April 2010  Volume 80, Number 4

SPECIAL REPORT: The Infrastructure Roundtables: Seeking Solutions to an American Crisis

Part 1

Part 2

By Anne Elizabeth Powell

Portraits by Skip Brown

In mid-January, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) convened a series of five roundtables in Washington, D.C., that were conceived as in-depth discussions of how best to address the nation¹s significant infrastructure deficiencies, which threaten not only the safety and welfare of the public but also the nation¹s economic growth and competitiveness. Each roundtable had its own moderator and slate of participants, and the participants included well-respected political leaders, policy leaders, and members of ASCE who are well versed on the subject of critical infrastructure. The starting points for these discussions were the five key solutions outlined in ASCE¹s 2009 Report Card for America¹s Infrastructure, which was released in March 2009. In essence what these roundtables were striving to achieve was a framework for giving full dimension to these solutions and securing for them positions of high visibility and high priority on the national agenda.