Water. Is there anything more fundamental to sustaining life on this planet? Human survival, our livelihoods, and nearly all modes of economic production depend directly upon water. However, in spite of the fact that we inhabit a water planet, fresh water is not an abundant resource the world over. Less than 3% of the water on the planet is fresh water. Over 80% of this fresh water is locked away in glaciers and ice sheets and therefore not readily...

This weekend seemed to be a pretty tough weekend in the media for the infrastructure here in the U.S., or more specifically, our national will to improve and sustain our infrastructure. The first blow was delivered when, on Saturday morning, I read a short article by Nathan Thornburgh in the July 14, 2008 issue of Time Magazine, Nation Building . The focus of the article is the lack of progress in the rebuilding of ground zero where, now seven years...

I assume you have all read about the announcement by Bentley and Autodesk regarding the agreement to expand the interoperability between the software applications provided by the two companies. If you've been on vacation or otherwise "disconnected," you can read about it here . I am quite certain that there will be (in fact, there has been already) speculation -- informed and otherwise -- regarding why Autodesk agreed to this, why Bentley...

It's probably obvious by now that I've been thinking a lot about topics like sustainability, the role of infrastructure in society, and climate change for a while now. Along the way, I've read a bunch of books on these and other topics. I'll have to admit, I didn't get through all of them -- some were pretty dry and uninteresting and some mainly pointed out the problems without offering much in the way of solutions. On the other hand, I did read some...

It's been a little more than a week since our keynote sessions at the 2008 BE Conference in Baltimore -- plenty of time to decompress and reflect. I've had the opportunity to speak to a number of people regarding my keynote on Sustaining Infrastructure , so I thought it would be useful to respond to some of the comments I've heard or read as well as re-emphasize some of the points I was attempting to make. Sustaining Infrastructure vs. Green One common...

In the aftermath of this week's tragedy in Minneapolis, a lot of attention is focused on the nation's infrastructure. As is all too often the case, it takes a catostrophic event to shed light and bring attention to important -- often life and death -- issues. In this case, most of the attention is focused on the 600,000 bridges in the U.S. But our attention can't be limited only to bridges. The state of infrastructure as a whole in the U.S. and in...

Read Any Good Mission Statements Lately? I've had the opportunity to read quite a few corporate mission statements during my career. To be honest, I haven't found many to be very inspiring. Quite a sound as if they've been written by a committee, careful not to offend, limit, or exclude anyone. I've seen many where you wouldn't know what the company actually does unless you already knew about the company -- "become the leading company in this...