I’ve written before about the incredible opportunity to significantly upgrade our water infrastructure and improve resilience via the bipartisan infrastructure bill, most recently just after President Biden signed it into law on November 15th, 2021. The H.R.3684, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is 2,702 pages long, and deciphering the details of $1.2 trillion in grants, studies, and projects is a daunting task.
Useful information sources
For the past four months, I’ve attended numerous virtual and in-person industry day forums, reviewed scores of websites and articles, and had many discussions with teaming partners and potential government clients to begin to make sense of the information within the bill. The most useful information sources included:
- S. Army Corps of Engineers Work Plans for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act published on January 20th, 2022.
- Tulsa Post Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) Industry Day 2022 – February 9th-10th
- American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Federal Agencies Procurement Advocacy (FAPA) winter meeting February 15th-16th, 2022.
- Sacramento Post SAME IIJA Overview on March 17th, 2022.
- SAME Capital Week Fiscal Year 2023 Department of Defense (DoD) & Federal Agency Briefs March 22nd-23rd, 2022.
Programs involving resilience and water
As the leader of a 50-person water resources group focused on dams, hydropower, flood control, and water infrastructure, I’m especially interested in those elements in the legislation focused on resilience and water. At the Sacramento SAME event, the White House Building a Better America website was reviewed. At the bottom of that website are details of every program funded by the IIJA; there are 380 separate entries. Each program entry includes information on category (airports, broadband, ports, etc.), program name, agency, bureau, funding amount, funding mechanism, and whether the program is new. Below is one example from the site:
Using this website, I was able to identify the 28 programs that focus on resilience and water, broken out as follows:
- Environmental Protection Agency – 7
- Bureau of Reclamation – 3
- Natural Resource Conservation Service – 6
- Fish and Wildlife Service – 1
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – 2
- Department of Transportation – 1
- USACE – 8
Combining this information with the information gleaned from the USACE Work Plans and various industry days, I’m able to zero in on the programs and opportunities I’m most interested in pursuing. I encourage all of you to similarly do your homework, and then let’s talk! We can work together to significantly improve our nation’s infrastructure.
