Recommendations to Raise the Grade

To raise America’s infrastructure grades over the next four years, ASCE urges a comprehensive agenda that sustains investment, prioritizes resilience, and advances forward-thinking policies and innovations.

Continued—and in some cases, increased—investment is necessary despite recent resources slowing the growth of America’s infrastructure investment gap. Reducing federal and state investment levels, or delaying that support, will escalate the costs and risks of an aging infrastructure system, a scenario American families and businesses cannot afford. Infrastructure investments must be made with consideration of a project’s full life cycle, including the impact of more frequent extreme weather.

Public safety and efficient use of public dollars are advanced by building projects that can withstand increasingly severe weather events and natural and man-made hazards. Therefore, the implementation of best practices for resilience when planning across a project’s intended life cycle is critical.

To realize the benefits of recent infrastructure investments, we must advance forward-thinking policies and innovations necessary to build systems today that will provide clean drinking water, ensure safer transportation systems, and produce reliable electricity and broadband over the next 100 years.

Jump to: Sustain Investment  |  Prioritize Resilience  |  Advance Policy and Innovation

Sustain Investment

Since ASCE last assessed the condition of the nation’s infrastructure systems, Congress passed two sweeping packages to improve the networks that move people and goods across the country, provide clean drinking water to millions of Americans, and ensure that households and businesses have reliable electricity. One of those measures, the 2021 IIJA, set a new standard for federal infrastructure spending.

However, the legislation will expire in 2026, and Congress will decide how programs under the IIJA will be funded going forward. IIJA and Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) $580 billion in new investment has provided an initial and consequential step in bridging the funding gap between the nation’s infrastructure needs and preexisting support. The use of financing options to leverage public dollars, like tax-exempt municipal bonds, continues to increase, and private equity plays an increasingly important financing role.

Government decisions will support or stymie our momentum on infrastructure. A decline in funding from levels in the IIJA and IRA would cost taxpayers and businesses. American households should expect to pay an average of $700 more annually over the next 20 years if federal infrastructure investment snaps back to levels from before those laws.5 Municipal bonds may also lose investor appeal if Congress adjusts their tax-exempt status.

If the U.S. is serious about achieving an infrastructure system fit for the future, necessary steps must be taken that start with continued, long-term investment. Infrastructure improvements are time-intensive, often requiring multiple years to distribute resources and develop projects from feasibility study to design, on to shovels in the ground, and eventually to grand openings. To close the $3.7 trillion 10-year investment gap, meet future needs, and restore our global competitive advantage, we must sustain, or in many cases increase, infrastructure funding and financing options across all levels of government and the private sector.

Infrastructure Investments must be consistently and wisely allocated, beginning with the following steps:

  • Congress should maintain investment levels provided by the IIJA when the law expires in 2026 and fully fund authorized programs during the annual appropriations process.
  • Infrastructure owners and operators must charge rates reflecting the true cost of using, maintaining, and improving infrastructure. They will need to educate the public on the actual cost to deliver those services so they can understand set rates.
  • Federal, state, and local governments should expand the use of public–private partnerships for appropriate projects and find opportunities to leverage additional financing tools.
  • Congress must reinstate confidence in critical infrastructure programs by addressing the long-term viability of the Highway Trust Fund and ensuring that the State Revolving Funds for Clean Watersheds and Drinking Water are not experiencing revenue losses due to Congressionally designated projects.
  • Project owners should include life-cycle costs associated with planning, financing, designing, constructing, operating, maintaining, and decommissioning projects to properly evaluate the full infrastructure cost and the need to plan for the total cost over a project’s lifespan to get the most value out of their investments.

Raising the Grade

Investment Solutions that Work

Prioritize Resilience

Across the U.S., disasters of greater intensity, duration, and frequency have wreaked havoc on communities of every size and location. In 2024, a total of 27 extreme weather events caused 568 deaths and over $182 billion in damages; since 1980, the U.S. has experienced 403 events amounting to at least $1 billion in damages with a total cost exceeding $2.9 trillion. In addition to life and property losses, disasters strike assets across the infrastructure network, including buildings, roads, bridges, electrical lines, water  resources, and rail.

Severe flooding, wind, fire, snow, ice, and earthquakes damage and destroy these critical lifelines for residents, businesses, and communities at large. Measures to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters have led to an increased focus on resilience. The costs associated with building stronger infrastructure and structures demonstrate prudent investment. Every dollar spent on resilience and preparedness saves communities $13 in post-disaster costs, according to a 2024 study.

More work is needed to integrate resilience that protects against the impacts of extreme weather events. Better outcomes can be realized in disaster recovery and response through project planning and development that prioritizes resilience. This practice enables policymakers to ensure public dollars are used efficiently over a project’s lifespan.

Advancements in resilience across all infrastructure sectors can be made by:

  • Enabling communities, regardless of size, to develop and institute their own resilience pathway across all infrastructure portfolios. This is accomplished by streamlining asset management, incorporating life-cycle cost analysis into routine planning processes, and integrating future conditions, factoring climate impacts into long-term goal-setting and capital improvement plans.
  • Incentivizing and enforcing the use of the most up-to-date codes and standards, which mitigate risks of major events such as floods, hurricanes, fires, sea level rise, and more.
  • Encouraging asset management practices to ensure investments are spent wisely.
  • Understanding that our infrastructure is a system-of-systems and encouraging a dynamic, “big picture” perspective that weighs trade-offs across infrastructure sectors while instilling safety from resilience as the highest priority.
  • Prioritizing projects that improve the sustainability, safety, and security of systems and communities to ensure continued reliability and enhanced resilience.
  • Improving land-use planning across all levels of decision-making to strike a balance between the built and natural environments.
  • Enhancing the resilience of various infrastructure sectors by including nature-based or “green” infrastructure solutions.

Raising the Grade

Resilience Solutions that Work

Advance Policy and Innovation

Infrastructure improvements rely on both public and private sectors to address needs and advance solutions. Policies provide a basis for projects to be integrated in communities, states, and regions, and those policies should be responsive to the needs of the public and encourage both safety and innovation. To do this effectively, cooperation across all levels of government and the private sector is paramount for a successfully integrated infrastructure network. As engineers work to deliver the infrastructure of the future, new policies will need to accommodate emerging societal trends and environmental conditions, as well as incorporate forward-thinking innovations that can expedite project delivery and enhance safety. Furthermore, policies must recognize and address the need to reduce delays in the project permitting process and ensure that the U.S. has the workforce required to build the infrastructure necessary for the 21st century and beyond.

Policymakers and Infrastructure Leaders must work together to:

  • Innovate policies and practices across all levels of government that address common issues in project development and delivery across infrastructure sectors, locations, and environmental conditions.
  • Assess current government permitting processes, identify “pain points,” and inform strategies to modernize compliance across all infrastructure sectors—working in parallel rather than series—while ensuring appropriate safeguards and protections are in place.
  • Address the engineering and construction workforce shortage by implementing strategies and policies that recognize both short-term and long-term recruitment and retention challenges, as well as prioritize STEM opportunities in K-12 education.
  • Ensure reliable data is collected and released to the public frequently regarding the condition, capacity, operations, maintenance, safety, and resilience of all infrastructure systems.
  • Leverage proven and emerging technologies to make the best use of limited financial and personnel resources.
  • Support research and development of innovative materials, technologies, and processes to modernize and extend the life of infrastructure, expedite repairs or replacements, and reduce costs into the future.

Raising the Grade

Policy and Innovation Solutions that Work

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