President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) into law on February 17, 2009. The Act provided a $787 billion stimulus for federal tax cuts, expansion of unemployment benefits, domestic spending in education, health care, and infrastructure, including the energy sector. Included in the Act was $48 billion for transportation projects, such as highway and bridge construction, mass transit, and high-speed rail projects that require civil engineering expertise.
Since that time, the Federal Highway Administration is boasting that progress has been made saying nearly two-thirds of the funding available to the States for highway investment has been obligated and thousands of projects have gotten underway.
Pennsylvania’s piece as it relates to transportation infrastructure is $1.026 billion to repair its aging roads and bridges. The plan for these stimulus funds allows Pennsylvania to make much-needed fixes to hundreds of bridges and miles of additional highway paving projects while creating and retaining countless jobs. In addition to highway and bridge funding, Pennsylvania’s transit agencies are receiving direct Recovery Act funding to improve train, bus, subway and trolley systems.
Three hundred twenty-six Pennsylvania Department of Transportation highway and bridge projects, ranging from resurfacing roads to restoring bridges, are proceeding with help from Recovery Act funding. Two additional rounds of projects were identified and are being let to fully utilize the stimulus funds that were saved as a result of the competitive bid process.
Although last year was lean for many engineering firms due to the recession shelving many construction projects, Navarro & Wright’s business increased due in part to stimulus funded transportation projects.
Paul Navarro, President, said much of that stimulus supplement went to ready-to-go projects with the need for additional construction inspection services and the funds also accelerated the need for the design of new highway construction projects. “It did increase our workload substantially and is keeping our engineers and staff busy and as a result it required an addition of 8 employees to our Transportation Division within the past year,� added Navarro.
For Navarro & Wright, stimulus supplements increased 13 awarded agreement totals by more than $3.5 million resulting in additional engineering fees of over $560,000.
Navarro & Wright looks favorably on PennDOT’s current effort to build a new backlog of projects that will be ready-to-go in the event a second round Jobs Creation Bill is authorized for the transportation industry. This is great news for the civil engineering business sector.
