Engineers Are Telling the TBL-CBA Value Story: Financial + Social + Environmental Returns from Sustainable Infrastructure

摘要

This paper will describe how civil engineers are playing new roles in delivering sustainable infrastructure projects. Beyond traditional tasks including steel and concrete takeoffs, engineers are now calculating triple bottom line or TBL returns (financial/economic + social + environmental returns on investment) for design alternatives under their control. They have learned to use cost-benefit, life cycle cost, sustainable return on investment based TBL analysis to determine project value which is essential to competing in best value based procurements. They are providing data sourced from practical and accessible economic assessment tools to inform community sustainability and resilience plans. They are revealing the value of their work through compelling business cases with outputs that address returns by project stakeholder group. Finally, they have discovered the benefits (customer service and competitive) of being able to test and tune their designs as decisions are made with the goal of delivering optimal returns.