Articles / April 30, 2025

Infrastructure Outlook: From ‘Good Enough’ to ‘Built to Last’: Rethinking How We Deliver Resilient Infrastructure

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) “2025 Infrastructure Report Card” presents a sobering assessment of the state of U.S. infrastructure, assigning an overall C grade. While this marks a modest improvement from previous evaluations, showing the positive impacts of federal investments, it underscores the persistent challenges facing infrastructure in the United States and beyond.

For those of us working in transportation, this isn’t surprising. Aged roads, railways and runways across the globe are groaning under the weight of increasing demand and evolving performance criteria.

Throughout my career connecting people and places, I’ve witnessed firsthand the consequences of neglecting infrastructure. Congestion and outdated transit systems hinder mobility and stifle economic potential. We need to break the cycle of reactive investment and start planning like we mean it.

There’s no shortage of ambition or technology. From electric buses to autonomous systems, the tools to build cleaner, more efficient transport networks already exist. But technology on its own won’t fix structural gridlock. What’s missing is a more strategic approach to delivery.

Despite firm commitments, many transport agencies struggle to move from ambition to action. Electrifying an urban bus network or shifting a national rail system to hydrogen power takes a series of interconnected moves executed in a logical sequence.

We need to move faster, and we need a different model to do it.

Rather than prioritizing speed, programmatic thinking prioritizes sequence. It means taking on transformation not as a series of isolated projects but as a connected program with clear goals, risk-managed phases, cross-sector planning and integrated delivery baked in from the start.

From Plans to Practice

Risk is inherent in any significant transformation. But in transport, the potential for stranded assets, supply chain disruptions and technological obsolescence demands a proactive approach to mitigation.

Programmatic thinking means treating infrastructure delivery as an integrated, long-term effort rather than a string of disconnected projects. It builds in risk management, systems integration and workforce readiness from day one.

Nowhere Is This clearer than in Atlanta.

At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport—one of the busiest in the world—a $20 billion capital improvement program is being delivered with precisely this mindset. The scale is massive, but so is the ambition: to reimagine how one of America’s key transport hubs serves passengers and freight for decades to come.

The program looks beyond terminals and runway extensions, focusing instead on ensuring the airport can adapt to evolving needs and growing demand.

Just as important is the way this program embeds public-private collaboration. Rather than handing off responsibilities among agencies, contractors and operators, the delivery is coordinated to align design, construction, operations and long-term planning. That means fewer surprises, better value for money and a system built to scale.

Confronting Risk

Programmatic thinking is about identifying and confronting risk early.

Jacobs worked with a major airport in the United Kingdom to build a risk-based masterplan focused on future power needs. Instead of waiting for capacity problems, we modeled multiple scenarios to understand how power demands might change, where upgrades would be needed and how to phase them without disruption.

This is the opposite of ad-hoc project delivery: it’s coordinated, iterative and strategic. It gives operators confidence that when the time comes to scale up, the systems will be ready.

Technology has a significant role. At a national scale, custom analytics platforms are helping operators see the big picture: where charging infrastructure is needed, where demand will grow and where investments will have the most impact. They provide operators with the foresight and strategic vision required to understand what the future may look like.

We can’t engineer our way through any transformation without people. A deep understanding of the people side of the equation is essential to develop training, certification and redeployment plans to go along with redesigned operations.

Whether teaching drivers how to handle EV acceleration profiles or training technicians to service hydrogen fuel cells, the human element is what turns bold plans into working systems. Without it, even the best-designed program will stall.

From the outset, programmatic thinking includes workforce planning, training and change management for this very reason.

The next few years are critical for transport infrastructure. The landscape for transportation infrastructure investment is changing in the United States, and we need to make coordinated, long-term strategic investments or risk repeating the same fragmented, short-term thinking that will (at best) sustain our current C grade average—but not much more.

Programmatic thinking isn’t flashy, but it works. It’s how we build systems that are bold, resilient and fit for the future.