A hopeful source of work for civil engineers in 2011 will be the rail and transportation sector. This sector has seen the recent distribution of $8 billion in ARRA funds to begin development of 13 new, large-scale high-speed rail corridors across the country. The major corridors are part of a total of 31 states receiving investments, including smaller projects and planning work that is expected to help lay the groundwork for future high-speed intercity rail service. Earlier last year President Obama proposed $1.82 billion in funding in his fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget for 27 major transit construction projects. The budget recommends investing $834.6 million in 19 new transit construction projects — 10 of which are new funding recommendations in FY 2011, and nine of which have been recommended for funding in previous years. The plan also provides $924.6 million for the continued funding of eight projects already under construction in New York, Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Northern Virginia.
More than half of survey respondents said that alternative energy markets, including wind and geothermal, have great growth potential for civil engineering services. In 2009, with assistance from the ARRA, the U.S. wind industry installed a record 10,000 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). With these new projects, wind power now ties natural gas as the leading source of new electricity generation in the United States, AWEA said.
But executives in the renewable energy sector warn that such gains may be short lived without a national renewable energy standard (RES). "The RES is the best way to provide the certainty that companies need to expand wind manufacturing nationwide,” said the AWEA. The Geothermal Energy Association added that Congress had enacted stimulus legislation with a historic group of incentives supporting geothermal and other renewable technologies. The keys to sustain this growth will be adopting longer-term measures to support an increase in both new projects and the manufacturing and supply infrastructure.
The promise of emerging markets only offers hope to those civil engineering professionals who can endure the current challenges. By a wide margin survey respondents ranked maintaining a backlog as the greatest challenge facing their firms this year and early next year. In fact, more respondents ranked maintaining a backlog and maintaining clients as the greatest challenges. This is made more difficult when almost 90 percent of respondents’ firms have experienced projects going “on hold” during the last six months.
It should be very clear that last year’s optimism for recovery in 2010 was premature. Nevertheless, expectations for increasing firm revenue and indications of continued federal support for transportation and renewable energy markets offer hope today that, for the civil engineering industry, the recession has bottomed out and a recovery — however slow — is potentially within sight.
The lack of work is particularly telling in the growing number of firms that experienced layoffs or downsizing events during the last six months — almost 60 percent of respondents’ firms in 2010 compared with over 40 percent in 2009. It is not surprising, therefore, that only 8 percent of respondents this year said that maintaining staff was a challenge, compared with 16 percent of respondents a year ago. Likewise, only 61 percent of respondents in 2010 regarded recruiting and retaining talented civil engineers as an important issue to the industry, compared with 77 percent of respondents in 2009. And in the face of less work and shrinking staff, maintaining staff salaries has become a greater challenge early this year, almost double the number in 2010.
