CEI Team Serves on TxDOT Panel for 100+ Professionals
Juan Sierra and Beever Valdez from Freese and Nichols’ Construction Engineering and Inspection (CEI) team recently served as panelists at the Quarterly Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Fort Worth / ACEC Tarrant County Liaison Committee. The forum was directed toward best practices, lessons learned and current challenges which included materials sampling and deficiencies, testing, change orders, inspector qualifications, lab certifications, and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) concerns. More than 100 professionals attended the seminar.
The TxDOT Director of Construction, Greg Cedillo, provided an update on consultant expectations for CEI projects as well as the new technology and innovation that will be used for the Fort Worth District.
The session ended by discussing CEI experiences, challenges and solutions. It was discovered that there are several challenges facing the industry today including the following:
- Finding well-qualified inspectors
- Lacking experienced engineers
- TxDOT and CEI are having to do more due to the contracting community’s loss of experience
- Material shortages putting DBEs out of business
- Third-party design by municipalities and constructed by TxDOT
