Engineering the Future: Just Do It!

I remember when Nike launched its “Just Do It” media campaign—it was brilliant! The application to infrastructure was obvious to me. Three words that sum up the need to stop analysis paralysis and get things built. When you look at the masterworks from the past—the lack of electronic tools, yellow iron to build things, complex models to optimize the design, multiple funding sources, etc.—it’s amazing what was built and, in many cases, how quickly it was built.

Negative Inertia

I believe we’ve been worn down by the world around us. Environmental permits take a long time. Project approvals get stuck in various levels of government and bureaucracies. We need the entire project funding in place to start work, which, on major projects, isn’t always possible since many large projects must be cut into phases of work that are inefficient.

Designs in the past were defined by the adage, “when in doubt, make it stout.” There were bold leaders in our business that had the vision. Where have they all gone?

I remember a phone call early in my public-sector career with the Division of Budget where I was trying to streamline project paperwork to move things faster. I was told we need to make sure there’s a complete and durable paper trail; after all, projects were about paper. My sassy response was that I totally agreed every project needs a lot of paper—as long as that paper can be used as structural backfill for bridge and building foundations.

We Can and Must Do Better

In 2024, when the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) launched the “Bridging the Gap” economic report for all 18 categories assessed in the Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, if you considered the current funding to stay flat, there was a $3.7 trillion needs gap over 10 years. When you factor in inflation and tariffs on construction materials such as steel, aluminum and copper—as well as components that are almost-entirely manufactured outside the United States such as transformers—that gap gets bigger. Now consider the chronic engineering and labor shortage, and it creeps up again. We need upward of $4 trillion to meet the needs of the next decade, just to get to a state of good repair.

At this rate, we will not lead with a future world vision, as we will be trying to just close the gap without making investments that will transform our lives. Our children and grandchildren deserve better.

Narrowing that gap will require new methods and processes: streamlining permitting, procurement, public outreach, financing and review. There are ways to meet the goals and objectives for environmental permitting by doing things in parallel instead of in series, expediting work.

If we embrace public outreach at the start of a project, we will incorporate community input and have better projects that can be delivered faster. It’s a slighter larger investment that yields great results on project completion.

Across infrastructure classes, or at least across federal and state entities, we need standard procurement documents that share risk among owners and the designer and/or contractor. Phase Design Build is one such tool.

Why are contracts, terms and conditions, billing procedures and payment procedures invented specifically for every individual project? I’m aware of at least one state Department of Transportation that has different billing procedures in different regions within that state. Such redundancy adds to overhead costs for owners and contractors; why do we allow this continue?

Financing teams are brought to the table right before project construction starts. I’ve always thought that if you have 10 engineers around the table planning a project, there will be 10 answers. If we bring project finance to that table, to join the engineers, they can advise as to which solution will provide a resilient product that will be the most cost effective or bring the best-suited financial tools to pay for the project.

We’ll need more private equity in projects to facilitate growth. State and local governments as well as authorities and private entities doing good public work (think Brightline in Florida) will need to increase tax-exempt municipal bonding to pay for their capital improvements. Luckily, when looking at the finance picture, many government owners have headroom in their bonding capacity, so there’s money available. How do we streamline that bonding process to hit the Office Depot “easy button”?

Streamlining processes so approximately 70 to 80 percent of the work is “cookbook” will allow human and financial resources to use the last 20 to 30 percent to create phenomenal projects that are efficient, effective and resilient. We can add independent final project approval through financing, which also can be contingent on project performance at five-year intervals to ensure the required operations and maintenance have been invested to keep the assets from prematurely deteriorating. The tools are there; we just need to change up the basic toolbox.

Imagine where we could be. 

 

Engineering the Future Maria Lehman