Utility Engineering

Texas A&M Transportation Institute
1100 NW Loop 410
Suite 605
San Antonio, TX 78213
(210) 321-1229
[email protected]

Dr. Cesar Quiroga is a Senior Research Engineer and Manager of the Utility Engineering Program at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI). He is an international expert on utility engineering. His contributions also include areas such as optimization of the project delivery process, right-of-way acquisition, spatial data technologies (e.g., uncrewed aircraft systems (UASs), 3D, BIM, and GIS), and interactions between unconventional energy developments and transportation systems. His experience includes several years of surface hydrology and hydraulic engineering work as well as construction supervision.

Cesar is a member of several organizations. He is a founding member of the Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute (UESI) at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He played a pivotal role on the development of two standards (ASCE/CI/UESI 38-22, Standard Guideline for Investigating and Documenting Existing Utilities, and ASCE/CI/UESI 75-22, Standard Guideline for Recording and Exchanging Utility Infrastructure Data), which are changing the way utility facilities are managed within the right-of-way. He is also credited with the development of a generalized framework called the Six pillars of Utility Engineering for managing the utility process during all phases of project delivery. At the Transportation Research Board (TRB), he served as Chair of the Utilities Committee and member of the Design Section until 2020.

He is working on or has completed numerous research projects at the state and national levels. Recently, he led National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) 15-69, which documented the causes of utility-related issues during highway construction using a large national sample of change orders and produced recommendations to reduce delays and lower costs. He completed NCHRP 11-08, which produced recommendations to improve the acquisition of utility property interests and reimbursements for utility relocations. He led Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) Project R15B, which produced a holistic utility conflict management (UCM) approach for managing utility conflicts during project delivery. Implementation of this approach throughout the country, including Texas, has resulted in project delivery time savings, more effective utility coordination, reductions in unnecessary utility relocations, and fewer change orders during construction.

Cesar led a research project that evaluated the impact of suboptimal environmental conditions on the positional accuracy, relative distances, and other metrics associated with use of UASs for photogrammetry applications and production of 3D models. This effort led to two other projects, one dealing with the use of UASs, external GNSS antennas, and mobile devices for conducting construction and utility inspections, and the second one dealing with use of UASs and LiDAR for a wide range of transportation applications. He is also leading efforts on the use of multi-channel ground penetrating radar (MCGPR), time domain electromagnetic induction (TDEMI), and magnetic technologies, in conjunction with artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, to improve utility investigation methods.