What are the implications of the bipartisan agreement for the average American?

Ashuri: A historical note: 65 years ago on June 29, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the law authorizing the Interstate Highway System and creating the Highway Trust Fund to finance its construction. The system created the backbone for the U.S. economy, with today’s estimated economic contributions at $19 trillion. But, this great infrastructure needs to be retooled and modernized up to the 21^st century standards.

The proposed bill is a step towards the right direction. Seeking long-term, reliable solutions for our infrastructure problems is exactly what the average American needs. Everybody, regardless of their socioeconomic class, will benefit from the enhanced infrastructure in their communities. Every business, no matter how small or big will benefit from improved infrastructure. State and local governments will benefit tremendously from the enhanced funding and financing, which means average Americans’ tax dollars go longer.

And above all, everybody will be a winner when we save lives by improving the safety and resilience of our infrastructure system (think: utilities failure, roadway accidents, etc.). 

Is the price sticker placed on this effort likely to change once projects get underway?

Ashuri: It is possible. However, following best practices in project planning and project control will help deliver projects on time and on budget, which is critical to gain and maintain the public trust. There are great project management tools that the industry can use to make sure that the proposed infrastructure projects have clear scope. Innovative project delivery systems, such as design-build (DB) and public-private partnership (P3), should be utilized as high-performance contracting have proven to be effective in enhancing the quality of the final facilities and developing the projects faster and cheaper.

Smart risk allocation needs to be considered to identify, analyze, and mitigate the risks in infrastructure development. Public involvement is also key to build coalition to engage people in project development and increase the support for the project. In fact, I believe we at Georgia Tech have a great opportunity to disseminate knowledge and best practices to the industry stakeholders, especially owners of capital programs.  

What do you think should be the first step in this project? What gets fixed first?

Ashuri: I strongly believe that the infrastructure decision-making must be a rigorous data-driven process. Infrastructure prioritization must be done based on a systematic infrastructure asset management system. There are great examples of the asset management systems in place in all sectors.

At Georgia Tech, we can make public and private infrastructure owners familiar with the fundamentals of asset management, including condition assessment, performance degradation, forecasting costs and benefits, and decision tree analysis for selecting the most optimal improvement strategies.