Managing Infrastructure Systems through Changeability

Any engineering structure is designed and built to operate in a dynamic and changing environment that cannot be fully predicted at design. Thus, successful designs ought to account for provisions that can handle uncertain but predictable futures and that allow the system to cope with new and unplanned events. These needs have attracted interest in concepts such as resilience, robustness, flexibility and adaptability, which are all part of a more general idea: changeability. This paper presents a critical discussion of the limitations of existing life-cycle approaches, discusses the need for and importance of changeability in engineering design, and presents a roadmap that may open new spaces for a new engineering design paradigm that contributes to the efficient development of high-value infrastructure. The paper discusses critically current practices in infrastructure design and management and proposes an alternative approach centered around the system’s ability to change over time.