Research subcommittee for infrastructure management in concrete structures (217 committee)
The committee organized by Hirotaka Kawano, Kyoto University, aiming at introduction of the infrastructure management into JSCE specification system.

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1. Outline of activity and purpose

"Research subcommittee for infrastructure management of concrete structures" has been active from April 2008 to March 2010. In the activity, aiming at introducing infrastructure management into JSCE specification system was examined. The committee’s activity concerning this infrastructure management originally started at “215 committee” in 2007. Initially, discussions were held on the definition of the infrastructure management, summarization of the problem, and to a proposal. The result was published in JSCE concrete technology series No.79, committee report titled “A good infrastructure for the people, and the technology and engineer systems that support it.” Afterwards, this committee was re-organized because of the necessity of more considerations and the activity continued to March 2010. In infrastructure management, the people who construct and, maintain high-quality structures are not only civil engineers but also the people who manage them with an organic connection. A high-quality structure should be constructed and maintained not only by civil engineering technicians but by the users by an organic connection. So we paid special attention to people's sense of infrastructures. And we acted with the aim of examining the ideal way the engineer and the management should interact in the future, and to summarizing the problems, including the relationship between the Standard Specifications for Concrete Structures and the Concrete Committee and to obtain a proposal from this committee. We also distributed questionnaire survey to the people to investigate the people’s sense of the infrastructures. In addition, we discussed the necessity and the contents of the Standard Specifications for Concrete Structures – PR for the people. We hope that the Standard Specifications – PR will help people to gain insight about infrastructures. All the results are summarized in the committee report, JSCE concrete technology series 92. In the committee report, “Infrastructure management” is defined as follows.

"Infrastructure management is systemized hands-on activities based on the cooperation with people. This includes the planning, designing, construction, and maintenance from a long-term aspect with technical and economical point of view. We discussed infrastructure management based on the above mentioned definition and wrote a committee report. The contents are summary of the committee’s activities and a basis for discussion of the Standard Specifications for Concrete Structures – PR, and the results of questionnaire survey.

The basis for discussion of this specification – PR was written for people so that they can easily gain understanding about infrastructure. The details of the questionnaire survey for people’s sense was reported as a supplement in this committee report. The member of this subcommittee is as follows.

Chairperson Hirotaka KAWANO Kyoto University
Chief secretary Hiroaki TSURUTA Kansai University
Member Ichiro IWAKI Nihon University
Toshiharu KISHI University of Tokyo
Morio KURITA Shimizu Corporation
Yasuhiro KOIDE C.S.Inspector Co., Ltd.
Hirohisa KOGA Public Works Research Institute
Yoshio SHINODA Japan Concrete Technology Co., Ltd.
Atsushi HATTORI Kyoto University
Tsuyoshi MARUYA TAISEI Corporation
Keiichi YASUDA NEWJEC Inc
Hiroshi YOKOTA Hokkaido University
Hiroko WATANABE Luna & Spring Engineer Office

2. Details of proposal of Standard Specification for Concrete Structures - PR


The maintenance and use of infrastructure cannot be expected to progress without people’s cooperation in the future. To correspond to such a situation, first of all, people should more correctly understand the infrastructure.

Of course, many opinions were voiced regarding this within this committee. The big problem is whether people would read such specification or not. It is said that even a concrete engineering obtaining the Standard Specifications for Concrete Structures and to even read it have decreased recently. But since concrete engineers deal with the people at the construction site every day, we concluded that the contents of this specification – PR would be spread to people through the concrete engineer. Of course, it is also necessary to think about a method of spreading them to people more directly.

This specification – PR is a basis for discussion and we hope that more discussions about this specification will be carried out widely and continuously.

The report of the results of our committee was carried out at JSCE on August 24th, 2010 (Figs. 1 and 2). In this meeting, we had a panel discussion on “Concrete for people – Let’s talk about future of concrete.” One of their opinions was “Let’s collect many examples on cooperation with people and appeal to them”.

Fig.1 The scene of panel discussion 1 Fig.2 The scene of panel discussion 2