Parsons-Brinckerhoff chairman Bob Prieto began at the firm in 1983. With a background in nuclear engineering and a visionary’s eye toward the future, he set his sights on growing the company and diversifying its efforts. “It was apparent when I joined that the firm needed to grow and diversify to survive. In 1983, 97% of our business was in transportation, in design work, in the United States and at the mercy of a few clients and programs. A downturn could have had a severe impact.”
With a renewed focus on strategic planning, Parsons-Brinckerhoff (P-B) cast a wider net in the global marketplace, applying the corporate philosophy in a broader sense. Prieto contends that by taking a longer view, systems will be designed with enough variable flexibility. “If I have a hobbyhorse, it is the notion that infrastructure planning and development need to be more closely linked. You have the developers in one room and they figure out what they want to build and the infrastructure guys in another room figuring out what they want. With a little integrated planning they might actually build something better. There’s a great example of this kind of planning with the Big Dig in Boston. When first planned in the 1970s, it was perceived as a highway project, but that’s not what it’s about anymore. Somewhere along the line it became about taking the infrastructure of one of the oldest cities in the United States and retooling it to meet the 21st century.”
Pointing out that ongoing improvements to the transit, water and waste systems in Boston have also been underway, Prieto sees this project as a model for the future. “Now, when you start to look at some of the other trends in terms of integration of development and infrastructure sustainability, you’re starting to see recognition of this importance. In my view, 10 years from now Boston will look like a wonderful place and 20 years from now historians will write about how far sighted somebody was.”
One venue where Prieto’s visions are being applied is through his role as co-chair of New York City’s Infrastructure Task Force, which was formed following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “Underground infrastructure in cities is really the arteries, the blood vessels, the nerve system. It’s a tremendous impact when you consider that the daily commuting patterns of 335,000 people were disrupted by the attacks. It’s hard to explain that you’ve dislocated 10 times as many passengers as most new start transit systems would hope to see, but that’s what we did,” he explained. “In the midst of all this is the opportunity to create a more integrated underground transportation complex in lower Manhattan. Factor Homeland Security into this and we are really looking at defining and planning around critical infrastructure.” ‘Critical infrastructure’ he defines as systems, the destruction of which results in unacceptable loss of life, unacceptable economic consequences, or degradation of security.
In assessing vulnerability, Prieto has developed what he calls the “Three Rs”. The first is Resist; to design to resist attack or catastrophic failure. The second is the need to Respond if the resistance has failed. Finally, if the resistance has been overwhelmed and the response could not stop the loss of critical infrastructure, the third R is all that is left – Recover.
"What happened here in New York City is an example of just how linked are infrastructure and development. When those big towers came down they destroyed as much infrastructure as the buildings themselves and knocked out vital transportation core capacity. A credit to the overall transportation system was that it had enough redundancy, resiliency and flexibility to reconfigure itself and sustain the flow of New York’s commuters."
“Establishing a formal protocol for responding to disaster ” |
Changing capacity demands and the changing nature of threats with some situations unable to be fully anticipated, makes strategic planning the more challenging. Prieto notes that while you can’t protect everything from destruction, recovery needs can and should be projected. "Training operators to respond to critical situations is as important as what you design, construct and maintain. Along with constructability and maintainability reviews, we must also factor operations back into the planning stages."
These questions become even more pressing in a time of crisis. "There was no protocol for an engineering emergency response to the September 11th situation and a number of us in the industry are discussing a formal disaster response protocol,” Prieto said.
Bringing in a historical perspective, the chairman of P-B sees lessons in the past. “If you go back to the true emergence of engineering, it goes back to the Renaissance period when the engineer was viewed as a master builder looking at what needed to be done from a systemic standpoint,” Prieto reflected. “What I think has happened to our profession over the years is that the degree of specialization we insist on causes us to lose sight of the systems perspective.
As individual cities take on the task of urban planning for an unknown future, Prieto believes the federal government is also looking to the future. “It bodes well for the tunneling industry that cities are looking at core underground capacity for power, water and transport as essential,” Prieto said, “and new spending, I think, will particularly be aimed at critical transportation infrastructure. That’s one thrust we’ll call economic stimulus. The second is aviation security, which will be addressed because it’s vital to the country. A third piece which I think the jury is still out on is going to be the fact that rail ridership has picked up substantially since 9/11 and we discovered what we already knew: that we don’t have an inter-city rail system. There’s $12 billion proposed to improve rail service nationwide and it will be very interesting if that $12 billion passes. It will be the first time in a long while that this country has invested in something other than highways for connecting its cities.”
So, while guiding his company through the rapidly evolving global marketplace, Prieto keeps one ear to the ground and one eye on the horizon. His half-historical, half-futuristic perspective is no longer revolution, just evolution. “I think the notion of the urban designer has become acceptable again. Urban planning got misguided, it became social planning. I think it’s now coming back. I think in the developing part of the world they reach a stage where they’re ready to undertake the next great thing, that next great city and they’re not doing it haphazardly. If you look at the redevelopment that’s happening you see a broader look at the bigger picture. I think you saw that with the transit system in Atlanta, the extensions on the transit systems in San Francisco and the kinds of things Seattle is trying to do in terms of looking at its city more holistically,” Prieto explained. “So there’s an urban planning dimension and sustainable development. People are starting to realize it’s not just what you build, it’s how you build it, and how you build it for renewal.”