Sometimes, it may be easy to overlook the diversity in Municipal Engineering. This diversity can be seen in the aims and scope of this journal, which addresses technical issues, political interface and community participation, the sustainability agenda, cultural context, and the key dimensions of procurement, management and finance. The topics covered in this general issue are a reflection of this diversity; from education for university students and an experimental city exploring sustainability to public participation of major infrastructure projects, building information modelling (BIM), and management of recreational sites.
The first paper by Lima and Ribeiro (2016) talks about the establishment of a ‘living laboratory’ in the form of a sustainable city, modelled on the entire secluded main campus of the Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Brazil, to explore through innovation the improvement of sustainability in energy use, water consumption, mobility and waste management. Objectives in these areas are determined along with a list of performance indicators measuring the progress towards these objectives.
The campus bears some resemblance to an average European city, having small companies and research centres together with student facilities such as restaurants, banks and a sports centre. This living laboratory is aimed to be developed as an example of a sustainable city; improvements in various methods, techniques and infrastructure can be explored through experimentation, benchmarked and spread to the outside world to facilitate the development of sustainable, smart and resilient cities. A number of schemes have been developed through this, including the use of solar energy, bicycle sharing, development of a ‘Ride System’ and water rationing programmes, while opportunity is also given to developing innovative tools, one of which is to facilitate community participation and decision making. One may also note the emergence of positive behaviour to compete for better results among the ‘city’ communities.
Li et al. (2016) deal with public participation in major infrastructure and construction projects. Public participation increases the chance of project success by promoting sound decision making and improving legitimacy, but can also cause delays and cancellation of projects and, in the worst cases, can lead to social disorder and confrontation as large numbers of stakeholders will inevitably create more conflicts of interest. Examples from Hong Kong and China give good support to these arguments.
The issues in public participation are examined mainly in two dimensions; firstly, the different systems that govern Hong Kong and megacities in China, with their own social, economic, cultural and political backgrounds; secondly, the different groups of stakeholders, namely the government, general public, project-affected groups and pressure groups. The paper also touches on a third dimension of the time frame of the project life cycle. A questionnaire survey and validation interviews show clearly, in both dimensions, the differences and similarities in priorities among a list of stakeholder concerns identified in studies worldwide. This study of cities of different systems leads the authors to conclude that a successful participatory mechanism must consider its social, economic, cultural and political contexts. Computer-aided design (CAD) has been the software of use in traditional highway design, but BIM is gaining prominence as exemplified by the UK government mandate, which makes the utilisation of BIM methods compulsory for all government projects within the UK by 2016. Omoregie and Turnbull (2016) present a comparative study of the traditional CAD and BIM methods through a survey of experts who are experienced in their application in the A1 Dishforth-to-Barton highway improvement scheme.
In the literature review, problems and issues are highlighted both in the traditional CAD and BIM approaches, their merits and disadvantages compared on a project life-cycle basis in terms of cost saving, risk control, project delivery, data quality, data sharing and communication and productivity. These are supplemented and checked through analysis of the survey results. The paper articulates well the need for standards, guidance and training if BIM is to be successfully applied. Organisations and firms unsure about whether to use CAD, BIM or a combination of the two should find this paper useful. For those who are optimistic about the use of BIM, the authors' view is that while the benefits of BIM in the long term is undoubted, the traditional method will stay for a long time, particularly for smaller projects, and that BIM and CAD are complementary.
Guneroglu et al. (2016) examine beach management beyond the viewpoint of tourists from a broader angle to include functional, ecological, economical, physical and visual aspects, from which a range of criteria are selected from literature review on coastal management. They are evaluated by an expert panel of three landscape designers, a marine ecologist, a tourism expert and a geomatics engineer, with a view to promote and protect the coastal assets. The study comes out with an ordered list of priorities to the criteria and attention is drawn to various studies that show that differences in geography, culture and socio-economic conditions surrounding the concerned beaches can lead to changes in the order of priorities elsewhere.
The next paper is a discussion by Bather et al. (2016), in which the diversity of the field is reflected in the array of skills required to gain a bachelor degree, which can be considered daunting by the student who wonders how best to prepare themselves for a real job. This should not, in fact, be too much of a cause for concern, and the authors reason that their behaviour towards education and continued professional development in the real world are what the perspective employers are looking for. The paper goes on to explain that the role of university education is not to provide the whole breadth of knowledge encompassed by civil engineering, but rather to lay the foundation for graduates to enter the working world. Bather et al. argue that knowledge and skills will and need to be developed continuously throughout his or her career and that this will lead to a mastering of the art of engineering judgement, a mix of knowledge, experience, skills, communication and clarity of thought.
From all these diverse papers, one important point to take away is perhaps that civil engineers must work not only with a range of disparate subjects, but also in different parts of the world with different geologies and climates, different social and economical environments, different political systems and different cultures and beliefs. Sensitive engineering judgement in these varying circumstances will prove itself a treasured asset to the civil engineer.
