Both the public and private sectors are struggling in the COVID-19 era. The dire health consequences for thousands have led to disruptions across industries, and neither grading nor excavation has been spared. The coronavirus pandemic has affected every facet of the construction process.
For public infrastructure projects, elected officials have been either reluctant to fund new construction or eager to divert previously appropriated funding toward more urgent, under-resourced departments better suited to cope with the impacts of COVID-19. At the same time, projected budget shortfalls due to drops in revenue push elected officials to make difficult decisions.
In the private sector, a complicated web of state and local health regulations make for difficulties with permitting, labor needs, and maintaining compliance at job sites, These issues span from planning stages all the way to shovels-in-the-ground as projects have been delayed across the country.
It’s difficult to make predictions for how COVID-19 will affect each sector in the long term, but for now, we can see how this dynamic is playing itself out by looking at two entities at one job site in Redding, CA: PACE Engineering, and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (“Cal Fire”).
With general contractor, G&S Construction, along with Giles Excavating in tow, PACE is building their new headquarters in the long-planned Stillwater Business Park, and they hope to have the project completed by the end of 2021. While Stillwater’s origins date back to 2010, PACE has just begun construction on a 5+ acre lot, affording the company a more spacious facility than its current headquarters in downtown Redding—a fact taken well into account during this era of distancing measures—according to PACE President, Paul Reuter. While COVID-19 certainly complicates matters, the work can be done.
PACE’s prospective neighbors, Cal Fire, have not been so lucky: their plan to move to Stillwater remains on hold. Since Cal Fire found their funding exhausted due to the COVID-19 outbreak, their agency remains unable to make a planned move to one of the other available lots in the Stillwater complex.
The juxtaposition of public and private fates here is telling.
Right now, with less than a hundred days until the November elections, long-overdue public infrastructure projects all over the country remain postponed, shelved, underfunded, or unfunded. Aside from the logistical consequences felt by commuters and travelers, consequences for the contracting, engineering, and construction industries are equally massive. While US Senators’ and Representatives’ haggling over the lapsed unemployment benefits extension continues to draw the most attention from media outlets, major US transit funding is also on the table: the Surface Transportation Program (STP), the foremost federal mechanism through which funding flows to surface transit, expires at the end of September.
With public transit revenues stalled due to travel restrictions, appropriating necessary means for improving surface transit is reaching the 11th hour. If I had to bet on which sector would come back first, I know which one I’d choose.
