Instrumentation and Monitoring Trends in New York City and Beyond

Abstract

With the construction of large publicly funded infrastructure improvements by public transportation agencies, instrumentation and monitoring contracts in New York City have grown significantly since 2005. Part I of this paper will introduce four large NYC infrastructure projects including South Ferry, East Side Access, the Fulton Street Transit Center, and the 7-Line Extension. These projects and others including the Second Avenue Subway have resulted in a shift in the complexity, scope and procurement of instrumentation services in the metropolitan area. Part II will focus on the lessons learned in developing cost bid proposals and consider the state of current specifications, the technician’s role, the impact of minority, disadvantaged or women owned business enterprises, the risk bidders absorb to compete in this market, and the trickle down effect of these large projects on smaller projects. We will examine our approach and our intention of providing improved data interpretation and evaluation. The expansion of the market comes not without the issue of balancing performance against cost, with risk and value being underlying components. INTRODUCTION TO INSTRUMENTATION AND MONITORING TRENDS Instrumentation and monitoring is controlled by the type and complexity of the projects that necessitate monitoring and by the contracting parties. Concurrent with the demand for instrumentation on larger publicly funded infrastructure projects, we anticipate a growth in instrumentation services on smaller projects in the private sector. Improvements have been realized in vendor supplied instruments, and services including website database options. It is now commonplace to regularly provide data in real time, with automatic notifications by email, text FMGM 2007: Seventh International Symposium on Field Measurements in Geomechanics © 2007 ASCE Copyright ASCE 2007 Field Measurements in Geomechanics (FMGM 2007) 2 message or alarms, thereby streamlining data distribution. As industry wide improvements are incorporated in response to the demands of larger projects, smaller projects benefit without sharing an unfair proportion of the system improvement costs. Firms committed to this work have and will continue to build their inventory of available instruments, accessories and skills in which to provide improved services at reduced costs.