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Sanjiv Gokhale

Professor of the Practice of Civil Engineering
Engineering Endowed Director of Construction Management
Director of Graduate Studies in Construction Management

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Focus

  • Repair, Rehabilitation, and Renewal of Underground Infrastructure: 
    Due to their low visibility, rehabilitation of underground pipelines is frequently neglected until a catastrophic failure occurs. Professor Gokhale's research focuses on the testing and assessment of minimally invasive technologies for pipeline condition assessment, repair, and rehabilitation.
  • Infrastructure Management: 
    Traditional rehabilitation methods for underground infrastructure often focus on initial construction cost, rather than consideration of life-cycle costs. Prof. Gokhale has also made significant contributions in the development of a framework for a multi-attribute model that addresses the various objectives in underground infrastructure asset management, through a life-cycle cost approach. The model provides the basis for a decision-making for asset managers in short-term and long-term infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation planning within the budgetary constraints.
  • Cost and Schedule Control for Large-cap EPC Projects: 
    From automotive industry to process industries and from information technology to e-commerce, today's businesses rely on first-to-market product strategies to gain competitive advantage. In these instances, Owners are often focused on fast track project delivery systems that achieve schedule compression. However, a large number of projects from renovation to new construction and regulatory compliance to facility upgrades continue to be cost-driven. Prof. Gokhale's research is looking to develop a Decision Tool to assist the project team in evaluating and executing projects that are cost-driven. In defining the cost-schedule trade-offs, the tool will model all of the variables in a capital project execution plan that influence the cost versus schedule decisions.

Biography

Professor Gokhale came to the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Vanderbilt University, in 2001. Prior to that he was a tenured Associate Professor in the Construction Management program at the Purdue University School of Engineering, Indianapolis, Indiana. He has over 15 years of consulting experience, related to design and construction. He is a registered Professional Engineer in New York state. He is the co-author of "Trenchless Technology: Pipeline and Utility Design, Construction, and Renewal", published by McGraw Hill, 2005. Prof. Gokhale is the author of Construction Management of Healthcare Projects, published by McGraw Hill in 2014.
 
He was elected “Teacher of the Year” by the National Honor Society - Tau Beta Pi in 2004, and also received the “Teaching Excellence” award from the School of Engineering, Vanderbilt University in 2005.
 
Professor Gokhale is the recipient of the 2009 Distinguished Professor award by the Construction Industry Institute (CII). He was elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2009.
 
Professor Gokhale is married and has two children. His interests are racquetball, gardening, reading, and traveling.
 

To visit the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering website, click here.