NEWS: Why is the world demanding great infrastructure from the US?

The big visionary projects no longer originate in the U.S. - and if they do, then they need a lot of help from countries around the world to see them through.

“Living happily… is available to those who have to excess the adornments of character and mind but behave moderately in respect to the acquisitions of good things.” Aristotle
Why do we build infrastructure? Because it shows us who we are, and gives us concrete proof - powerfully symbolic - of what each of us, and all of us together, can be. This used to be a big part of our democracy, from private bridges, to turnpikes to the Erie Canal. And infrastructure is power. Think of the 50,000 miles of roads that Rome built, or Grand Central Station with its 44 platforms, or the 46,876 miles of our interstate highway system - or China’s 18,000 miles of high speed rail (Spain alone has 2000 miles of high speed).

The right infrastructure shows us who we are, naturally forces us to see opportunity for ourselves, and gives us a big leg up in grabbing that opportunity - for us, for our children, for our countrymen and for people around the world. It shapes our dreams, literally showing each of us the arc of the possible. This is important. In a democracy the two things that matter most to citizens, although they strangely don’t often share the same constituency, are education and infrastructure. Those two public goods drive economic productivity - if done right they breathe life into our dreams, and if not done right they lock us in the past and block progress toward the future.

By failing to uphold our role as a global infrastructure beacon we are creating muddle where there should be clarity. This matters, a lot. It matters because in elections around the world leaders are chosen, first and foremost, because of their promises to build infrastructure — clean drinking water, efficient transport, ports, power and communications and all the basic structures that allow citizens to live good lives. Leaders look for the country that has what they need (or want), and can help them create what they have promised.

Failure to Engage Has Real Consequences.
To the extent that we no longer lead, we diminish our country. In a YahooNews/YouGov poll released on July 4th only 17% of Americans saw the U.S. as a ‘shining city on a hill,’ versus 52% in 1989. This fact of America becoming smaller is an even larger theme around the world - we are not losing soft power, we are losing real power. When San José, Costa Rica lets a bid for its $1.5 billion transit system no U.S. firms show up. Myanmar asks for help in building a mega port in Irawaddy, providing a vital trade link from Rangoon to the world and no U.S. companies come calling (no engineering firms, no financial firms, no owners), and no effective U.S. government support is mobilized. It is not just our lack of action that forces countries to turn elsewhere, but after a long period of underinvestment it is is our lack of actual capacity to compete that forces them to look elsewhere.

Screen Shot 2020-07-07 at 3.30.45 PM CG/LA INFRASTRUCTURE, INC.

The retreat of the U.S. from the global infrastructure market not only makes us smaller, but is largely unrecognized (in this country) and it is completely unnecessary. It is also brutally real, a constant topic of conversation around the globe. As a percent of total international revenue the U.S. decline over the last 15 years has been cataclysmic: 70% in Latin America, 89% in Africa and 55% in Asia. It is all the more jarring for happening largely unremarked, and out of sight.

Technology is our crown jewel - the U.S. leads the world, right? The problem is that infrastructure does not work like that - application of technology follows the most successful companies, and the most important projects. For sure Silicon Valley leads in the creation of technology, and is mightily productive because of its bountiful, deep and rebellious ecosystem - producing leading players like Oracle, Trimble, Autodesk - and going well beyond technology to the creation of radically disruptive business models. But when leaders around the world look to candidates for putting this all together they don’t see U.S. contractors, disruptive or not. Only two U.S. firms are in the world’s top 25 contractors, Bechtel and Fluor, as opposed to six just 15 years ago (the largest firm in the world, Spain’s ACS, has revenue six times greater than the U.S. champion, Bechtel).

The big visionary projects no longer originate in the U.S. - and if they do, then they need a lot of help from countries around the world to see them through. The supply chain issue is holding us back mightily. Anbaric, for example, is developing a series of offshore wind farms along the eastern U.S., and a transmission highway that would be a model for the world - but the vast majority of its supply chain is outside of the U.S. Look at another visionary project, the opportunity to digitize the 46,000 miles of our interstate highway system with cutting-edge 5G technology - creating autonomous trucking lanes, and massively expanding rural broadband - as currently designed we have to buy the radios and other technology from other countries, causing huge security gaps (not to mention missing a giant manufacturing opportunity).

The global rise of China over the last 15 years has stunned U.S. infrastructure (Europe is holding its own). Like a turtle, we have pulled back into our shell. China’s growth has not been silent, but has been the subject of tremendous debate - government led or not. Over the past 15 years China’s share of the international contracting business has increased in Latin America by 460% (our former backyard), 600% in Africa, 211% in Asia (where there is actual resistance) and 467% in the Middle East. 

It is no wonder that 94% of infrastructure executives in a recent CG/LA survey said that infrastructure was a “weak” or “mediocre” brand.

Democracy itself is the DNA critical for bringing good things to life. Back to Aristotle - building the right infrastructure is all about character and mind. This is the heart of our superpower - great infrastructure tells us everything we need to know about who we are, and we need to get back to creating great things for the right reasons. As Albert Cho of Xylem - the leading smart water company - told me recently: “Technology is all about system resilience and affordability.” The reason we build - and the reason we must double down on infrastructure investment - is that it gives each of us individually, and each of us together, an actual physical stake in our country. That is the incredible source code of our infrastructure culture - we build so that everyone in our democracy, and everyone around the world, will have a real shot at a great life. This is why GE’s powerful slogan, ‘we bring good things to life,’ resonated so deeply for people everywhere.

Every country wants to be a City upon a Hill. This is where we need to put our shoulders into the business. There is no city upon a hill without a vision, a strategy - and real investment. And this work starts at home. Think about the visionary Texas Central project, high speed rail between Houston and Dallas; or the magnificent TransWest Express Project taking green energy from Wyoming to Las Vegas; or the overwhelmingly necessary $28 billion Gateway Project, breathing vitality into Manhattan. These are projects that we need to build yesterday, and and the bipartisan infrastructure stimulus that we must demand will must do four things: move projects forward at speed; measure the enormous opportunity and productivity that results from those projects; create a much more responsive and agile government to enable the entire process; and produce national champion companies that once again create wonderful things both at home and around the world - not for making money, which will happen naturally, but because the business of producing good things will create great lives.

This article was written for Forbes by Norman Anderson Chairman & CEO of CG/LA Infrastructure