Infra Insight Blog

On September 23, 2024, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky issued an Opinion and Order in Mid-America Milling Co., LLC, et al., v. U.S. Department of Transportation, et. al., No. 3:23-CV-00072-GFVT, 2024 WL 4267183 (E.D. Ky. Sept. 23, 2024), granting a preliminary injunction on the basis that the race- and gender-based rebuttable presumptions used in the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program violates the United States Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. ... 

Through recent updates to California’s Public Contract Code, public agencies are being equipped with new tools to deliver major infrastructure projects through use of the progressive design-build (PDB) model. As more public agencies gain access to the legislative tools available to use PDB, we expect to see an increasing number of water projects undertaken and completed successfully under the PDB or other early contractor delivery methods. … 

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) recently announced a long-awaited Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for public agencies to enhance technical capacity to deliver projects using a public-private partnership (P3) model. Authorized by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58; also known as the IIJA), $57.72 million is available through the Innovative Finance and Asset Concessions Grant Program (Program) for public agencies to hire technical, financial and legal experts (either on staff or as consultants) to support the evaluation and delivery ...

On January 17, 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck Northridge, California, resulting in thousands of casualties and approximately $60 billion in damages and economic loss. Hospitals within the impacted area suffered severe structural damage and many became inoperable. Recognizing the insufficiency of the existing seismic safety standards for hospitals, the state of California signed Senate Bill 1953 (SB 1953) into law in September 1994.

SB 1953, also known as the Hospital Seismic Retrofit Program, established the following deadlines by which all California general ...

When an infrastructure project takes the first steps from vague idea towards becoming a reality, public owners must make countless decisions on how to advance the project. One decision of particular importance is the selection of the project delivery method, which has significant impacts on the project’s timeline and budget. While many owners are familiar with a variety of project delivery methods, including alternative delivery methods such as design-build, construction manager-at-risk and public-private partnerships, knowing when to choose one option over another can ...

Last month, through the annual process known as the “May Revise,” California Governor Gavin Newsom released an update to the 2023-24 state budget proposal that he first introduced in January. The updated budget proposal sets forth a $306.5 billion spending plan that seeks to tackle the state’s growing budget deficit while maintaining key investments in education, healthcare, housing, climate and infrastructure.

Regarding infrastructure, the Governor noted that, due to unprecedented local, state, and federal investments, the state will spend more than $180 billion ...

On January 10, 2023, the Biden-Harris administration released the U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization ("Blueprint"), representing a major step in advancing the president’s clean transportation agenda and addressing the growing climate crisis caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Blueprint arrives as preliminary U.S. carbon-emissions data for 2022 show yet another year of increased emissions, indicating that the country is not on course to meet its commitment under the Paris Agreement to halve economy-wide emissions by 2030. ... 

The President unveiled details of his historic infrastructure plan this morning, proposing the largest infrastructure investment in U.S. history.

The President’s proposal, titled the American Jobs Plan, requests roughly $2 trillion in total federal funding and financing tools over the next eight years...

The State of Delaware and a subsidiary of Gulftainer Company Limited (Gulftainer) have finalized a concession agreement for the operation and further development of the 100-year-old Port of Wilmington (Port).

While the concession agreement signed on September 18, 2018 is not publicly available, it is expected, based on deal terms described in Port documents submitted in support of approval of the P3 transaction,[1] that the agreement grants Gulftainer exclusive rights to manage the Port for a 50-year term. In return, Gulftainer agrees to invest up to $584M in the Port in the first ...

It’s been a productive time for advocates of water in the U.S. with President Obama signing into law the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN).  WIIN includes the Water Resources Development Act of 2016 (WRDA), together with provisions to authorize critical water projects  and improve drinking water infrastructure, water storage and supply, flood control and waterways across the nation.

A summary of some of WIIN’s key attributes are set out below:

• WIIN authorizes Congress to provide $20 million for the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act ...

With the rapid pace of innovation and deployment of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to enhance existing transportation infrastructure, transportation officials frequently procure and manage sophisticated systems that collect, use and maintain vast amounts of data. Today’s transportation officials must possess considerable technological proficiency in addition to their traditional expertise in civil engineering and construction.

Identifying technology to optimize infrastructure, and crafting complex technical specifications to procure the same, is ...

The National Council for Public Private Partnerships, reengineered its 2016 P3 Connect annual conference June 27 to 29, 2016, posing the question What’s Next for public-private partnerships in the United States.  NCPPP (as it is widely known in the P3 space) launched four Institutes to offer answers.  NCPPP created four separate Transportation, Energy, Real Estate and Social Infrastructure and Water institutes, each of which met in Chicago over the three day conference starting discussions with where are we now and ending with where do we go from here.

In parallel, NCPPP reprised ...

We all know how hard it is to change federal statutes these days—you need an Act of Congress and the President to sign the bill.  Last week, a group of the top public finance lawyers in the US offered an approach relating to the use of tax exempt bonds that wouldn’t require a change in tax statutes but instead could be accomplished through a change in the regulations relating to the so-called private use test.  As the group pointed out in its letter to high ranking US Treasury officials, Congress itself has made it clear that Treasury had the authority to adopt other, more flexible rules.

The ...

To help promote Infrastructure Week—which brings together thousands of stakeholders from around the country to highlight the critical importance of investing in and modernizing America’s infrastructure systems, and the essential role infrastructure plays in our economy—Nossaman is reposting this article on California’s infrastructure needs. To learn more about Infrastructure Week, which runs May 11-May 15, please visit www.infrastructureweek.org or follow Infrastructure Week on Twitter @RebuildRenew.

California is the most populous state in the Country; ...

On November 17, 2014, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest U.S. public pension fund with approximately $300 billion in assets, conducted its annual real assets program review. CalPERS’ real assets program includes real estate, infrastructure and forestland. According to the presentation by its investment staff, real assets’ 13.4% return outperformed the policy benchmark by 160 bps in 2013-2014 fiscal year. CalPERS’ infrastructure program has focused on both public and private infrastructure primarily in transportation ...

We all know that our infrastructure is aging.  Considering how hot the issue of transportation funding (or lack thereof) has become, it is almost impossible not to see or hear something on this topic daily.  That being said, Transportation for America has provided a new way for us to fixate on the state of disrepair of our nation’s bridges – an interactive map.

The map is color-coded and uses green to mark states that are more-or-less maintaining their bridges.  A special hats off to Florida and Nevada, which rank 50th and 51st respectively in the list of disrepair.  In contrast, the map ...

A week after the Project Finance Awards honored the Florida deals, the Infrastructure Journal Awards honored the Texas DOT’s North Tarrant Express project as its 2009 Global Transport Deal of the Year. The Florida DOT’s I-595 Project was nominated along with one other project for the honor.

The North Tarrant Express was nominated with two other projects for the IJ’s 2009 Global Deal of the Year – which selects from projects in all sectors, including: power, renewables, oil and gas, PPPs, and transport.

Nossaman was nominated along with two other law firms for the 2009 ...