ASCE FIVE-YEAR ROADMAP TO

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Introduction
In Policy Statement 418, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) defines sustainability as

…a set of economic, environmental, and social conditions in which all of society has the
capacity and opportunity to maintain and improve its quality of life indefinitely without
degrading the quantity, quality, or availability of economic, environmental, and social
resources. Sustainable development is the application of these resources to enhance the
safety, welfare, and quality of life for all of society.

ASCE has long considered sustainability an emerging strategic issue confronting practicing civil
engineers. Its integration into professional practice is required to address changing environmental,
social, and economic conditions ethically and responsibly. Although challenging issues such as climate
change, urbanization, and the rapid pace of technological advancement create opportunities, they also
require serious re-evaluation of current professional practice and standards. To address this state of
affairs, ASCE has outlined a roadmap to transform our profession to increase the societal,
environmental, and economic value of the engineering projects we deliver.

The Four Priorities for Change

Priority 1: Sustainable Project Development: Doing the Right Project
Economic considerations predominantly drive current project development methodologies. To control
costs, projects are often conceived based on what was previously successful or simply on what the
project owner finds expedient and is designed to existing standards and practices. This approach can
result in impacts—environmental, societal, and economic—that have not been thoroughly considered or
anticipated in the design process. To reach the paradigm of sustainable infrastructure, engineers must
approach projects and engineering in a new way. The focus of our engineering efforts must shift from
the product of our work—the stormwater management system, the bridge, the building—to the needs
the project aims to address and the benefits it will provide. In other words, attend to the need and the
desired benefits to define the outcome rather than simply relying on existing and perhaps outdated
standards (or the lack thereof) to define the project. This shift in thinking overcomes the perpetuation of
past mistakes, inaccuracies, or misapplications and seeks outcomes that truly address the need and
account for unintended or unknown impacts on surrounding systems. This way of approaching
development can often minimize or eliminate the need for new “hard” infrastructure by reducing or
eliminating the need or by proposing nature-based systems that can accomplish the same outcome.
While the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure’s Envision Rating System is an example of how to “do
the project right,” this priority indicates the importance of “doing the right project” as well.

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Developing new decentralized stormwater management protocols is an example of this shift in
approach. Past protocols and existing standards collected stormwater and transported it as
expeditiously as possible to receiving waters. Although this approach protected crucial infrastructure, it
ignored the negative environmental impacts on receiving water bodies and the possible co-benefits of
conserving and beneficially re-using the stormwater. Current design methodologies integrate retention
and infiltration into the outcome, providing the same protection to crucial infrastructure, but also
achieving positive aesthetic, recreational, and resource preservation impacts. Such a full systems benefit
can be realized if engineers ask, “What am I trying to accomplish and why?”

Priority 1 Strategic Goal

To achieve such a shift in thinking, the strategic goal is to invent or reinvent infrastructure development
processes to identify and address the intrinsic needs of a program or project; minimize those needs to
the extent possible; satisfy any residual needs; and consider all possible alternatives before projects and
programs are conceived, executed, and operated—in other words, to “do the right project.”

Priority 1 Desired Outcomes

• A new process for engineers to engage as trusted leaders before project approval and execution
in identifying and defining project and program needs, as part of complex, multidisciplinary
teams; and
• Project and program development methodologies that carefully consider, prior to project
approval and execution, all approaches and alternatives that
o Optimize the use and application of available resources;
o Use economic, social, and environmental sustainability as the key criteria for selecting
the right project; and
o Meet project and/or program development needs, whether by the use of structural,
nonstructural, or so-called “natural infrastructure” solutions.

Priority 2: Standards and Protocols: Do the Project Right

While “doing the right project,” engineers must still “do the project right.” Clearly, however, previously
reliable standards and protocols no longer suffice. Current prescriptive standards may apply in
conditions of stationarity. However, where non-stationarity (a condition where statistical properties,
such as mean or variance, of a data set are not constant over time) is prevalent, new standards and
protocols are needed that are process- and performance based rather than prescriptive. Those
standards must also address resiliency to develop infrastructure that ensures society’s safety and its
ability to recover from disturbances, thereby allowing resources to be applied to innovation and
advancement, rather than to defense and reactiveness. Adopting sustainability standards and, perhaps
more importantly, protocols appropriate for this new climate paradigm can address impacts and non-
stationarity in the built and natural environment.

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Priority 2 Strategic Goal
To address the problem of standards and protocols that fail to address non-stationarity, the strategic
goal is to establish, adopt, and implement methodologies that produce sustainable infrastructure.
Methodologies meet this goal by

• Meeting the project owner’s objectives, requirements, and specifications;

• Significantly improving the project’s environmental, economic, and social performance;
• Accommodating a changing operating environment (non-stationarity);
• Developing standards that integrate risk, probability (forecasting) and resiliency into engineering
design; and
• Accounting for operations, maintenance, and end-of-life disposition.

Priority 2 Desired Outcomes

• A new standard for transformational infrastructure planning, design, construction, operations
and maintenance, decommissioning, and overall management that (1) meets the project
owner’s needs, requirements, and specifications; (2) meaningfully reduces the net ecological
footprint; and (3) accounts for changing environmental and societal conditions;
• A new higher-level standard for sustainable infrastructure and engineering, including, for
example, the use of tools like Envision; and
• An inventory of all ASCE standards that affect sustainability, with plans to update current
standards and incorporate sustainability into all future standards.

Priority 3: Expand Technical Capacity: Transform the Profession

Now that the familiar lighthouses of the past may no longer be relevant, civil engineers must have the
protocols, processes, and standards needed to navigate the unfamiliar waters of the future safely and
effectively. We must develop tools to perform life-cycle assessment and life-cycle cost analysis to
account for lifetime impacts of infrastructure—and even for impacts beyond its useful life.
Unfortunately, the data and conditions that underpin previous standards and bodies of knowledge no
longer accurately and reliably describe future conditions and requirements. Designing infrastructure
based on such standards and methods without knowing whether those standards really apply is
inherently risky and leads to the commoditization of civil engineering. Although applying old standards
and processes may feel less risky than stepping beyond the comfortable bounds of traditional
engineering practice and integrating the roles of “master builders, stewards of the environment,
innovators, managers of risk, and leaders in public policy,” as ASCE’s Vision 2025 advocates, doing so is
necessary.

To apply the principles of sustainable development, expanding engineers’ abilities and capacities beyond
the currently accepted technical acumen and professional standards of engineering practice is
necessary. Engineers must gain confidence and expand their capacities to identify, understand, navigate,
and manage the new risk and uncertainty adequately and appropriately. The new engineer must
develop relationships of trust and respect to become the trusted advisor. This role requires expanded

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approaches, courses, study methods—even new bodies of knowledge—for pre-college, college, and
post-graduation training and new advanced certifications, accreditations, and standards.

Priority 3 Strategic Goal

Achieving the necessary professional transformation requires civil engineers to build or expand their
capacity to achieve the visions and principles of sustainable development through new training and
professional development opportunities, including formal and continuing education opportunities.

Priority 3 Desired Outcomes

• An operational Certificate Program for engineers to demonstrate understanding of sustainable
development principles and their implementation;
• A significant number of professionals pursuing the certificate, with a goal of 1,000 in five years.

Priority 4: Communicate and Advocate: Making the Case

Transforming the civil engineering profession and methods for sustainable infrastructure development
requires communication with all stakeholders and advocacy to promote acceptance and adoption.
Orchestrated messaging must be presented with a common, recognizable, and cohesive voice to best
serve and guide ASCE’s members and the public. Communication and advocacy must be composed
carefully to include varied and diversified disciplines outside of ASCE and engineering. Examples of
organizations to collaborate and build common purpose with include American Planning Association,
American Institute of Architects, and American Public Health Association, among many others. In
addition, the profession and its practitioners in the institutes, committees, regions, sections, branches,
and other ASCE entities must be informed and their expertise and technical acumen expanded to
recognize, accept, and champion the changes required to meet this challenge. Finally, ASCE must align
with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to support global implementation and
collaboration with other international supporters of sustainability.

Priority 4 Strategic Goal

This significant transformation of the civil engineering profession requires communicating the reasons
for change with members, the public, and all stakeholders. The end goal is a membership and public that
demand environmentally, economically and socially sustainable infrastructure that meets the needs of
human welfare equitably and enables healthy communities.

Priority 4 Desired Outcomes

• Comprehensive and consistent engagement with sustainability committees in ASCE’s sections,
branches, institutes, and divisions;
• Development and distribution of advocacy and communication materials for use by ASCE’s
sections, branches, institutes, and divisions to enable adoption of ASCE-endorsed or -sanctioned
principles of sustainable development in engineering services procurement by federal, state and
local agencies;

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 • Recommendations for revisions, with commentaries, to ASCE’s Code of Ethics, standards, and
policy statements to strengthen consistency with triple-bottom-line sustainability concepts as
expressed in ASCE Policy 418;
• Delivery of compelling messages in meetings and conferences that align with ASCE’s strategic
goals and in meetings and conferences where ASCE should have a proactive presence; and
• Development of strategic alliances with aligned and complementary organizations, both within
and external to ASCE. Such organizations may include American Institute of Mining,
Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers; American Public Health Association; American Institute
of Architects; American Planning Association; American Society of Landscape Architects;
National Recreation and Park Association; American Public Works Association; American Council
of Engineering Companies; Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure; and National Emergency
Management Association.

Conclusion
Civil engineering is at the crossroads of a critical time in history. Charged with transforming our
profession in light of emerging sustainability issues, with this Roadmap ASCE presents details of how to
do this. ASCE can accelerate this professional transformation by providing direction on why and to what
extent this roadmap should be implemented in all ASCE organizations and programs and by the civil
engineering profession in general, consistent with existing Society policies and efforts. Only a visionary
approach such as this can maintain the continuing relevance and importance of our profession in these
changing times. Join us!

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