FAST Act funding
As has been the case for years, the construction industry came into 2020 with hopes that this was the year a multi-year federal infrastructure funding bill would be passed.
Alas, it was not meant to be.
Despite continued agreement between both parties in Washington that infrastructure funding is a necessity, that bill never came to fruition. Instead, President Trump signed a one-year extension of the FAST Act – which was signed into law by President Obama in 2015 and expired on Sept. 30, 2020 – in early October to provide continued, yet temporary, funding for federal surface transportation programs.
“I think that was something that caused a big sigh of relief,” Simonson says. “But it’s disappointing given the long lead time that we had to get a replacement for the FAST Act in place with additional spending and moving toward solving this funding gap that nothing was done. It’s the overworn phrase that we’ve ‘kicked the can down the road’ for another year.”
The proverbial “kicking the can down the road” has taken its toll on contractors and producers hoping for long-term stability.
“[An infrastructure bill] would impact our [company] greatly,” Wise says. “They just need to pass something. It’s absolutely infuriating. Time after time, you go through parts of this country, and the roads and bridges are deteriorated. They need to do something.”
Likewise, Scepaniak would welcome any federal infrastructure funding that would provide a boon for his company and the construction industry as a whole.
“If they do pass an infrastructure bill, then all the sudden there’s all sorts of public work,” Scepaniak says. “There’s no way it’s anything but a positive for us and the industry, because all of a sudden we have our workload filled with [public] of certain proportion, private of certain proportion, and so on.
“The only problem [an infrastructure bill] would present to us is a whole bunch of new opportunities and how do we accomplish it, which is a good problem to have,” Scepaniak adds.
2021 outlook
Rewind to one year ago, and the construction industry was optimistic about what 2020 would bring. Little did anyone know, however, that unforeseen challenges would alter the way business is done – in some ways temporarily, in some ways permanently.
So what should the industry expect when looking to 2021? While the future, as always, is unpredictable, Simonson sees reasons for optimism – depending on the market segment.