Happy New Year!  And good riddance to 2008.

With the new year comes Hope, in many forms.  Our new president ran his campaign on the theme of Hope, and I do think he will bring that to us all, regardless of political ideology.  The most tangible outcome of this initial hope in the Obama administration will be the much ballyhooed and currently undefined Economic Stimulus Plan.  Other than “Roads and Bridges” not much else is known about what will be in the plan as of yet, but you can be sure that it will be huge.

I’m reminded of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, another example of government stimulus plans at work.  If you will recall, that plan essentially involved dumping several billion dollars along the gulf coast and sending thousands of mobile home trailers to Louisiana and Mississippi, without much planning aforethought.  A sad result of this was that billions of dollars were wasted, lost, and plain stolen.  Very little of the money was used efficiently, and thousands of the infamous FEMA trailers sit unused and rotting somewhere.  The parts of that plan that did work were those projects that were thought through, planned over time, and incentivized with tax breaks.  And, overseen by competent governments. 

The good news is that hopefully, the new administration will approach this new stimulus plan with a bit more planning and oversight, while keeping inefficient politically motivated mandates to a minimum.  Transparency and thorough deliberation are keys here.  An informed, watchful, and vocal public that insists on keeping stupid stuff out of the package is also critical.  (True story: one group is requesting that $6 million of the stimulus money be earmarked for snow making equipment – in Minnesota.) Surely the next stimulus plan can’t be handled as incompetently as the last one, right?

Well, one can hope.

At any rate, the message to the construction industry is to get ready.  One of the biggest boom times in the history of the construction industry is coming soon, for those who know how to work the system.  Put yourself in position to grab those dollars that the government will soon be throwing at you.  Figure out how to get on the bidding list for infrastructure projects.  Network with your GC and subcontractor colleagues who have experience in this kind of work, and build those relationships so that you can help each other when the dollars start flowing.