ASCE Report Card for America’s Infrastructure and the Implications of the Failure to Act

Maria Lehman, P.E., F. ASCE

ASCE National Treasurer, Member Committee on America’s Infrastructure, & Director U.S. Infrastructure, GHD

Overview

The presentation will focus on the 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure release and describe the process and the resulting grades and all the analysis put into getting to the grades.  It will also review the Failure to Act economic reports which quantify the economic impacts of the status quo.

 Since 1998, ASCE has issued a quadrennial Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.  The latest release was on March 3, 2021 and included 17 categories.  It is a comprehensive review of public data related to the major infrastructure categories that make the U.S. economy work.  Each of the categories are then graded on a specific methodology based on capacity, condition, funding, future need, operations and maintenance, public safety, resilience, and innovation. Each category also includes a section on recommendations to raise the grade.  ASCE issued a COVID report card last June to define the pandemic impacts on our infrastructure.  Companion to the Report Card were 4 economic studies that quantified the impacts of not improving the infrastructure; one for the electric grid, one for water and wastewater, one for transportation and a composite.