Federal Stimulus Starting to Hit Mainstream Construction Market
Last week's 2010 McGraw-Hill Construction Outlook, offered a fascinating status report on the impact on the $130 billion (Yes, that's billion with a "b") in funding earmarked for the construction industry by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). Funds have been slow to hit the construction market, but some savvy contractors have been ready with "shovel-ready" projects, particularly in highway construction and road resurfacing.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of ARRA funds will be the federal government's General Service Services Administration (GSA), which oversees the business of the U.S. federal government, including the construction and maintenance of millions of square feet of office space and other facilities and resources for different departments of the federal government. The GSA is scheduled to get $5.6 billion in ARRA funding, including $4.5 billion for energy-efficient upgrades of government buildings.
Want to see what ARRA is funding in your neighborhood? Visit www.recovery.gov
About the Author
Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.