Infrastructure Bill's possible effects on the Structural Engineering Industry 5

[oengineer]

I am curious what others may think of the Infrastructure Bill that has just passed through congress will have on our industry, as structural engineers.

Would this possibly increase the demand for Structural Engineers (thereby increasing the value of currently practicing structural engineers)?

If it is currently already tough to find structural engineers (entry, mid and senior positions) then would the passage of the Infrastructure Bill make it even tougher to find structural engineers (if so, could this cause an increase in the salaries of those currently practicing)?

Curious to hear others thoughts.

 

[oengineer]

You cut off the last part of my statement, which is material to your question.

It seems like your applying broad economic principals to a specific corner of the broader market and, in doing so, you're missing some important nuances. In general I think your ideas make sense, but they're not as easy to apply to structural engineering specifically. If we were workers on an assembly line who can be trained to do a passable job inside of a couple of weeks and probably make a decent wage (for the work), you'd be spot on.

For engineers, the time span to go from "hey, that field is paying well" to "hey, I'm making a decent living at this" is more like 8-10 years. Will there be indirect benefits? Maybe. Some in the heavy civil/transportation sector may get desperate enough to start training building PEs to do the work and pay them enough to convince them to "start over", but that's going to be a very tough sell. We're not all interchangeable cogs in a machine - we have our unique roles that make it difficult to switch back and forth. So a sudden spike in demand for bridge engineers, transportation engineers, or oil and gas engineers would probably take several years to show up in any sort of analytics.

Another important consideration is the unique nature of economies of scale in consulting engineering - and more importantly the diseconomies of scale. There is a sweet spot for every company - dictated by myriad and ever changing variables - between the two. You want to be big enough to handle the right size and quantity of projects to maximize profits, but no bigger as you start incurring more overhead and expenses than you can make up for by increases in revenue. So even though being on the wrong side of that sweet spot can look better because revenues continue to rise, profit margins actually shrink and your overall return on investment falls until the folks at the top are not receiving any additional compensation for growing managerial responsibilities and risk assumption. So smart engineering business leaders in this market shouldn't necessarily be expanding - they should be increasing their fees to increase margins and employee compensation. If they are still below their sweet spot for economies of scale, then expansion and hiring may be a good idea, but it's not always the answer.

From your comments, I interpret it seems like mainly those structural engineers who already have 8 to 10 + years experience with their PE license will probably benefit from this Infrastructure Bill (as well as the other stuff like the increase in gas prices & current employee market), directly or indirectly. Also, it will possibly cause a new generation of graduate engineers to join the Bridge design community, but it may not necessarily cause a pay increase for these engineers, or structural engineers as a whole.

It will create work but not some big demand and therefore increase in pay. These projects have such a long lead-time that the industry will be able to accommodate the increase in demand.

Hopefully it will create good job opportunities (and some job security) for the structural engineering community for awhile

 

[phamENG]

I'd say it's more of a "mainly those structural engineers who are already designing bridges and other infrastructure related structures will probably benefit." I bring up the 8-10 years to show that the employee side of the engineering market does not respond quickly to stimuli. The companies already in the game or ready to get in the game can act quickly and dynamically - individuals usually cannot unless they already have the skill set the aforementioned companies are looking for.

 

[dhengr]

Oengineer:
I suspect that two thirds of those monies will be pissed away before a yard of dirt is moved or a yard of conc. is poured, unless they budget some significant money, for an office and officers who oversee that the projects are run properly. These positions should not just be patronage rewards, but should be manned by people who know what they are doing, non-political, honest, inspectors general with some authority to stop waste, graft, etc., and prosecute it. We pee so much time, effort and money away to make politicians look good, and to make a few of their friends rich, but rarely oversee the spending until the damage is long done, and the guilty parties are seldom made to fix it or repay their ill-gotten gains. Then, some TV reporter makes a big exposé out of the mess, and we just never seem to learn. God knows, there are plenty of projects or infrastructure areas which need the money to do needed work.