Am. Society of Civil Engineers

Diversity by design; guide to fostering diversity in the civil engineering workforce.

A female professional engineer enumerates the rationale for diversity being crucial to the profession in the global marketplace. This report presents strategies learned from interviews on removing obstacles to and fostering diversity in the workplace, e.g., accommodations for disabled engineers, mentoring, endorsement by senior management, diversity training pitfalls to avoid, and tips for cross-cultural communication. The guide includes a list of organizations supporting diversity in engineering, and appended information on outreach efforts and participating organizations, interviewees, and advisors for this project. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Infrastructure reporting and asset management; best practices and opportunities.

This collection of 23 papers delineates the ways engineers can improve their data collection and reporting to ensure public structures receive appropriate attention. The papers, some of which include case studies, give an historical perspective on infrastructure reporting and then cover public water enterprise financial reporting practices, impediments to public sector implementation of asset management in the US, Alberta's approach to managing provincial infrastructure, changing municipal policy in support of infrastructure, and community engagement in Oregon. Instructions on preparing reports cover rating management performance, background preparation for reports, communicating the results of integrated asset management, data on roads, reporting to small and rural local governments, taking a clinical approach, standardized risk analysis, mission dependency indices, market-based valuation and building metrics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)