By Leslie Benson, Marketing Communications Group > With much of the infrastructure across the US nearing the end of its useful life cycle, finding innovative ways to rehabilitate, upgrade, or replace these complex and important parts of our society requires an improved process for planning, financing, designing, building, and operations.
Craig Parks (Transportation), project development director at American Structurepoint, will participate in one of several panel sessions at the invitation-only symposium, “Making the Grade: New Ideas for Innovation in Infrastructure Development,” to be held at the New York Yacht Club in New York City. Sponsored by Autodesk and the Environmental Financial Consulting Group, the purpose of the think tank event with various infrastructure leaders is to produce recommendations for improving how infrastructure should be planned, designed, built, and financed in order to support US economic competiveness and environmental sustainability.
Topics to be discussed at the symposium, which opens with a preliminary program, keynote speech, dinner, and networking on June 5, include:
- Infrastructure development and redevelopment
- A deeper understanding of complex systems
- Change management
- Economic advantages of infrastructure investment
- Sustainability principles
- New technologies
- Business process innovations and the new collaboration models and financing strategies that they enable
Parks’ particular session, which will be held on Thursday, June 6, from 1:30 to 3 p.m., will focus on the theme, “Enabling Ourselves to Meet the Challenge: The Future of Infrastructure Design and Delivery.” Hosted by panel facilitator Timothy McManus, senior vice president and director of global program management and delivery, AECOM, Parks will speak alongside fellow panelist David White, executive vice president and director, Hatch Mott MacDonald Group. Parks and the others will discuss how recent advances in technology for infrastructure visualization, simulation, and analysis can be utilized successfully with collaborative design, project delivery, and construction methods to improve project outcomes, cut project costs, and reduce schedule delays.
The ideas exchanged throughout all the panels and working roundtable discussions during the symposium will eventually be published and disseminated to public and private sector decision‐makers.