TRB Webinar: Use of Life Cycle Assessment in Public Procurement: State of Practice

Pavement designers were invited to a TRB webinar on Tuesday, August 20, 2019, from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM ET. The webinar highlighted current efforts across United States’ departments of transportation to integrate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-based instruments into the project procurement process, including Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). The use of EPDs varies between different environments depending on what is required and desired. There are no requirements at the federal level, but the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Sustainable Pavements Program has led the development and dissemination of tools to support the use of LCA in project procurement. At the state level, different areas of the country have different requirements and plans in places to adopt EPDs. The webinar addressed the varying requirements at different levels of government and how different departments of transportation handle their own LCAs. Presenters highlighted their experiences from both organizational and technical perspectives, focusing on the challenges and opportunities they encounter as LCA-based approaches start to inform project procurement.

This webinar was organized by the TRB Standing Committee on General and Emerging Pavement Design.

The slides are available. Contact Reggie Gillum for a copy of the recorded webinar.

Webinar Presenters

• Jacquelyn Wong, California Department of Transportation
• Curt Turgeon, Minnesota Department of Transportation
• Milena Rangelov, Federal Highway Administration - National Research Council

Moderated by: Amlan Mukherjee, Michigan Technological University

Professional Development Hour Information

A certificate for 1.5 Professional Development Hours (PDHs) will be provided to Professional Engineers (PEs) who register and attend the webinar as an individual. For approved webinars, TRB’s webinar program awards Registered Continuing Education Provider (RCEP) Professional Development Hour (PDH) credits associated with participation only to the registered individual and not to other members of a group that view the webinar together. To receive PDH credits, please register as an individual and sign into the webinar from your personal computer. After doing this, you may join your group in a meeting room.  To be eligible for the credits, individuals must remain signed in for the entire webinar, including for any question and answer session following the presentations.

In addition, advance registration is available until just before the webinar starts. Once the webinar starts, you will be unable to submit your registration. Individuals that are registered for a webinar but do not receive their confirmation emails due to their organization’s internal firewalls should contact the TRB Helpdesk (MyTRB@nas.edu) for assistance in signing in.

Individuals registered as Florida PEs are no longer required to email TRB with your license number to report your attendance. Instead, please use your certificate that TRB provides through RCEP.net as verification of your attendance to the Florida Board of Professional Engineers.

Please check with your licensing board to ensure that TRB webinar PDHs are approved by your board.

This webinar was developed in March 2019. TRB has met the standards and requirements of the Registered Continuing Education Program (RCEP). Credit earned on completion of this program will be reported to RCEP by TRB. Complaints about registered providers may be sent to RCEP, 1015 15th Street, NW, 8th Floor, Washington, DC 20005. Website: www.RCEP.net.

Registration questions? Contact Reggie Gillum at RGillum@nas.edu.