David Raymond has been President of the American Council of Engineering Companies since March 1999. He came to the Council after 20 years in the engineering industry in executive positions with Raytheon in Massachusetts, Ebasco in New York, ENSERCH Corporation in Dallas, Texas, and TAMS in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has named him a member of their Committee of 100. He is also a Member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations.
Mr. Raymond plans to retire in 2018, after 19 years as President and CEO of ACEC.
We have the capacity, but we lack the will
We do not lack any capacity to do what’s needed to be done. We have thousands of engineering firms and contracting firms who are ready to take on an increased workload, and what we’re waiting for is for government agencies and private parties to pull the trigger to unleash that capacity. The constraints on moving forward can be summarized in two words: political will. There’s insufficient political will to undertake such a program, both in the administration and in the Congress.
Society, as a whole, needs to commit to infrastructure
There’s quite a frustration. Many of us share that frustration. I believe that the public has not felt the pressure of doing more than is being done now. By pressure, I mean our infrastructure, in a general sense, is not failing in any kind of a crisis mode. At least it’s not perceived in the public as being any kind of a crisis, and I think until crises happen in our society, the will to invest any more than a nominal amount is just going to be the order of the day. We’re not going to be doing much more any time soon, I don’t believe.
Lots of talk + no action from the political sphere
I am disappointed that after all the talk about infrastructure in the last presidential campaign, there’s really nothing much going on now. President Trump came up with a way of bypassing normal government expenditures for infrastructure by saying that those expenditures should actually act as seed money for private investment. That is actually a very good idea, but it doesn’t offset the need to have public expenditures not tied to seed capital for projects for which there will be very low investor interest in such funding. When you add it all up, there’s really nothing more going on today than there was some years ago.
Concerted advocacy efforts needed
A concerted effort would do us some good. If there is a general lack of societal will to do more than we’re doing now, then those who are working for a society in this infrastructure area will meet the modicum of demand that exists for their services, rather than being able to respond to a higher demand. It is, in the final analysis, the public that’s going to have to decide what level of demand they will call for as far as infrastructure development in this country.
Infrastructure to follow innovation
We see private firms such as SpaceX sending satellites into space. We see private companies engaged in the development of autonomous vehicles of all different kinds. I think there will be innovation and there will be infrastructure to meet that innovation when society becomes accustomed to it, and demands the infrastructure to support it. I am generally optimistic. I’m just not in a whirl of optimism about what’s going to happen, in the short term, as far as certain basic infrastructure in this country.
Download full transcript (PDF): David Raymond on The Infra Blog
Tags: ACEC, American Council of Engineering Companies, Dave Raymond, David A. Raymond, David Raymond ACEC, Infrastructure Advocacy
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