Last week I participated in Making the Grade: New Ideas Symposium for Innovation in Infrastructure Development hosted by the Environmental Financial Consulting Group, Autodesk, ASCE, and ISI. The goal of this symposium was "to produce a set of recommendations to be published and disseminated to policy makers and to the public for improving how infrastructure should be planned, designed, built, and financed in order to support U.S. economic competiveness, environmental sustainability, and social equity in an era of severe fiscal constraints."

Becoming a Meaningful Voice

My panel, "Redefining Infrastructure Workflows for Greater Financial Efficiency," discussed the current constraints of public funding for infrastructure development. We spent a lot of the discussion on the need to better understand what role private financing will play in public infrastructure, and, more importantly, how to enhance the role of design professionals in project financing decisions.

Crafting the Business Case

Understanding how to craft detailed business case analysis is crucial. Moving from subjective discussion about green benefits to quantitative business cases that monetize social and environmental impacts offers a new way of thinking about infrastructure development in order to leverage natural systems to create a more resilient infrastructure.

Another important question that was raised during the symposium is "What do we need to show project sponsors and funders to persuade them that my project should go first?" It's imperative that sustainable infrastructure advocates shift subjective discussion like "improved quality of life" to quantitative business case models to capture key opportunities with private investors and public-sector project sponsors.

This symposium was a significant step in getting our industry moving in this direction; and, as design professionals, we need to be better equipped to make the business case. For instance, financially-strapped governments are shifting away from formula grant-making to merit-based funding. By crafting detailed business cases, design professionals can leverage project-specific technical knowledge to reduce "financial risk" and attract potential investors and ultimately reduce the costs of due diligence and transactions.

Once the recommendations resulting from this symposium have been published, I will write a follow-up blog with our conclusions, so stay tuned for more!