asset management and GASB 34 by Dr. Kristen Sanford Barnhardt to the annual meeting of the Missouri Highway Engineers’ Association.
• An article on GASB 34 by Charles Nemmers in the Missouri Municipal Review

During the coming year, MTC Associate Director Charles Nemmers is scheduled to make presentations on asset management and GASB 34 at the Midwest Local Roads Conference in Columbus, Ohio; at the Transportation Highway Engineers (THE) Conference in Champaign, Illinois; and at the Purdue Roads School in West Lafayette, Indiana. Together with MTC Director David Plazak, Nemmers is planning a workshop on asset management and GASB 34 for a joint meeting of the Missouri and Iowa associations of regional planning agencies.

MTC representatives Omar Smadi (ISU) and Charles Nemmers (UMC) have participated extensively in the activities of the AASHTO Asset Management Task Force and the TRB Asset Management Task Force. These activities have led directly to opportunities for the MTC schools to join teams to respond to several National Cooperative Highway Research Program requests for proposals on transportation asset management tools and techniques and on GASB 34 implementation.

Research Projects

For the second year of the research effort, projects were sought throughout the region through an RFP process that took place in the late winter and early spring of 2001. In the end, three new projects were approved and funded, subject to availability of adequate and eligible matching funds. Each of the three new projects focuses tightly on asset management and closely related subjects.

Approximately $450,000 in research projects (including matching funds) has been approved during the first two years of the UTC grant. Emphasis has been on funding a relatively small number of focused projects, most of which involve the development of tools and techniques for transportation asset management, which is a particular strength of MTC member schools and faculty. Another $400,000 in research ($200,000 UTC and $200,000 matching funds) is anticipated to be approved in the third year. (more about research projects)