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O P I N I O N
The best of times With a focus on renewable energy and environmental conservation, and a need to improve a vast and aging infrastructure, opportunity abounds.
T hings are going pretty well for nearly all these days. Those downturn doldrums are a distant memory and the more recent drop in the oil and gas sector has at least stabilized. It seems nearly every market sector and geographic region of the country is busy – no matter the service offerings a company provides. The question of the day is whether we are in the “best of times.”
Gerry Salontai
Let’s begin with infrastructure. Nearly every aspect of our infrastructure is aging in this country. Transportation, water, power, and other systems are straining from the years of taxing use and neglect while there is a need to expand capacity even more. Yet repairing or expanding this infrastructure is viewed as a cost rather than an investment in our future and there is reluctance to step up and fund these needs. We are observing more investment in each of these sectors – using a combination of traditional and much healthier funding sources combined with many new innovative approaches. The need is just too overwhelming over the coming decades to be ignored. Then there is the area of energy – opportunity that’s driven by our country’s stated goal of energy independence along with desires to be more efficient with our use of energy. This
I certainly think so.
We are in the confluence of a much-improved economy with an ever-increasing need for our help. The private sector is spending and the public sector revenues are much stronger than a few years ago. Construction activity is visibly up as one travels throughout the country, reinforcing the fact the economy is relatively strong. And, as I reflect on the history of the AEC profession and the experience in my own career, there just seems to be more need for our help resulting from both the opportunities and challenges facing this world today. And it seems our professions are central to solving these – while advancing society to a better tomorrow. It’s the need for our help that is the exciting part of the position the AEC industry is in today. What is creating this opportunity that is yielding the “best of times?”
See GERRY SALONTAI, page 8
THE ZWEIG LETTER October 17, 2016, ISSUE 1172
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