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Building Equity into the
Design Process
Design Development
During the Design Development the engineer should ensure:
(1) An inclusive Stakeholder engagement practice
As the design is developing, it becomes critical that engagement and feedback is sought out from the various stakeholders. This ensures that the resultant design meets the needs for whom you are design with.
"If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be."
MAYA ANGELOU
This can begin by ensuring the design team uses different communication styles (auditory, visual, tactile) when working with or eliciting feedback from all people.
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Schematic design helps communicate drafts of design to a broader non-technical audience. For visually impaired people, touch based displays are a developing technology that one can be used to make design work more accessible.
Watch the video to see what one aspect of inclusive engagement or design might look like.
Additionally, as the design gets further along in development it is critical for their to be iterative engagement and approval with the community during, and within, each of the project milestones. Some things to recognize and consider are:
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How feedback on developing designs provides opportunities for community engagement.
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The creation of metrics of success for the project will allow for a quantification of potential social, economic and environmental impacts.
(2) Finalized Design Details
The design development is concluded with the creation of project plan documents, their corresponding technical specifications and a finalized budget.
"Rule of law, access to justice, and financial transparency happen by design, not accident."
WINNIE BYANYIMA
Back to Hoo City
Which design framework would you recommend and why?
In engineering design, what does transparency mean to you?
What are some steps to creating a barrier-free workplace for all people
PIEDMONT ENGINEERING SERVICES
During the design development, your team, comprised predominantly of planners, engineers, and scientists, was able to focus on factors that influence the design of the highway (e.g. location, terrain and soil properties, drainage capabilities, traffic volume, the ratio of cars to trucks and buses, possible future development in the area, and effects on the environment or nearby residents).
It became clear to you, and the other employees at Wahoo Engineering Group that the scope of the Hoo City infrastructure project would require additions to the, already growing, team. Since this was your first management position, you were relatively unfamiliar with how companies strategize for hiring employees. With that said, you are aware that the common aspects of the engineering design environment can present barriers for people to thrive. Excluding people from the opportunity to take roles in the company. You look to take steps that will create a barrier-free work environment within your department of design development.
You looked to update the nature of work at Wahoo Engineering Group with the goal barrier-free job roles. These roles would be transformations of existing duties and responsibilities that, could potentially, be drawn from a number of existing job descriptions. In order to create an inclusive workplace that centers flexibility and customization, you reached out to a number of experts and organizations for their recommendations. This was done collaboratively through extensive dialogue with your current co-workers. This ensures each employee was able to share how their abilities could be best used in the context of their work at Wahoo Engineering Group.
You should be partaking in a collaborative process to ensure your workplace is universally designed for all people. Examples of steps you might take with your coworkers:
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Lighting, such that it is individually controllable, so that individuals can set lighting to levels that work best for them.
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Noise, such as ensuring there are spaces that are designed for different levels of noise, so that people find what works best for them.
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Physical accessibility, such as designing the space without steps and have doors that automatically open.
What are some steps to creating a barrier free workplace for all people?
I would recommend >>
The design development process was challenging, but resulted in greatly improved design. Intensive meetings with the various stakeholders of the project resulted in a comprehensive plan for a highway with priority lanes for carpooling and enhancements to public transit.
Transit stations will also be incorporated at overpasses, allowing for local residents to quickly gain access to the new highway even without a vehicle of their own.
This process was not without controversy. SDOT initially wanted to create a tollway for the proposed highway in order to pay for the road’s maintenance.
The Community that would have been most impacted by the tollway organized a protest to oppose it. They highlighted the inequitable cost the tolls would place on them simply because the highway was routed around them.
After witnessing this pushback from the diverse coalition of citizens, you connected members of the community with SDOT for open dialogue. Due to the grassroots organizing, the State decided to alternatively fund maintenance on the new highway by increasing taxes on new development spurred by Cumulus Co.
This is just one of the many iterations of the design you will experience while working on this project.
The stakeholders of the project and your team would like to see the highway get a sustainable certification. Your firm has never gone through this process before and have asked you to scout out what design framework would work best for this project.
Take some time and look over the Greenroads Rating System and the Envision Rating System.
Greenroads is comprised of 61 credits, each having a point value. The more points, the higher the certification level. The certification levels are Bronze (40 points), Silver (50 points), Gold (60 points), and Evergreen (80 points). The framework challenges teams to go above and beyond minimum environmental, social, and economic performance measures and evaluates projects by independent, expert, third-party review.
Greenroads
Project credits: Required and carry no point value, due to being a baseline for a “green” project. They span all parts of a project lifecycle from early environmental planning, social and community decision-making, economic considerations, construction planning and operational management.
Description of credits
Number of credits
Mandatory
Voluntary
Bonus
Voluntary credits: Teams elect which ones to pursue. These credits track a variety of economic, social and environmental measures against specific performance targets and thresholds that are designed to encourage behaviors and performance above and beyond minimum compliance.
Extra Credit: Additional credits recognize things like prioritization of local values, the number of accredited and educated professionals on the team, enhanced performance beyond minimums in the Core Credits and innovative ideas.
12 (do not earn points)
Environment & Water
(10 credits and up to 30 points)
Construction Activities
(11 credits and up to 20 points)
Materials & Design
(6 credits and up to 24 points)
Utilities & Controls
(8 credits and up to 20 points)
Access & Livability
(10 credits and up to 21 points)
4 (up to 15 points)
Example: City Of Bothell – Downtown Revitalization Plan - (1) Greenroads Success Story: SR 527 Multiway Boulevard. (2) Walkable Washington Case Study
Envision
Envision includes 64 credits, organized around five categories. Envision supports higher performance through sustainable choices in infrastructure development. The framework provides a flexible criteria and performance objectives to aid decision makers and project teams identify sustainable approaches during planning, design and construction that continue throughout the project’s life-cycle.
Description of credits
Credits
13
10
Quality of Life: Addresses a project’s impact on host and affected communities, from the health and wellbeing of individuals to the wellbeing of larger social fabric as a whole. Quality of Life focuses on assessing whether infrastructure projects align with community goals, are incorporated into existing community networks, and will benefit the community in the long term.
Leadership: Successful sustainable projects require a new way of thinking about how projects are developed and delivered. Project teams are most successful if they communicate and collaborate early on, involve a wide variety of people in creating ideas for the project, and understand the long-term, holistic view of the project and its life cycle.
14
15
Example: I-4 Improvements - Florida Department Of Transportation’s I-4 Ultimate P3 Improvement Project Earns Envision Platinum Sustainable Infrastructure Rating (2017)
Resource Allocation: Resources are the assets that are needed to build infrastructure and keep it running. It concerns itself with the quantity, source, and characteristics of these resources and their impacts on the overall sustainability of the project.
Natural World: Infrastructure projects have an impact on the natural world around them, including habitats, species, and nonliving natural systems. The natural systems around us perform critical functions called ecosystem services that provide us with clean air, clean water, healthy food, and hazard mitigation. The way a project is located within theses systems and the new elements they may introduce to a system and create unwanted impacts on these ecosystem services.
Climate and Resilience: The scope of Climate and Resilience is two-fold: minimizing emissions that may contribute to climate change and other short-and-long-term risks, and ensuring that infrastructure projects are resilient. In order to be resilient, infrastructure must be informed, resourceful, robust, redundant flexible, integrated, and inclusive.
8
Which design framework would
you recommend and why?
"Design Thinking Workshop" by Bytemarks is licensed under CC BY 2.0
With a design agreed upon by all parties, Wahoo Engineering Group now enters the phase where the design is fully detailed in schematics. You make the final renderings and project details accessible online and are preparing to present the final design at the upcoming town hall meeting. As the design is complete, your organization is working on creating the bid package to be sent out by SDOT. The bidding process involves the owner hiring a general contracting firm to implement the design.