<p>Often dismissed in favor of the quick-jolt stimulus, spending on bridges, streets and sewers is on the table again. Obama backs the public works idea, an echo of the FDR era.</p>
<p>By Richard Simon and Jim Puzzanghera
November 9, 2008</p>
<p>Reporting from Washington -- As recently as a few months ago, the idea of trying to bolster the troubled economy by pumping money into public works projects such as roads and bridges was dismissed as too slow -- not the quick pick-me-up that was needed.</p>
<h2>But today, economists and policymakers are beginning to change their minds.</h2>
<p>If this happens, will our salary finally raise along with the need for civils? Will it cause more people to wanna go to civil field instead of ibanking? Let's discuss...</p>
<p>There’s billions of dollars of work ready to go, designed, engineered, everything. All it’s missing is funding. If I remember correctly, ASCE estimates that there’s $38B of work that can be started within 90 days once funding is secured. AASHTO estimates $17.9B in highway and bridge work.</p>
<p>What’s important to note is that funding infrastructure projects helps not only the construction industry, but others as well. For every 1000 construction jobs created, it can support 610 upstream jobs in areas such as but not limited to manufacturing, professional/technical/scientific, retail, transportation, etc. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’ll raise salaries in civil engineering though. After all, our economy is still struggling. What it will do, however, is to create more jobs.</p>
<p>I doubt this will turn people on to civil engineering. What it will do is make people choose civil over other engineering if they’re undecided and have no preference. In this economy, people just want a job.</p>
<p>No disagreements with what Ken said. Nothing really to add, except that darn… I went into building design rather than bridge design. Also, it sucks that I left grad school when I did, because my graduate research was in deciding which bridges in woefully poor repair get fixed first. <em>Sigh</em>. I’d’ve gotten more funding <em>now</em>…!</p>
<p>But if you one day decided you wanted to go into bridge design, you could do that, right aibarr? Is there some kind of transition phase you’d have to go through first to reacquaint yourself with the aspects of bridge design?</p>
<p>Eh, it’s a pretty huge switch. The fundamentals between bridge design and building design are fairly large, so much so that when you take the structural engineering PE exam, you say “bridge” or “building” and they hand you the respective exam.</p>
<p>I suppose it’d be possible to switch between one or the other, given enough studying and elbow grease, but it’s one of those things where if I switched, I’d be doing it for the stability and the money, and not for my own personal happiness. I really like working with buildings, I’m just idly whining. I’d have liked to have had more funding for grad school.</p>
<p>Oh wow, I didn’t know there was such a major distinction between the two. Is there more beam analysis in bridges, versus column analysis in buildings? Or rather, one spans, the other rises?</p>
<p>That really sucks for the person that cannot decide between the two. I always figured you had flexibility within the structural region (aerospace, bridge, buildings, cars).</p>
<p>Well, ultimately, all the nuts and bolts of structural engineering are completely interchangeable. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the difference between buildings and bridges is about the same as the difference between buildings and bridges and aerospace and automotive and whatever. If you’ve been doing rocket dynamic analysis for thirty years, you aren’t going to have the chops to walk in and crank out a stadium. It’s not bad, and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t flexibility, it just means that you kind of have to decide what you’re going to specialize in, and to change takes a certain amount of commitment to learn the new stuff. I <em>could</em> switch to bridges, but I’ve chosen buildings. Same as I could switch to aero or auto or whatever. I have the background for it, I’ve just invested a lot in knowing a bunch about buildings, and that knowledge isn’t terribly transferrable to anything else.</p>
<p>(As to the structural difference between buildings and bridges, it’s mainly that the construction methods are really different between the two, and the loading patterns are very different… You have beam and column analysis in both, but how everything plays together is different.)</p>
<p>In contrast with China, there is a perception that US civil infrastructure has stagnated over the past 30 years. This period has coincided with a generally rightwards trend in American politics, and the belief that “government is the problem, not the solution.” This belief may be valid in some situations, but it simply doesn’t work for public infrastructure. If you value highways, bridges, airports, air traffic control, flood control, reliable power grids, etc., you need actively involved and adequately funded government agencies, and a willingness to take expensive risks with public money. </p>
<p>There may be growing recognition of these issues, as Americans become increasingly fed up with jammed freeways, air travel nightmares, collapsing highway bridges, failing levees. etc. California, for example, just passed an initiative for a $10 billion high-speed rail project to link SF, LA, and ultimately other California cities with 200+ mph trains. The project is clearly ambitious and risky, but would be way cool and awesome if it succeeds. Maybe US civil engineering is overdue for some way cool and awesome new projects.</p>
I’m kindda sad actually, that we have to BORROW money in order to fund infrastructure projects, while we are funding social services for these non-tax-paying illegal immigrants.
The tax payers will be paying for the bill and subsidizing for the service at the end of the day.</p>
<p>There’s always public-private partnerships (PPPs). I’m a supporter of these, but the trick is to be able for the government to do it correctly. On the government side, it can actually raise money for other infrastructure projects. On the private side, it is a pretty stable and solid investment.</p>
<p>I don’t think civil engineers get paid very little compared to the rest of society. Compared to other engineers, yes, but not the rest of the world. A few years ago, NYC rookie cops made just slightly over 1/2 of what an entry level civil engineer made.</p>
<p>Hey aibarr, so I’m not sure if I mentioned this in another thread but you might remember how I was <em>against</em> going into design and was considering doing the unaccredited Struc degree, so I would not have to take any design courses.</p>
<p>Well halfway through steel, and I’m sort of enjoying it. It’s NOTHING like theory analysis; that was all demand, and I got frustrated with those problems. Capacity just seems so much easier for me, and I love the steel bible (so many deflection, shear, and moment formulas!!).</p>
<p>That being said, I’ll take geotech and reinforced concrete next quarter, and then prestressed in the spring. I’m still not sure about grad school though, and I know you’ve stated many times that if you are serious about design, getting a masters is a top priority.</p>
<p>Let’s say I don’t go for the masters. I’m going to be limited to the other aspects of structural, not involving design, right?</p>
<p>Not necessarily, but all the firms that do the <em>really</em> cool design work… you have to have a masters before they even acknowledge that they’ve received your resume. We flat-out do not hire engineers who don’t have masters degrees here, and my old firm did basically the same thing.</p>
<p>(I enjoyed steel design, too; that was what convinced me that I wanted to do design work. I think capacity analysis requires a little more art and finesse than strict demand analysis. I ended up TA’ing steel design in grad school.)</p>
<p>Quietly, our state legislature has figured out that green energy and investments in infrastructure are not going to pump the economy, except to line the pockets of environmental consultants and lawyers so will drag the planning and permitting states out for years. To little money actually make it to the building project itself. </p>
<p>When the work plan for dumping three truck loads of stone to stop errosion requires a 100page workplan, 93 pages of which is permitting and documentation related, civil engining stops being about building. </p>
<p>A recent rail trail rehab project was review; 60 percent of te $ went to permitting documentation, only 40% went to the project.</p>
I’d have liked to have had more funding for grad school.</p>