Villanova Engineering Professors Share Expertise Nationally in Transportation Field

Drs. Leslie Myers McCarthy, PE, and Seri Park, Assistant Professors in Villanova University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, recently saw the publication of their latest report for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), a branch of the National Academies. As PI and co-PI, respectively, Drs. McCarthy and Park conducted the research and co-authored NCHRP Synthesis 442 “Practices and Performance Measures for Local Public Agency Federally Funded Highway Projects.”

The report is published by the National Research Council and is part of the NCHRP series “Synthesis of Highway Practice,” which compiles and documents public agency practices used in federal-aid project development and management. In the preface, Tanya Zwahlen of the Transportation Research Board, writes, “A primary objective of this study is to explore what performance measures, delivery practices, strategies, and tools are currently used in relation to federally-funded local public agency highway project development and delivery, and how they are used to measure success in project administration.”  There are 15 to 20 synthesis projects conducted annually and the investigators are selected based on their technical expertise and experience with each topic.

This is Dr. McCarthy’s second NCHRP Synthesis Report since 2010 when she and  two Villanova Civil and Environmental Engineering undergraduates, David Mensching ’10 and Andrew Horgan ’11, wrote NCHRP Synthesis 414 “Effective Delivery of Small-Scale Federal-Aid Projects.” The hard-copy circulation for NCHRP synthesis reports is roughly 5,000 agencies and organizations at the local, state and national levels. A PDF of the most recent report can be accessed online.  

In the past year, Drs. McCarthy and Park also co-authored “Innovative Partnerships Help Inventory Traffic Signs,” the feature article in the March-April 2013 issue of Public Roads magazine, published by the Federal Highway Administration. In July 2012, their article “Can They Read Your Signs? How to Develop a Streamlined Strategy for Meeting FHWA Traffic Sign Compliance Dates,” appeared in American Public Works Association Reporter.