An interview with Connie Edmonston, parks and recreation director for Fayetteville, Ark.
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The MS/MT350 street sweeper is a heavy-duty machine mounted on a commercially available truck chassis. With dual steering controls and operating positions, it offers a high degree of maneuverability.
After several years of planning, the public works project is finally approved. The rush begins to get permits in place and procure the necessary support to move the project along. The team makes a final check of the drawings and is ready to break ground. Then at the project kick-off meeting...
The growing emphasis on point source pollution control has focused increasing attention on stormwater runoff. As a result, public works directors all over the country are now addressing the issue, some more eagerly than others. One of the most ardent clean water proponents in northern Illinois is...
By industry association figures, it costs $10,000 to $12,000 per space to build a new multi-level garage. Even more staggering is the estimated annual cost of $650 per space to simply operate the structure, including lighting, cleaning, employees, elevators, and gate equipment.
There are ways to reduce the amount of waste that goes into a landfill. And with the number of landfills decreasing, public works directors should be looking for ways to decrease the amount of solid waste that goes into these landfills. One way is to divert waste into other streams.
Fortunately, the federal government realizes that local agencies need help to reduce crashes in their jurisdictions. Through the efforts of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), many tools and programs have been developed to provide guidance to local agencies, including the Local Technical...
In 2000. Mason City, Iowa, began planning an upgrade of its water treatment system in order to meet the regulations established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Final Radionuclide Rule. Until the new standard became effective on Dec. 8, 2003, the city's treatment for drinking water had...
Chicago's Millennium Park is a different sort of public works project. Though the park is now owned and operated by the city, many of the attractions were paid for by private donations—some of them in the multimillion-dollar range. And the park is really five separate structures—two underground...
Landscape and park designers often run into strange problems when designing into an existing space. For Paul W. Bouchard, the problem was hawthorn trees. “The preservation of existing trees was the biggest challenge concerning the orientation and layout of the project, which includes the splash pad...
In business today outsourcing is common; public works departments are no different. No department by itself can handle all of the things that are thrown at it—from planning new parks to rebuilding outdated parking facilities to maintaining water treatment plants.
In-house training has proven to be the answer for public works departments that have difficulty finding qualified equipment operators and truck drivers.
All levels of government in the United States are facing a new era of capital financing and infrastructure management. In recent years, many revenue sources have diminished while others have evaporated entirely.
Parcel data, regional and community maps, facility as-builts, building permits, and other collected data are the longstanding capital of public works departments. Systems to manage and better analyze these pieces of information, however, have advanced with technology, and public agencies need to be...
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Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., has introduced legislation to increase the federal government's role in developing desalination plants.
In the National Engineers Week Future City competition, students—under the guidance of a teacher and engineer mentor—design a city on a computer using SimCity 3000, build a 3-D model, write an essay, and create an oral presentation. Regional winners receive all-expense-paid trips to the national...
The National Transportation Operations Coalition has released the National Traffic Signal Report Card, which gave traffic signal operations a score of D-.
The
, released by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), shows a dramatic increase in traffic congestion over the past two decades. Pete Ruane, president of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), points the finger squarely at government.
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Cutting electricity costs; detention pond design seminar; fund seeks to help rural projects; bipartisan group launches e-waste group; work-truck resource; highway groups product 'green' forum; aluminum can recycling increases.
Safe drinking water plants should be at the top of the list for public works professionals. Adding security measures to a treatment system should be paramount.